ONE of the many ironies of our 21st-century lifestyle is that while we can afford to go pretty much anywhere on the planet, the chances of a meaningful encounter with a truly different society are few and far between.
Which is what makes one particular moment in John Murray's documentary film A Prayer for the Windhorseso special. A young girl and her mother are sitting on the ground. "My hands are freezing!" the girl exclaims. "How are yours?" "They are very cold," is the soft reply. Now we Irish like to think we know all about cold hands, after the winter we've had. But the truth is, we can't imagine what it would be like to belong to a semi-nomadic tribe in north-eastern Nepal.
Every year, these families spend six months trekking to their winter pastures in the high Himalaya, a journey which A Prayer for the Windhorse– the title refers not to an animal, but an ancient symbol of well-being or good fortune – chronicles with vivid immediacy.
Murray eschews the explanatory commentary we’ve come to expect from documentaries about the natural world. Instead he allows the landscape to speak for itself: the sound of the wind, the advance and retreat of the changing light, the whistling and yahoo’ing of the people, tiny specks against the huge mountains as they teeter across an increasingly scary-looking series of paths and passes. At the centre of it all is Karma Tshering, yak herder, salt trader and narrator; “My family and my yaks are always on my mind”.
It's a film so gentle it might slip away, unnoticed, among all the glitz and glamour of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, where it's showing alongside Broken Tail, Murray's elegiac tale of a tiger killed by a train in India. Which would be a great pity. Both films look spectacular – even on a computer screen. In Cineworld, with proper sound and comfy chairs and all the rest of it, they're guaranteed to bring the viewer, quite literally, into another world. No 3-D glasses, no gimmicks or gizmos; just sympathy, sensitivity and skill.
That an Irish film-maker should be making these films is a kind of magic in itself.
A Prayer for the Windhorseis the last in Murray's four-part series documenting the last great nomadic journeys on Earth; earlier instalments featured Siberian reindeer herders, the Qashqa'i tribe of Iran and a Touareg camel caravan in the Sahara. "The Nepal story was the one that got me interested in the first place," he says. "But it was the most expensive to film – and also, there was political unrest in Nepal. So it was left until last."
In Nepal in 1993 to film an Everest expedition, he came across an article about the mountain journey by a French photographer – in a bookshop in Kathmandu. "Peter Matthiessen's book The Snow Leopardwas also a big influence," he says. "The area where the film is shot is the area in the book – the monastery in our film is actually the same one." When he finally got there, it didn't disappoint.
“In fact, unlike most other places you might visit – Machu Picchu and so forth – it more than lived up to expectations,” he says.
Funding for the project came from TG4, National Geographic and the Film Board. Murray seems unperturbed by the physical challenge of getting cameras, equipment, food, and goodness knows what into the depths, or rather the heights, of the Himalayas. “We have good experience of filming in the mountains – plus we have a great team in Nepal,” he says.
“Our trek leader is a fantastic character.”
As a film-maker you can control almost everything. But you’re not God. The shoot had barely got going when, one day, Murray noticed Karma Tshering’s father leaning over and vomiting. “We just thought, ‘Oh, he’s not well’,” says Murray. “But he was dead within two minutes.” The tragedy sent a huge shockwave through family and film crew alike.
Tshering was left to make his incredible journey without the support and guidance of his father: Murray was left to wonder whether his journey was over before it had begun.
“It was terrible,” he says. “He was a fit, wiry man who, minutes before he died, had been running around doing stuff. It really gave us a sense of the lives these people lead – I mean, it’s so remote up there. There was no question of getting him to hospital or anything like that.”
But life had to go on for Tshering and his family too: and A Prayer for the Windhorseis the result. "It was," Murray concludes of the experience of making the film, "like going back in time. And it was such a privilege. I have never enjoyed myself so much. Nomads in different countries tend to be treated as second- or third-class citizens. Business people look down on them, and they're considered hard to police and had to tax. But they're some of the best people I've ever met in my life – so good, so cheerful, so friendly.
“And when you see the kids . . . I mean, to see that 12-year-old girl carrying her two- and three-year-old sisters over mountain passes that expert trekkers would have trouble with. And she was skipping along. That was a real eye-opener.” The eyes widen; the jaw drops; the mind opens.
A Prayer for the Windhorseis on Saturday, February 27th at 8.30pm, at Cineworld, Dublin.