Date: 04.04.2007
Text: Shiven

Thoughts in time and out of season, the hitchhiker stood by the side of the road and leveled his thumb in the calm, calculus of reason

Kathmandu saw snow for the first time in 62 years and then it rained on the most auspicious day of the year. 16th February, 2007- the night consecrated to Lord Shiva, instigator of universal love, change and transformation. The party in honor of this festive occasion was beautiful and soul inspiring to say the least.

Music could be heard all around the hill, reverberating and echoing in all directions. Losing our way but finding the sound, we crawled and crept towards it, booming from Hattibaba‚s collection. Eventually finding the venue, we walked into a psychedelic playground of lights, visuals, décor and music. Baba twisted his set with „fun games of the hallucination generation sitting behind the consoles of a new-age electronic machine but still connecting us to our archaic past.

Sanuk from Switzerland took over the consoles with crunchy, quirky yet full on tracks guiding space ships of the imagination, opening up options and portals and we chose one of them. I chose the light shimmering and subtly falling on fluorescent mandalas of gods and demi-gods, all dancing like nobody‚s watching.

Down in the confines of the Dj rooms, we met an old friend, awake and aware at mid-night and eager to dance. We talked and smiled and drank some water. We now awakened in our senses with sounds and lights moving like soft piano notes. We were aware of everything around us. Mid-way through Hydra‚s set was a sound going Œchi-chu-chaaa-cha-cha-cha-cha‚. Didn‚t know whether to dance in normalcy or go ecstatically numb. The set was dark but heavy, uneasy at times but still beautiful altogether. That is good night music.

Dawn was cold to begin with and Satwah‚s music was crawling towards the outbreak of sunlight. Once the sun was out, music and nature meshed and created this wonderful playground of light, sound and dance. Full on yet progressive in nature, Satwah‚s set was seductively groovy, maintaining that fine line between intelligent dance music and total mayhem.

Hattibaba was back on Sunday morning, playing ritualistic hymns and devotional music making a friend remark that „it was the most positive psychedelic experience for me. This sound could be heard down at Sitapaila and drawn by the music; villagers and monks from the nearby monastery gathered to dance and watch baba play. By mid-afternoon, what began as a psychedelic, electronic dance festival had now become a spiritual gathering of locals, monks, babas and trancers.

When Jack Kerouac was chilling in the city light bookstores in San-Francisco, he was foreseeing the future of electronic spirituality and he aptly mentioned this:

„The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes \"Awww!