According to Nepalese people, the mother goddess dwells on top of the Everest or, as the Sherpa call it, Sagarmatha.

In this white hell made of thick, milky mist and sharp tongues of ice, the soul is reborn. With every step, with every breath, you become lighter, you become sky.

The paths, studded with stupa and other small temples, further prove the sacredness of these places through which you cannot pass without due prays.

Locals, albeit displaced in the cities for economic reasons, cannot keep themselves from looking at the mountain tops with nostalgia-laden eyes, unable imagine a life outside of those lands, no matter how inhospitable they seem.

Because that is where their forefathers lived. It is where their fathers still live and where their memories shall live on once their bodies will be gone.

These places summoned up remembrance of things past: the taste of my childhood in Salento, the stones, the shrubs, the old, sunburned farmers.

Unexpected symmetries between places and worlds that seem so far off.