“Paradise is here on earth… for me, somewhere right here.” (Mari Jürjens)
Today I’m just happy.

It all starts with the thunderstorm. It goes on and on - no choice but to become more humble as a human being. For a moment, just before sunrise, it gives us respite and lets me see the sea of clouds beneath my feet, only to continue demonstrating its power again right until our departure.

From the moment we start walking to discover the heights of Thông Nguyên, I am spellbound. Despite all the fears expressed by the group last night - the length of the route, the elevation gain, and “too much walking” in general for some - I am in a curious state of mind, completely connected to the Earth, to nature, to the omnipresent green and the sound of water. I feel part of the planet.

The sound of water is everywhere. Rivers and streams line our path, tiny gurgling waterfalls tumble down the mountains, and water fills the rice fields between the forests. The rice plants stand with water up to their hips. Water is not my favourite element, and yet the sound of it makes one feel part of the universe.
 

It’s mirror season: the rice paddies are in water | Mr Linh's Adventures

Green. Everywhere. A concentration of unfamiliar plants, with a few vain butterflies I have never met before. Birds appear like revelations, just for a moment. Tapioca and ginger, both on my list of favourite ingredients, suddenly incarnate as living beings - plants standing right before my eyes.

The smell. For a long moment, I stop, struck by the scent of the place. Somehow familiar - but how? It is like fresh vegetation after the rain. Yet the smell I remember from my homeland, Estonia, is that of pine forests after a shower, and we are far from those now. There is something of a fresh birch sauna whisk in it, but not quite. A curious sensation: inhaling something both familiar and unknown at the same time. As if a memory had travelled thousands of kilometres and returned wearing a different face.

And suddenly, while I am in the middle of a photo session with an enormous green bug, I hear it - a sound moving in circles. At first I pay no attention, concentrated on my favourite models, the insects. It must be my Italian group singing to encourage one another. But as I draw closer, this circular singing creeps deep into my body and soul.

There is a man, dressed in vivid colours, particularly red, powerful as a thunderstorm, sitting in front of a house and singing. And the melody goes in rounds.

A shaman.

Someone in this house is not well. Someone is sick. A negative spirit has moved in, and there is a need for a shaman to bring life back into balance.
As we continue our path through this tropical paradise, something comes with us - something deeply ancestral. A connection.
 

Dao people preparing medicinal herbal | Mr Linh's Adventures

After more greenery, more lush vegetation and the constant sound of water, another house. An old woman from this household has been to the hospital with appendicitis. When someone becomes ill, bad spirits are involved, and they need to be driven away.

Two shamans.

Plants are used to draw out what is harmful. They are burned, and the spirits are then chased away with water and countless ritual words. We remain there, bewitched. All the nature around us becomes ritual space, ancestral space. We grow roots.

And then we pass through the “Gate of Heaven”, a mountain pass a thousand metres high, linking one valley to another.
At our lunch break, our breath is taken away by an indescribable view of rice-field patterns. Three water buffaloes refresh themselves in the flooded terraces, while a young man and another buffalo labour among them. Heaven. We are in heaven.

“It’s like music,” says Silvia, contemplating the scenery. “There’s harmony.”
 

Our proud Italian group on day 9 | Mr Linh's Adventures

At the end of the day, many of us once again try the Dao medicinal bath. This time, the window between the bath and the world is huge, the fragrance of the plants stronger, the water hotter. Slowly, slowly, the universe takes us in. Our souls entwine with the Earth and its plants.
I feel happy.
I love this Earth.