Crossing the Himalayas
CHINA | Tuesday, 11 November 2008 | Views [465]
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0cm;
mso-para-margin-right:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0cm;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
Day 24: The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see…
We got up early enough that it was still dark when we
piled our bags and ourselves into the 97 Toyota Landcruiser and left the city.
Now, as we steadily snake ever upward, the roads twisting and turning so
sharply that they nearly bend right back in upon themselves, the Tibetan sun
lazily rises over the looming ridge. Before
we’d left we had settled on a seating system to give everyone equal time in
each seat. Conveniently, small sign posts mark the kilometres to Everest and so
at each 20 kilometre mark we stop to stretch our legs and change seats; the one
in back, crammed into a small gap between backpacks, switches to the front seat,
and the rest of us slide one seat across. Jerry had volunteered to take first
shift in the back and it wasn’t long before the claustrophobic environment
combined with the curves had Jerry calling out for the driver to stop so he
could throw up out the backdoor. “It must have been…” Jerry claimed between
breathless heaving, “last night’s dip”. A man such as Jerry, who spends most of
his life on the road, doesn’t like to admit to a travelling weakness. I was
next in the back and I spent the whole time trying desperately to hold down my
own vomit, and I’ve never been travel sick in my life.
Our highest pass on this day is a breath-taking 4900m.
Stopped at the top we look out across a lake of the deepest blue, lying like a
mirage amongst undulating naked hills. A lady who looks as old as the hills around
her leads a shaggy black yak saddled with brightly coloured cloth down to the
lake below. Lining the distant horizon we can see the white peaks of the
Himalayas, our destination. The cloudless vista is broken only by the white
sheet that flows from Everest’s leeward side, like a woollen scarf wrapped
around its extended neck. It accentuates Everest’s dominating height, like its
extra reach is just enough to slice open the belly of the sky that bleeds
white, wispy blood. “Orographic lifting” I tell the others. (I realize my
mistake much later while flicking through an old weather book of mine back in
Australia. The kind of orographic stratus atop especially high mountain ranges,
such as Mt Everest, the book informs me, is not caused by the lifting of an air
mass but by strong wind blowing against the peak creating an area of low air
pressure on the leeward side and as low pressure enhances condensation, cloud
forms.) The wind up here blows unhindered and I gratefully zip up my
snowboarding gear, bought especially for this trip, pull down my beanie, and
pull over the hood. Still, the wind chills me and we stay out just long enough
to snap some photos, marvel for a moment at the mountains, and then clamber
shivering back into the 4WD.
A few hours later we arrive at a secluded golden
roofed monastery situated in a narrow valley ringed by a high white stone
wall. As we walk in a small boy comes running up to me and tries to snatch the
bottle of water from my hand. I win the short tug of war and cry “What the hell
you doing kid?” He runs away. I drink the rest of the water lest some other
thirsty bugger tries to pinch it from me. An old beggar sitting cross-legged in
the entrance way sees the empty bottle and pleadingly puts up his hands. “You
want this?” I ask confused. I tentatively hold out the bottle and he grabs it
eagerly. “That little kid didn’t want a drink,” I say with surprise, “he just wanted
the bottle”. The beggars here are so isolated they beg for rubbish. I wish I’d
kept all my empty bottles and brought them with me. I could have showered them
with plastic presents. Throwing them in the bin seems like such a waste now. Inside
the monastery sits an 8 story pagoda. Each floor a progressively contracting
circle of dark alcoves jammed with golden idols and walls covered in elaborate
murals, the top floor presenting the most impressive display. One particularly
ghastly figure makes me laugh. A blue demon with giant golden balls hanging low
between his legs stands on top of a small mortal, crushing the unfortunate
man’s head under his foot.
I learn more about my new travelling companions as the
trip goes on. Lisa, as her unintelligible accent suggests, is from far North England.
