What I Learnt From an Indigenous Shaman in the Amazon Rainforest.

On a hot and humid morning, I lay in a hammock under a towering fig tree, serenaded by the call of wild birds fluttering about in the Amazonian wilderness.

We had arrived in Puerto Maldonado, the gateway to the Peruvian Amazon, just the previous evening. After a month in the high altitude city of Cusco and the Sacred Valley, I felt a strange uneasiness from being at sea level again. Is low altitude sickness a thing, I wondered?

A gentle breeze cooled the humidity on my skin and lured me into a nap. I woke up to the voice of a young, short, broad built man – Enzo, our translator – as he told my partner that the shaman had arrived. Before we walked into the forest with him, he wanted us to try something.

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Don Victor, who belonged to the Indigenous Ese Eja community in the Peruvian Amazon, wore a long, flowing white robe and a necklace of colorful seeds gathered from the forest. His self-crafted hat comprised of foraged feathers, the largest of which were the characteristic red and blue feathers of the native macaw.

There was a hint of wisdom on his aging face at 63 years old, but there was also a hint of child-like joy. When he laughed, his happiness felt pure.

The thing he wanted us to try was spread across three big buckets, and a light-colored liquid in a small glass bottle he held in his hand. Enzo translated from Ese Eja to English with some Spanish thrown in. Don Victor had made an infusion from the roots and bark of the Chuchuwasi tree found in the Amazon, fermented with sugarcane over the last several days.

I hesitatingly took a sip from the mud shot glass, and felt the sweet, refreshing brew cool down my body. It was used to cure inflammation, but also restored the nature balance of the body. I took a couple of big gulps, for it sounded like just what I needed. In the next few minutes, I felt the potency of what I’d just drunk, as it churned my stomach but strangely relaxed my body.

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We followed Don Victor into the old growth primary forest just next to Casa Amazonas – our abode in the forest – learning about plants, barks and roots used as medicine by his community. He stopped next to some bushes and asked, thirsty? With his machete, he hacked his way into the wilderness, cut out a thick vine, and gave each of us a sip of pure water trickling out of the vine – that has sustained many a thirsty forest dwelling tribes. At a wild cacao tree, he split open the fruit to give us a taste of its sweet, lichee-like fruit.

When I asked what houses in his Indigenous forest village were made of, he gathered a bunch of leaves and vines, sat under the shade of a wild kapok tree, and began to sow them together. In just a few minutes, he built a tiny roof, that he said many houses still retain – it lasts a few years and is waterproof even in the torrential Amazon rain, although time-intensive to make and replace.

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He regaled us with stories of life in the forest, a few hours upriver from where we were, but every few minutes, he stopped to show us some miracle plant used to prevent or cure an illness, or roots and barks used in daily life. At 63, he had never seen the inside of a hospital or taken modern medicine, much like other elders in the community. But the younger generations, he lamented, were slowly moving away from natural medicine.

Speaking of traditional medicine, I had to ask what he felt about the commercialization of Ayahuasca. Through our time in the Sacred Valley, we had seen it being offered as commonly as beer, advertised in every hotel, restaurant and house! I had met a traveller in Lima who had flown in for a week-long plant medicine retreat, which featured everything from Ayahuasca to Huachuma (San Pedro cactus) in the span of just 7 days. Having experienced the intensity of a Ayahuasca ceremony with a practicing shaman in a simple shed by the Amazon River, deep in the Amazonian wilderness in Ecuador (I wrote about it in detail in my book), I felt surprised to see it being offered so freely, in a way that felt more ‘tourist experience’ than the sacred ceremony it was.

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Don Victor’s face betrayed no signs of irritation or anger as he acknowledged that no, this isn’t how Ayahuasca is meant to be practiced. He explained that there’s merit in this sacred and potent plant medicine only when practiced with a shaman of high knowledge, after first paying respect to the spirits of the forest and the river.

The ancient knowledge of this wondrous forest has been passed down many generations, through intense study, strict rules, solitude and Ayahuasca. Bu it is slowly being lost to the commercialization and commodification of the Amazon and its forest-dwelling tribes.

We stopped to gaze at a magnificent old ficus tree. At atleast a few hundred years of age, it’s wide bark curved and spread out for several meters, and seemed to stretch endlessly towards the blue sky above. I felt like a tiny creature in its vastness. When I tried to hug it, my arms barely covered a fraction of its grand trunk.

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Don Victor had of course witnessed the magic of these ancient trees all his life. But his face emanated a first-timer’s joy as he hugged this gorgeous ficus too. Even with all the changes around us, he said mellowly, I hope our ebio enati – an Ese Eja word for a deep-rooted connection with the forest that has no direct translation in most familiar languages – will never change.

What would you like to ask an Indigenous shaman in the Amazon?

Also in my Peru travel series:

Things I Wish I knew Before Travelling to Peru