The Heart of the World

by Ian Baker

  From ill-fated forays in the early nineteenth century through a final gambit in 1924, British explorers sought doggedly for a “spectacular cataract” to account for the tremendous drop in altitude from where the Tsangpo—one of Asia’s greatest and least known rivers—disappeared into an impenetrable chasm in Tibet and where it reemerged 11,000 feet lower as the Brahmaputra in the jungles of Assam. Lured by the prospect of a geographical grail to claim for their expanding empire, turn-of-the-century explorers envisioned the fabled Falls of the Tsangpo as a rival to Victoria Falls, a symbol of imperial power in the deepest heart of Africa.

  Long before the legendary waterfall was even imagined, Tibetans followed mystical prophecies into the labyrinth of the Tsangpo gorge—three times the depth of the Grand Canyon—in search of the heart of an earthly paradise called Beyul Pemako, the Secret Land Shaped Like a Lotus.

  FROM APRIL 1993 TO NOVEMBER 1998 I made eight journeys into the mist-wreathed gorges of the Tsangpo, following the accounts of early British explorers as well as the visionary narratives of Tibetan lamas who had entered the region centuries earlier. This book chronicles my first and last expeditions as well as a pilgrimage in August 1995 to a mountain thought to conceal the key to Pemako’s still undiscovered sanctum sanctorum. As I navigated between wild topography and dizzying myth, each journey opened the door to the next and revealed realms beyond the coordinates of conventional geography. Through historical digressions and extensive endnotes, I have tried to place in context the experiences that ultimately led me and my companions to the lost Falls of the Tsangpo, a place historians of exploration had previously dismissed as a “romance of geography” and “one of the most obsessive wild goose chases of modern times.”

  Tibetans still search the Tsangpo gorges for the elusive sanctuary that their texts describe as “a celestial realm on earth.” The Falls of the Tsangpo, one of several portals into this mysterious domain, was not a goal in itself, but a place of passage, a doorway—whether literal or figurative—to a hidden realm of mind and spirit. For the pilgrim, Pemako’s elusive center is not some lost and unattainable Eden, but an immanent paradise veiled more by habits of perception than by features of the landscape.

  Lying along a suture between continents that collided more than forty million years ago, Pemako is far more than a source of the legend of Shangri-La. The Tsangpo gorges present an ecosystem of astounding diversity, from ice falls and subtropical jungles to rare medicinal plants. Like the visionary scrolls that urge Tibetan pilgrims into this bountiful terrain, Pemako’s orchid-drenched cloud forests and moss-covered cliffs offer doorways into spaces of mysterious promise, to a world unfallen, where some of the deepest dreams of the earth and our species are still vibrantly alive.

  As I followed the accounts of Tibetan pilgrims, as well as those of Victorian and Edwardian explorers, Pemako became for me a realm of unbounded possibility, a place where geographical exploration merged with discoveries of the spirit. This book celebrates those who have journeyed into the gorges, not to extract trophies or make dubious claims, but in the deepest spirit of adventure, attentive to the hidden voices of this mythic world. In 1925 the intrepid plant collector Frank Kingdon Ward wrote of his own journey that: “I am fully conscious that a complete presentation of the regions visited is a task beyond my power. All I can strive to do is convey an illusion—my own illusion, if you like—which nothing short of a visit to the great gorge of the Tsangpo can dispel . . .”

  MANY TIBETAN LAMAS, SCHOLARS, and artists inspired the journeys that comprise this book. In 1977 Kappa Kalden introduced me through his paintings to other ways of experiencing mountains and rivers. In Sikkim in 1982, Sonam Paljor enthralled me with stories of Tibet’s hidden-lands and, several years later, the scholar Tashi Tsering plied me with obscure and poetical texts that described them in surreal detail. Chatral Sangye Dorje Rinpoche encouraged me to discover the qualities of beyul firsthand by spending months in remote Himalayan caves, while Bhakha Tulku Rinpoche regaled me with accounts of his own journeys through Pemako, the least accessible and most renowned of these hidden-lands. In 1987 Khamtrul Rinpoche described to me his own journey through the Tsangpo gorges and his visions in the dark cataract of Shinje Chogyal, the “demon falls” responsible for the legend of a monumental cascade in the depths of the Tsangpo gorge. Tulku Pema Wangyal later recounted how his father, Kanjur Rinpoche, had passed through an uncharted waterfall during his search for Chimé Yangsang Né, Pemako’s innermost sanctuary. This book is dedicated to the long and propitious lives of these great beings.