I can rarely understand a word she says and I’m forever asking her to repeat
herself. At first I wasn’t sure if it
was her accent or my ears having trouble adjusting to the altitude but when the
situation didn’t improve it became obvious that it was the former. Even after
she’d repeated herself I was often none the wiser as to what it was she was
trying to tell me. A tough, no-nonsense sort of girl, I initially found her
quite abrasive but warmed to her considerably once I’d managed to see past her
rough exterior to her softer side. In contrast, Andrea was easy to like; young
and cheerful, with bright eyes and a bubbly personality, she was always smiling
and thinking of others. She was in many ways the glue that held the group
together. A more eccentric man than Gerry would be hard to find. I can imagine Gerry
generates a love-hate relationship with pretty much everyone he meets. Of this,
I’m sure he would be the first to proudly admit. Due to his vibrant personality
and extensive travelling he has many friends all over the world, who would all
I have no doubt, admit to loving and hating him, in equal quantities. For
despite Gerry’s personality defects, his charisma is infectious. I found myself
almost honoured to be travelling with this unique individual, an opportunity to
learn from the master. To Gerry, backpacking is an art, and it’s an art he
relishes and excels at. There are few backpackers, certainly none I’ve ever
met, that could match Gerry’s enthusiasm, energy, drive, travelling and haggling
prowess, and straight up experience. You see, Gerry is a full-time backpacker,
financing his trips by working a couple of months of the year as a language teacher
in England and benefitting from the countries strong exchange rate. I don’t
know what language he teachers as he speaks 7 of them... fluently. Tibet is
Gerry’s 73rd country; his goal is to have visited 100 countries
before he is 30, 3 years from now. He only counts independently recognized
countries hence Tibet is actually uncounted in this total due to China’s sovereignty,
as are many others. He crosses these countries via land borders; it’s not a fly
in - fly out holiday, it’s on the road, all the way. When he runs out of money
and does need to fly home he returns to the point of his departure and
continues on. There are currently 193 independent nations in the world, before
he is 30 he will have visited more than half of them. It is his dream that the
Maldives be his 100th country, an expensive, rich tourist, holiday
destination; the perfect icing on a cake of backpacking grime and filth. He
hopes that his luxury trip to the Maldives, his concluding country, will be
fully sponsored and he intends to write a book about his 100 country countdown.
I proposed he calls it ‘Around 100 countries in 30 years’. His faults are just as extreme. Although completely aware of it, he can
be extremely selfish, arrogant, annoying, even childish, and yet somehow these
characteristics only serve to make him more endearing; perhaps because a rough
edge has more surface area for people to hold on to. Nader, in direct contrast,
is green; this is his first backpacking trip and in perfect novice fashion he
doesn’t even have a backpack, rather he’s travelling with a large
suitcase-on-wheels that gets cursed vehemently by whoever is squashed against
it in the back. He met the other three on the train to Tibet and it was then
that he learnt of his mistake. Travelling to Tibet is fairly tricky business
for the backpacker; it’s a relatively recently subjugated country by a
communist regime and as such, rules and regulations regarding tourists are in a
constant state of flux and confusion. Some entrepreneurial companies have taken
advantage of this vagueness by convincing tourists they can only travel to
Tibet on expensive tours. The state of affairs is so ambiguous that they may
indeed be right. Naively, Nader believed the information he was fed and
purchased a costly tour to Tibet of which he’d already paid a large deposit. He
spent his first night in a hotel in China which he believed to be cheap, and it
was by American standards but not in 3rd world China. His jaw
dropped when he heard how much Gerry, Andrea and Lisa had paid for their
accommodation and dropped even further when he heard they weren’t on a tour.
When they told me this I allowed myself a small smile at his naivety, but not
too big as I know backpacking is a learning curve and we always have more to
learn. Feeling sorry for Nader, Gerry and the girls vowed to take him under
their wing and Nader wisely opted to forgo the tour, cut his losses on the
deposit, and travel with them to Nepal. Complementing his naivety is a big
smile, an animated laugh, a good attitude, and a youthful desire for a good
time.
