Pokhara — Dreaming a Place

April 3, 2026

I arrived in Pokhara carrying a memory.

Not just of a place, but of how it once met me—more open, more spare… quieter somehow. That earlier encounter has stayed with me, and I can feel it here as I walk along the edge of Phewa Lake.

What I find now is different.

The lakeside is built up. There are now high rise hotels. Cafés and shops line the streets in a way that feels familiar—almost interchangeable with other places I’ve been.

And yet…

as I walk, something else is here too.

The light still catches the lake in a particular way. The Himalaya—off in the distance—appear and disappear behind the nearer hills. There are moments when what’s been built recedes, not because it goes away, but because something quieter comes forward.

Not something I’m trying to find.

More something that shows up when I slow down enough to notice.

I find myself moving between these layers.

What is here now.

What I remember.

What I’m sensing as I walk.

They don’t cancel each other out. If anything, they seem to sit alongside one another… not always comfortably, but not in conflict either.

It has me wondering what a place actually is.

I was reminded of something a mentor once shared. He had been speaking with an Aboriginal elder in Australia and mentioned how the Red Kangaroo had disappeared from a particular area. The elder responded, “Nope. Now we have Red Kangaroo Dreaming.”

I remember hearing that years ago and not quite knowing what to do with it.

Standing here now, it lands differently.

Something can disappear in its physical form… and yet not be gone.

Not just as memory.

But as something that continues to move—subtly—through how we sense, how we orient, how we meet what’s in front of us.

Walking here, I begin to notice that what I thought I had lost in Pokhara may not be lost in the way I imagined.

The earlier Pokhara—the one I remember—is not here in the same outward way.

But it doesn’t feel absent either.

It shows up in moments. In the way my attention settles. In a kind of quiet recognition that’s hard to locate in anything I can point to directly.

Almost as if the place continues… not only out there, but through how it is being lived here, now.

That shifts something for me.

Or maybe it’s more accurate to say—it opens something.

We tend to think of place as something fixed. Buildings, roads, what’s visible. And clearly those things change. Sometimes dramatically.

But that doesn’t seem to be the whole of it.

There’s something else here—less obvious, not always foregrounded—but still present. And at times it feels as though my earlier encounters with this place are part of how I’m able to notice that now.

Which brings me back to that line—Red Kangaroo Dreaming.

Maybe when something we’ve known changes or even disappears, it doesn’t only leave a gap.

Maybe it also shows up differently.

As a kind of orientation.

A subtle pull.

Even a longing.

Not something to resolve.

But something that keeps us in relationship.

As I continue walking along the lake, I notice I’m less concerned with how Pokhara should be.

And more interested in how it’s revealing itself… moment to moment.

The surface has changed. That’s clear.

And still, something remains.

Not quite where it used to be.

Not quite the same.

But not gone either.

And in noticing that… something in me settles.

Not because I’ve figured it out.

But because I’m back in contact with it.