  On my first journey to Pemako thanks are due especially to Rick Fisher for organizing the expedition and to the Chinese geologists of Mountains & Rivers Special Tours for allowing us to proceed beyond the limits of our permits. On subsequent expeditions special mention is due to Robert Parenteau, a lapsed Taoist and climbing partner from college days, and his intrepid fiancée, Karen Kung, who charmed potential obstructers with her knowledge of Mandarin; Laura Ide for preparing beds of Tibetan sheepskins when our sleeping bags were stolen by Khampa brigands; Gil and Troy Gillenwater for accounts of menacing serpents and eye-adhering leeches; Dr. Oy Kanjanavanit, authority on rainforest ecology, for her knowledge of edible mushrooms, wild ginger, and banana flowers when we were running out of food; Kawa Tulku who, while searching for a vision-inducing plant called tsakuntuzangpo, convinced some of us to eat purple flowers growing in a high-altitude marsh; Christiaan Kuypers for miraculously surviving a headlong plunge into boulders and sheared bamboo when a rain-drenched trail collapsed from under him; Pemba Sherpa for fashioning a bivouac in a leech-infested jungle when rain and night descended while we were far from camp; Ralph Rynning who, while recording a fire-tailed sun-bird, nearly stepped on a nest of pit vipers, yet had the presence of mind to take a photograph; “Lama” of Solu Khumbu—who preferred to walk barefoot—for performing riwosangchod and other Buddhist rites when successful passage required more than satellite maps and good boots; Ani Rigsang, yogini of Terdrom, for her companionship and insight into the essence of pilgrimage; Ken Storm for sharing an enduring passion for the earth’s wildest places; and Hamid Sardar for being convinced, as I am, that Yangsang is more than a myth.

  Immeasurable thanks also to Namkha Drimed Rinpoche for his visionary account of his journey through Pemako in the wake of Tibet’s Communist invasion; Jigme Rinpoche, the reincarnation of a revered Pemako lama, for his insight into the nature of Pemako’s secret topography; as well as Lama Rinchen, Dugu Choegyal Rinpoche, Peko Jedrung Rinpoche, Lama Dawa, Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche, and Lama Ugyen for their perspectives regarding the key to Pemako’s still undiscovered realms. Special thanks also to Palmo, Sonam, Pede, and Tseyang for their mystic lingdro dances and guidance into the living spirit of Pemako’s exile community in Jeerong, Orissa; Father Giles of Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland and the Dowager Countess Cawdor of Cawdor Castle for reflections on the Western quest for an earthly paradise while perusing the journals which the late Earl of Cawdor had kept during his journey through the Tsangpo gorge; Peter Miller, Rebecca Martin, and others at National Geographic’s Expeditions Council, for taking an interest in a then little-known part of the world and sponsoring our final expedition, and Barbara Moffet, Maryanne Culpepper, Bryan Harvey, Caryn Davidson, and others at National Geographic for ensuring that the region no longer remained unknown; and, not least, to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tibet’s Forestry Department for their efforts to protect Pemako’s unique environment from the ravages of tourism and hydroelectric development. Incalculable gratitude also goes to Scott Moyers, friend and editor at The Penguin Press for his vision, encouragement, and patience, and to Francis L. Kellogg—cousin and ambassador-at-large—for allowing me to complete the draft manuscript at his eighteenth-century Mill House that overlooks a small waterfall tumbling over a rock ledge. Thanks to Ulrich and Heidi von Schroeder for making available images of Tibetan deities still resident in Tibet, to Phuntsok Dhumkhang for his fluent c
alligraphy, and Erik Pema Kunsang for his contributions to the glossary. Thanks also to my loving and supportive parents and, in diverse ways, to Yeshe Dorje, Victor Chan, Charles Ramble, Jeff Greenwald, Steve Currey, William McGowan, Ann Godoff, Kate Condax, Robert Youdelman, Owen Laster, Robin Needham, Ken Cox, Brian Gregor, George Schaller, Shelley and Donald Rubin, Richard Pegg, Carroll Dunham, Kate Armstrong, Peter Matthiessen, Jamuna Devi, and innumerable others.