It’s afternoon when we arrive in Shigatse, our stop
for the night. There is another monastery here, founded by the first Dalai Lama
in 1447 but we choose instead to follow the path lined with prayer wheels up
the mountain behind the monastery. I’m following the advice I read about for
combating altitude sickness – ‘go high, sleep low’, but it’s not as easy as it
sounds. At this altitude my head throbs with every upward step and I feel like
I’m trying to suck air through a straw. It takes a supreme effort to climb but the
view makes it all worthwhile; the clear air allows me to see effortlessly over
the city, over the rolling hills, and beyond. At night Nader, I and another guy
we met in our guesthouse go looking for a place to eat. We find ourselves in a
bar sitting in front of a beer before we have time to ask if they serve food;
they don’t. Not wanting to be rude we drink the beers and then excuse ourselves
to continue the search. Eventually we follow a restaurant sign up some stairs
and into a family’s house. The father sits casually on a bed next to a stove
watching Tibetan pop videos on an old TV. He wears a black vest under a black
coat and has a perfect pencil moustache. We are a bit confused and ask if this
is a restaurant, “yes, yes,” he assures us and gives us a hand written menu. We
sit down in their living room and I read out some of the menu items and pretty
soon we’re all giggling and then laughing uproariously at the funny English in
the menu. ‘A kind of beef noodle’, ‘a kind of cook food’, ‘a kind of drink’ –
it was the least specific menu I’d ever read; but the ‘unripe beef jam’ was
perhaps more specific than I would have liked. We ordered and ate and the
father sat with us enthusiastically trying to communicate despite possessing
almost no English ability. He spoke much like his menu read, confusingly. None
of us had a clue as to what he was saying but it didn’t stop us from having an
animated joyful conversation with him. Things however, became somewhat puzzling
when he began pointing to his daughters and making gestures that in our own
culture would be considered sexual. “Is he pimping his daughters?” I ask Nader uncertainly.
“I’m not sure” says Nader, “but I hope so”, and attempts to probe for more
information. The father takes out a pen and writes on a scrap of paper the
letters ‘69’. “I think he is pimping his daughters” Nader exclaims excitedly
and ventures a ‘yeah, ok’ with a nod of his head. He’d already been eyeing the
two daughters and so couldn’t believe his luck. The father eagerly motions for
us to follow and bewildered we do so, wondering if he really is offering his
daughters or if this is just an incredibly embarrassing case of lost in
translation. He leads us up to the roof of his house and beaming proudly sweeps
his hand across the view in front of us. The roof of his house is blessed with
a magical view of the picturesque monastery lit by the silver moon and we laugh
aloud, realizing how completely wrong was our interpretation of the message he
was trying to convey. We thank him for showing us his splendid view and take
our leave, Nader takes a plastic bag that he’s poured his ‘kind of beef soup’
into. Finding the water was only lukewarm he was too worried about getting sick
to eat it but rather than wasting it, decided to give it to a poor starving
soul on the cold streets of Shigatse. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find a poor
starving soul on the streets so instead gave it to a poor unsuspecting victim
who happened to be ambling past at the time. I looked back to see him watching
us walk quickly away, holding the bag of soup in his still outstretched hand
with a look of forlorn confusion on his face.
Day 25: Dances with sheep
On the road again; all day we race along the bumpy dirt road that
winds its way up, down and sometimes through the steep hills, every so often
startling a lone traveller hiking in the hills or a family atop a yak-drawn
cart piled high with all their worldly goods. Our driver beeps long and hard to
warn them as we zoom through their timeless landscape. The shrill sound is
jarring, ringing around the hills long after we are gone. Neither do we slow
down for the small dusty towns that sometimes appear in the distance, quickly
growing closer, and then disappearing just as quickly behind us; indelibly
imprinting in our minds a few snatched images of an extraordinary culture lost
in time on the roof of the world. Today’s pass is the highest of the trip, 5200
meters and as we go over the rise I pop another altitude sickness tablet. We’re
all stingy backpackers so we skimped on the tablets and bought only enough for
half the trip. I’m using mine sparingly, but I’m hurting, yet it’s preferable
to running out before the end. We stop again to admire the incredible view from
this height. Bright prayer flags flutter violently in the strong winds. The
Tibetans climb to the highest Himalayan Mountain tops to string these flags
across its ridges and peaks. The colours of the flags represent the five
elements of nature and the five wisdoms. Upon the flags are inscribed mantras
that the Tibetans believe will be carried by the wind horse over the mountains
and up to the heavens, taking with them prayers of good will and compassion. Beside
the flags are piles of carved mani stones, the most sacred six syllable Tibetan
mantra ‘OM MANI PADME HUM’ etched into their weathered surfaces.
