A very realistic, sometimes lucid, dream I experienced last week:

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I'm at a musical performance. Daniel Lanois, whom I've never listened to before, was performing with classical musicians. There were books in cabinets nearby. I look at the books, and they are about hidden cities in Tibet. One book is titled The Dharpa, who led an explorer to a hidden city in Tibet. I lucidly wonder (and I remember actively pondering this in my dream) if it actually reads Dharma, but no, the word is definitely Dharpa. It's a word I've never read before. Daniel Lanois walks past, and mentions a Dharpa leading the explorers to the hidden city, perhaps thinking it's a word similar to Sherpa. I reply bemusedly, "No, not a Dharpa, but THE Dharpa!" Daniel Lanois laughs and replies in a skeptical, but friendly, tone, "The Dharpa? Haha, I don't think so!"

Fade.

I'm walking a path with a group of people in Tibet, a path I feel that countless others have followed believing it leads to a hidden city. All have failed to reach it. There are monk lookouts, and seeing us, they rush ahead and close enormous gates that we have no hope of opening ourselves. It's then that I realise the path won't get me to the hidden city, so I step off it, and make my way through the scrub up the slopes of the mountain.

Fade.

I remember flashes of extraordinary architecture, a city touched by the sky, the sun flashing off golden spires and fantastic buildings, but I can remember very little.

Fade.

I see myself at the city. Another me! He looks exactly like me because he is me. I get the impression that I've traveled to the hidden city in Tibet to meet this other me, I've come to find him and become one person again.

Fade.

I'm back at the music performance, showing an unknown lady and several other people photographs I took of the hidden city. They are all impressed by the hidden city.

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That's all I can remember. I immediately did a search for Dharpa and discovered it's the name of a real village in northern India, Uttar Pradesh, one of five villages whose inhabitants claim direct lineage from elite royal warriors. Dharpa also means "tree" in the dialect of northern Australian aboriginals. The Dharpa, not any old Dharpa, led me to a hidden city in Tibet? Intriguing. I've never heard of the Indian village nor the aboriginal word before.

There's also DARPA: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA raises some interesting questions indeed.

Dharpa. DARPA. Dharma. I have no answers, no explanations for this very vivid (and oftentimes lucid) dream only a burning desire to explore the hidden valleys of Tibet in search of a secret city!