  Greatest thanks of all goes to the lamas, villagers, and hunters of the Tsangpo gorges—some of whose names I have changed in the narrative to protect their identity—who led the way through pathless jungles and across rusted cables and rotten logs, entrusting us with knowledge of their secret, uncharted places. And to the visionary lamas of earlier centuries who entered Pemako’s forbidding wilderness without fear, hope, or hesitation and saw beyond the veils of common vision. These terton, or treasure revealers, discovered in the Tsangpo gorges a place of transformation and inspired others to travel beyond conventional limits—to imagine worlds, and selves, without boundaries or walls. All incidents and occurrences throughout the book are strictly factual; any resemblance to fiction is purely coincidental. The one exception is the timing and precise content of conversations that occurred between team members. These have been reconstructed to the best of my recollection and verified with the concerned individuals. In certain instances, names have been changed to protect privacy. For ease of pronunciation, Tibetan words have been transliterated phonetically, rather than in accordance with scholarly convention. Thus sbas-yul becomes beyul, Pema-bkod becomes Pemako, gnas becomes né, etc. Diacritical marks for Sanskrit words have been similarly omitted. A glossary and key to the illustrations are provided at the back of the book.

  IAN BAKER

  Norbu Dzong

  Kathmandu

  March 2004

  Year of the Wood Monkey

  Padmasambhava, revealer of Tibet’s hidden-lands

  Introduction

  Centuries ago, texts were discovered in Tibet describing beyul, hidden-lands where the essence of the Buddhist Tantras is said to be preserved for future generations. These revered scriptures are attributed to Padmasambhava, the eighth-century Buddhist adept celebrated as Guru Rinpoche, who helped to establish Buddhism in Tibet. They describe valleys reminiscent of paradise that can only be reached with enormous hardship. Pilgrims who travel to these wild and distant places often recount extraordinary experiences similar to those encountered by spiritual practitioners on the Buddhist path to Liberation.

  One of the most renowned of these hidden-lands lies in the region of the Tsangpo gorges in southeastern Tibet. It is called Beyul Pemako, “the hidden land shaped like a lotus.” Many pilgrims have journeyed there in search of its innermost sanctuary. From a Buddhist perspective, sacred environments such as Pemako are not places to escape the world, but to enter it more deeply. The qualities inherent in such places reveal the interconnectedness of all life and deepen awareness of hidden regions of the mind and spirit. Visiting such places with a good motivation and appropriate merit, the pilgrim can learn to see the world differently from the way it commonly appears, developing and enhancing the Buddhist virtues of wisdom and compassion.

  Whether this mysterious sanctuary hidden amid Pemako’s mist-shrouded mountains can ever be located geographically is of secondary importance to the journey itself. In the Buddhist tradition, the goal of pilgrimage is not so much to reach a particular destination as to awaken within oneself the qualities and energies of the sacred site, which ultimately lie within our own minds.

  Ian Baker has made repeated journeys into Pemako, following the accounts of Tibetan texts describing these places of pilgrimage. These works reveal the Tsangpo gorge as the life-current of the female deity Vajravarahi (Tibetan: Dorje Pagmo), whose form is identified with Pemako’s inner topography. In the deepest part of the gorge he descended to a waterfall that British explorers had sought for more than a century. Some Tibetans maintain that these falls are an entrance to Pemako’s hidden center. Whether this waterfall is literally the gateway to Yangsang, as legend maintains, I cannot say, but waterfalls serve an important role in Buddhist practice as symbols of impermanence and supports for certain kinds of meditation. Such places often have a power that we cannot easily describe or explain. When approached with an awareness of the emptiness and luminosity underlying all appearances, they can encourage us to expand our vision not only of ourselves, but of reality itself. I hope that Ian Baker’s book about his journeys into one of the least explored regions of Tibet will inspire others not only to venture into unknown lands on a geographical level, but also to discover the inner realms within which our own deepest nature lies hidden.