Early afternoon we get to the roadside village where
we’ll spend our second night. Huge rounded hills surround us and I can’t resist
my urge to climb them. “Go high, sleep low” I chant in an effort to inspire the
others to join me. Only Nader is up for the challenge and so we set off to
cross the vast field of dry brown grass that lies between us and a section of
the mountain that looks to me like it would be the easiest to scale. The
enormity of the countryside is humbling, we feel like ants, and without our
normal scales of reference it’s impossible to judge distances and heights. It
may be one hundred metres to the mountain; it may be one thousand, it may be
one hundred metres to the top; it may be a thousand. Deeply eroded gullies run
down the slope like skeletal fingers reaching out to clasp the helpless village
that lies just out of reach of its bony hands. Grazing on the sparse grass at
the foot of the mountain is a herd of woolly highland sheep. Amongst them, clothed
in rags that blend into the desolate landscape around him, is their shepherd.
He hops oddly on the spot, and I understand, scant moments before his melodious
voice carried lightly on the wind brushes past my ears, that he is dancing. Nader
and I are suddenly conscious of the significance of this moment, and we freeze
on the opposite side of a particularly deep rift, fearful to break the spell of
his performance. Presently, he looks up and sees us, but rather than stopping embarrassedly
he waves for us to cross the rift and approach him. When we climb up the other
side he greats us warmly, and seeing my forgotten camera in my hand, he
encourages me to film him. He begins his dance again, this time, for an
audience more appreciative than his gentle sheep. I film the entire show, possibly
the only filming of this traditional Tibetan dance in existence, and I am moved
almost to tears by the dignified simplistic beauty of this noble mans
performance set amongst the vast and timeless backdrop of the Himalayan plateau.
We continue on to the mountain, looking for a way to cross
the gaping chasms and start our climb. In the end we find ours inside one and rather
than climb back out we struggle up the narrowing and steepening gap finally
managing to get onto the foot of the mountain. From here it is a long, hard
slog, putting one foot in front of the other and gasping for breath. “See that
rock up there?” I’d say to Nader pointing to a rock a little larger than its neighbours
a few metres further up, “That’s our next stop”, and we’d slowly hike up to this
point before collapsing in exhaustion, then we’d wait for a while to catch our
breath before attempting to go higher. In this way we gradually closed the
distance to its top. At normal altitudes we could have hauled ass up this
mountain, but now it was like trying to walk upriver against a flow of treacle.
At almost 5000 metres I was learning the true meaning of thin air. A fair ways
up Nader begins to get concerned about the dangers of the altitude but I feel
confident that if we take our time and stop regularly we’ll be fine. “You can
turn back anytime” I tell Nader, “But I feel alright so I’m going to keep
climbing”. “I’ll see how I feel at the next rock” he tells me; and tells me the
same at each subsequent stop. We struggle on, drawing heavier and heavier
breaths. At each rock we rest and marvel at the incredible panorama before us.
The land dips and flows like large motionless waves etched eternally into the
earth. The quaint Tibetan village, our abode for the night, seems impossibly
distant, and the only road, a roughly hewn dirt highway running straight
between the two strips of houses, appears from, and then disappears back into,
the edge of the world.
Slowly, determinedly, focused entirely on placing one
foot in front of the other, we trudge to the final steep rise, just 20 minutes
from the top. But it is just 30 minutes till sunset and so rather than pushing
for the top and risking coming down in the dark I tell Nader we should turn
back. In reality the top is tantalizingly close, five minutes at most under
normal circumstances but this is the highest either of us has ever been and we
are acutely aware of it. So we start back down, and ironically a few minutes
later, I have to climb back up again after realizing I forgot my bag.
Nevertheless, we are soon making great time back down the sloping mountainside,
then following one of the crooked chasms that veer in the direction of the
village. I feel fantastic, like my whole body has been rinsed with the purest O2,
but moments after I get back things go pear shaped and I begin to feel like a
soda can that’s been picked up and shaken. My bodies buzzing and my brain feels
like it’ll explode via whichever opening yields first. Nader, in a similar
condition, goes straight to bed without eating. Although we’re paying for our
high altitude climb now, I feel confident it will make us stronger in days to
come; provided it doesn’t kill us.
Day 26: Qomolangma
We’re so close now to Everest; the excitement is
palpable as we strain our necks to see its bulk through the front windscreen.
Just one more kilometre according to the road sign that counts down the
distance. From up ahead a distinctive coloured car materialized out of the
dust... the Chinese police. “Shit” we all say in unison, our driver saying what
I assume to be the equivalent in Tibetan. Our worst, actually our only fear, is
about to be realized... permit check. The lights flash and the car slows to a
stop across the road. I pull out my camera and start filming, not because I
want the footage but because I hope the sight of the camera will unnerve them
enough to let us off. I’m banking on the unstable tourism situation in Tibet,
the result of communist control fettered by the desire to avoid negative
international publicity. Predictably, they tell me in no uncertain terms to
turn it off. I put it down, but leave it running. “Show us your permits”, they
demand. Jerry hands over our contract with the 4WD company knowing full well it
isn’t what they want but hoping we might be able to plead ignorance and be
given leniency. It doesn’t work. “No, this is not permit, show us your permit”.
These guys are in no mood for games. We insist that this is our permit,
pointing for emphasis at the stamp on the paper. “No, no permit. You go back
now”. We are all in shock; I refuse to believe that we have come this far only
to be turned back mere metres from the most significant natural landmark on
earth. Of all LP’s Thorntree stories I’d read, nobody had described anything
like this happening, never when this close. For added effect we wave our newly
bought Qomolangma passes in the air, bought, without any request to see our
permits, at the gates a few kilometres back, and babble frenetically in an
attempt to bombard them with confusing English explanations. Eventually they
concede, “You can go to base camp,” they tell the driver in Tibetan, “for ten
minutes, and then you must go back”. This means we’re unable to stay at the
monastery that sits in solitude at the foot of Mt Everest. At 4980m it is the
highest monastery in the world and surely affords the most famous and striking
vista. It’s disappointing that we won’t be able to watch the sunrise from here
in the morning but we are all extremely relieved to be allowed to continue to
base camp so we readily agree.
BASE CAMP 5100m - HERE I AM. Sometimes I find myself
wondering if this is all real. Have I really travelled to the foot of Everest?
Am I really standing here seeing this, or has this all just been an incredibly
lucid dream, and in reality I’m fast asleep on a mattress in suburban Brisbane?
I would pinch myself, but my gloves are too thick. So instead I’ll just accept
it, and stare. We each have a Lhasa beer, bought earlier in anticipation of a
celebratory drink; ‘beer from the roof of the world’ states the label. But because
of the extreme cold and altitude sickness none of us can meet the challenge of
a full beer so we share one between us. Each in turn, toasting the mountain,
its tip obscured by clouds that match the colour of the snow on its face, and
then swigging from the bottle. I pull out some mini marshmallow chocolates from
my pocket, my base camp gift for everyone, and notice as I hand them out that
the packaging has ballooned taut in the lower atmospheric pressure. Because of
our time limit we can’t stay for long but nobody complains as we retreat from
the windswept barren base back to the 4WD. I pass a frozen pond on the way back
and realizing that this is the first time I’ve ever seen a frozen body of water
up close I decide I should slide across it. I give Nader my video camera so he
can get my action shot and I take a big run up, throwing myself at the ice,
arms outstretched, expecting to do a superman slide across the pond. Instead I
stick to the ice like Velcro and ungracefully pull up a few feet from where I
started. It was my first lesson in new ice verse old ice. The ice up here has
been frozen for so long that it’s dry, and therefore, not slippery. I get up and dejectedly wipe the white powder from my
jacket, Nader continues to film, “that looked like it hurt” he says
observantly. I pretend that it didn’t.