  TENZIN GYATSO

  The XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet

  PART ONE

  THE CALL OF HIDDEN-LANDS

  Most races have their promised land, and such legendary places must necessarily be somewhat inaccessible, hidden behind misty barriers where ordinary men do not go . . .

  FRANK KINGDON WARD

  The Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges

  At the commencement as at the end of the religious history of humanity, we find again the same nostalgia for Paradise. . . . The myths by which this ideology is constituted are among the most beautiful and profound in existence: They are the myths of Paradise and the Fall, of the immortality of primordial man and his conversation with God, of the origin of death and the discovery of the spirit.

  MIRCEA ELIADE

  Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

  People make mistakes in life through believing too much, but they have a damned dull time if they believe too little.

  JAMES HILTON

  Lost Horizon

  I FIRST LEARNED of Tibet’s hidden-lands in 1977 in Kathmandu, where I had traveled at nineteen on a college semester abroad program to study Buddhist scroll painting. One day, my teacher told me of places in the Himalayas where the physical and the spiritual worlds overlap. “They are called beyul,” he said, “and they aren’t on any map.”

  His words lingered in my mind, and two years later, I applied for a grant from New York’s Explorers Club to learn more about Tibet’s sacred geography. Tibet itself was then a closed country, and I traveled to Sikkim, a once independent Buddhist kingdom wedged between Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan. At a small mountain hamlet, I unloaded my backpack from the roof of a bus and began climbing toward a monastery called Pemayangtse, Life Essence of the Lotus. I had arranged to base my research there, having corresponded with a resident scholar named Sonam Paljor, who’d earned a degree in anthropology at Brown University.

  Sonam soon appeared out of the mists at the wheel of a lumbering jeep. He lurched to a halt and stepped out to greet me in knee-high Tibetan felt boots; a long black pigtail hung down the back of his blood-red robe. He stowed my gear in the backseat and we drove the remaining miles to the monastery through moss-strung forests and drifting clouds.

  When we reached the timber-framed temple, Sonam swung open the doors on heavy iron hinges. As light flooded onto the walls, he pointed out the sixteenth-century murals of shingkam, or Buddhist paradises, painted on the clay surface. I commented that the realms painted with plant pigments, crushed gems, and the ash of cremated bones seemed like manifestations of inner meditative states. Sonam replied, “They’re not just imaginary realms; there are places here on earth called beyul, hidden or secret lands, described in texts dating back more than a thousand years. Many lamas have searched for these places in the remotest parts of the Himalayas. Some died trying to find them; others never returned.”

  Pointing north through a window toward the ice-covered peaks of Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain, Sonam said, “One of the beyul is hidden there beneath the glaciers. The scrolls describing it were unearthed from a cave in Tibet more than five hundred years ago.”

 
That evening, jackals howled in the surrounding forests as I sat with Sonam and his family around a hearth of blazing rhododendrons. As his wife filled a smoke-blackened pot with rice and water and placed it on the fire, Sonam told me that the beyul were first revealed in the eighth century by Padmasambhava, the lotus-born saint, sorcerer, and sage who helped establish Tibet’s Vajrayana, or Tantric form of Buddhism as well as its tradition of hidden-lands. “He described their secret coordinates to his principal consort, who preserved the locations in cryptic, yellow scrolls that she hid in caves and walls of rock, to be discovered in future generations.”

  The first scrolls were discovered in 1366, Sonam told me. A wild-haired Tibetan yogi who had spent years meditating in mountain caves received a vision that led him to their hiding place, and he dug them out from the earth.1 The cryptic texts contained accounts of remote Himalayan valleys where plants and animals have miraculous powers, where aging is halted and enlightenment can be quickly attained. “The beyul are something like Shangri-La,” Sonam said. He paused to blow on the coals through a hollow length of bamboo.