There’s little to separate tonight’s small roadside
village from the preceding ones. Packs of skinny stray dogs menace the dusty doorsteps;
the silence of the street is broken only by a strange overloaded tractor-drawn
cart or the occasional convoy that lumbers past, carrying goods to the border
town. The grandmother of the family that runs the guesthouse is the sweetest
lady I’ve ever met. Her toothless smile, filled with kindness, never leaves her
face and the deep lines across her leathery skin convey great knowledge and
strength. She stands in the courtyard next to a pile of thin cane chairs
powerfully pulling them apart with her bare hands to use for firewood. I try to
help her but with a laugh and a shake of her head she leads me aside and takes
the chair back from me. I try again but again she insists on doing it herself
and resolutely tears the strands apart placing it under her foot for leverage. Later,
in the cosy dining room warmed by the fire made with her own hands, she acts
like a delighted child upon seeing the pictures I take of her with my digital
camera. Tonight is our last night in Tibet; tomorrow we will go through the
Himalayan pass via the Friendship Highway into Nepal. But first we’ll challenge
the ridiculously cold early morning temperatures and climb a nearby hill to behold
Everest at sunrise. Although it won’t be
as rewarding as from the monastery the view from here, across the plateau dotted
with tiny villages, will still be spectacular. It is to be, or so I believe, my
last view of Qomolangma.
Day 27: Friendship High-way
Nader and I were up early, not wanting to miss the
sunrise. A little too early it turns out and we shiver uncontrollably at the
top of the hill while the night sky unhurriedly lightens. I begin to think the
cold has got to Naders head when he begins mumbling about frostbite and
attempts to light a small piece of paper inside a crack in the rocks with the
misguided belief that somehow this could warm his numb toes. “I thought the
Canadians could handle the cold” I say to him. “Canada aint this cold” he retorts. I hop from foot
to foot in an equally vain attempt to get some feeling into my own toes,
realizing too late that two pairs of thick socks and hiking boots are
completely ineffective against this kind of cold. As the last stars disappear in the growing
light I see jerry coming up the slope toward us while Andrea and Lisa
unenthusiastically follow behind. Their
own timing is more precise; distant peaks to the right begin to glow golden as
the first rays of sun sneak over the peaks on our left. But in front of us, the
tallest peak of all remains untouched by the light. This golden glow painfully
slowly oozes down the mountain range onto the plains far below then just as slowly
creeps across the flat floor. And still, Everest stands in solemn shadowed
stillness. From a distance the five of us must look like sun worshippers
performing some kind of ancient ritual. We all impatiently watch the
approaching light as it slides like syrup over the houses of distant villages
on its inexorable way toward us, each performing his or her, own unique, foot
warming shuffle. Finally the wall of light reaches us and we begin to thaw. The
Himalayan peaks too, are all alight. All that is, bar one, Mt Everest; the peak
expected to greet the sun first impossibly still stands in shadow. I begin to
suspect that the sun, out of some deep devout respect, has parted its rays
around Earth’s king. A less poetic
explanation would be that Everest’s self-created cloud, which streams out from its
leeward side, has blocked the morning sunshine.
As we begin the steep descent into Nepal down a valley
between two Himalayan peaks, the scenery around us dramatically changes. Frozen
waterfalls begin to melt, first dripping then falling; frozen rivers start to
crack then flow, growing in speed and strength; first grasses then shrubs and finally
tall alpine trees grow where earlier were only barren plains. Along a thin unpaved
road that clings tenuously to the side of the mountain we drive, frequently
squeezing past road workers with rags tied around their faces shovelling piles
of crusher dust. A man, who I can only assume is supervising the operation, stands
with his hand on the hilt of a sword thrust through his cummerbund. The last section of road before the Friendship
Bridge that links Tibet and Nepal is lined with trucks loaded with goods for
trade. Well before we get to the border this lengthy line of trucks forces us
to tread the roads steeply dropping edge. Border town is a row of ramshackle
wooden hotels and gambling dens built on the steep mountainsides that cater to
the gangs of rough and tough drivers waiting to cross. The last building on
this road is customs and this is where we stop. Our driver has steadfastly
refused all small offerings of sweets or drinks over the course of our trip so
we know he won’t accept our tip thus I jam the money into the back of a pack of
Marlboro’s I bought on the boat to China and I try to give him that. Still he
refuses and in the end I have to push the pack into his hand and run away to
catch up with the others who have already pressed through the aggressive
freelance money changers and into the customs office. Except for Jerry that is;
the practiced traveller argues with one of them about his calculations while
the man refuses to let Jerry use his calculator to check them. In the end Jerry
gets a calculator off one of the girls and keeps the man honest. In a place
like this an honest business man is as unlikely as China freeing Tibet but we
need Nepalese Rupees to pay our way to Kathmandu.
Out the front of the office dodgy minivan drivers in
dodgy minivans compete to take travellers the last couple of kilometres to the
bridge. We all jam into one of these tiny vans with our bags on our laps and
our faces squashed against the windows. It’s not until we’re on our way down
the road, not much more than a mountain goat track, that we realize the
driver’s side rear wheel is flat, the same side as the precipitous drop which
we now lean perilously toward. The girls cry out as the driver speeds around
left turns and we are all relieved when he deposits us alive at the bridge. But
we are not over it yet; in front of us is the biggest human traffic jam any of
us have ever seen. People fill every available space between the lines of
trucks that compete to cross the bridge. It is a frenzied conglomerate of
noise, colour, aroma, metal and flesh. Trucks and people alike are fully
loaded, the people with huge sacks on their backs supported by a rope around
their foreheads. Most of them, I notice incredulously, are old women, bent
under the weight of bags heavier then themselves. We squeeze single file
between a narrow gap between trucks and are funnelled onto the bridge amongst a
sea of people, feeling extremely vulnerable, with only minimal control. It’s an
intensely intimidating and nerve-wracking experience. The girls are freaked out
but they hold it together and get across the bridge. I find my confidence buoyed
in the company of others for I’m relieved of the burden of having to completely
rely on myself to get through traumatic experiences and so what would normally
have been nervous tension is replaced by exhilaration and excitement. I’m
laughing out loud at the shear pandemonium and I laugh even harder watching Nader
turn heads as he pulls his big blue suitcase noisily across the rough
cobblestone surface; people straining under the weight of heavy baggage look
enviously or perhaps disdainfully at him. The herd of people bottleneck at the gates on the opposite side of the
bridge and for a horrible moment we think we are going to have to fight our way
through with the crowd, but upon seeing us the customs officers open a side
gate and like celebrities usher us through. Our next challenge is getting a
ride to Kathmandu with minimal Rupees. Jerry and I attempt to achieve this
while the others sit with the bags on the side of the road; and so begins a
lengthy process of haggling and knock backs with the drivers of every type of
vehicle we can find. Eventually we have no prospects left bar the bus, but the
bus, as the girls have stressed and nobody disagreed, is not an option. That’s
because the only seats left on the bus are amongst a pile of people and bags on
the roof. Maybe, without our luggage we could have entertained the idea of fighting
for room to cling desperately to the roof of a bus over atrocious roads for the
however many hours it takes us to get to the capital, maybe; but not with our
luggage. And so with one last desperate attempt to find a ride I walk all the way
back up the road to talk to the driver of an old jeep who we’d come close to
coming to an agreement with. I hope that he’ll still let us take his final
offer - a price higher than we wanted to pay but lower than we could afford –
but I don’t ask that. Instead I say again the price he’d turned down and he
accepts. “Where’s your friends then” he asks and it takes me a moment to answer
because I’m astonished he has. I jump into his truck and like a saviour lead
him down to where the others wait anxiously. What we’ve got for our money is
the boot of a jeep, to be shared by the 5 of us and all our luggage. It’s as
tight a fit as could possibly be imagined and the jumble of legs and arms that
stick out in all angles must look like a group of mannequins that melted in a
store fire then fused together in random positions. It’s uncomfortable, but
none of us complain as we drive past what almost was our transportation. The
roof of the bus is completely covered in bodies and bags now; it is almost
ready to leave. And we have even less cause to complain after our last
passengers have taken their own precarious positions by clinging to the back of
the jeep. There isn’t enough room for
all of them so some are forced to hold on with just one hand. One of these is a
small boy whom I’m convinced is going to be knocked off by all the jostling for
space. We try to convince him to come and sit on top of us in our cramped
quarters but he refuses and fortunately manages to cling on grimly until his
stop. It’s not long before the passengers have thinned out enough to allow some
of us to fit into the cab and the rest, me included, are able to sit
comfortably in the back. I put on my headphones and watch the vision of
Kathmandu unfurl before me, the open rear window like a TV screen showing a National
Geographic documentary. I feel relaxed and content as the temperature warms the
lower we drop into the valley and by the time we get to our hotel I’m able to
take my ski jacket off for the first time in a month.
Add your comments
