by Tahir Shah
My obsession with Paititi, and the glory that finding it could bring, gnawed away at me. I traveled to Peru in search of the Birdmen of the Upper Amazon, a project that culminated in a book on the subject. It gave me the opportunity to do much more research, and to quiz hundreds of Peruvians on what they knew of the Incas and their last place of refuge.
I spent months combing library stacks, trawling through miles of manuscripts, many written more than four centuries ago. There were so many books, but so few clues. The only one was the recurring name Madre de Dios, the vast impenetrable jungle, east of the Andes, on the southern cusp of the Amazon.
The lure of the last great lost city of the Americas had not attracted me alone: at least a dozen of the world’s most seasoned explorers had just returned or were about to leave for the cloud forest. Teams from the United States and the UK, Poland, Australia and Peru itself had isolated a relatively small “hot zone”, which lay between the Piñi-Piñi and Palatoa rivers. Somewhere in there, they all claimed, lay the ruins of a tremendous civilization. Although, geographically speaking, the area is small, it’s regarded as the densest stretch of jungle in the world. One adventurer told me: “You could hide New York City in there and walk right by without knowing it.” He added that the race was reaching fever pitch. “If Paititi exists at all,” he said firmly, “it will be found in the next six months.”
That prediction got my blood racing. It might be the last chance I would ever get at easy fame. I had been fixated by the lure of the Inca stronghold for too long for the prize to be snatched by some other less deserving adventurer. I bought the cheapest flight to Lima I could find. It was scheduled to leave in a week’s time, on Christmas Day.
Unlike most of the competition, I didn’t have corporate sponsorship or a fat expense account. Nor could I boast a support team of scientists, or high-level contacts in the Peruvian government. I didn’t have a headquarters either, or much in the way of specialist equipment. I owned a second-hand GPS, but hadn’t a clue how it worked. It was just for show, proof of my serious intentions, as was my Gold Bug metal-detector, which I had bought on my Ethiopian search for King Solomon’s mines. Like a rebel fighter in a guerrilla war, I viewed my weaknesses as strengths. I was lean and mean, free from excess people and a glut of equipment. I had no one to report to, and no one except myself to please.
My wife rolled her eyes when I explained that I had to leave our poky flat in London’s East End almost at once. The jungle was calling me, I said theatrically. She was very understanding, considering our little daughter’s first birthday was a few days away.
I bought a copy of Loot, a newspaper with classified ads, and withdrew two hundred pounds from my bank account. I spread the sheets of advertisements on the sitting-room floor, and searched for equipment worthy of a budget lost-city expedition. In less than an hour, I had found an old Zodiac rubber dinghy, a pair of used jungle boots, two shovels, six canvas kit-bags, three tarpaulins and a pair of cheap lanterns. With the money that was left, I went to a local hardware store and bought some plastic rubble sacks, the kind used by builders to carry gravel. I splashed out on some extra batteries and a roll of bin-liners too. Lastly, I went down to Safeway with my credit card and snapped up some packet soup and their entire stock of Pot Noodles. Previous experience had taught me that any expedition marches on its stomach.
It always amazes me how much money people spend on nonessential knick-knacks and mountaineering food at camping shops. A whole industry has developed touting nicely packaged rubbish to ingenuous adventurers. You’re far better off buying everything second-hand, from a hardware store, supermarket or, better still, on a market stall in the country you’re visiting.
These days, explorers tend to take with them from the start everything they expect to need. It’s an inefficient way of operating; you get lumbered down and can hardly move. It’s wiser to take only a basic core of equipment and to compensate by making anything you find you need. On rough journeys, ingenuity is the mother of success. The Victorians were masters of exploration and of solving problems, and they turned problem solving into an art form. They could knock up just about anything from a few feet of waxed canvas, some stout cord and a cleft stick or two. For those who wanted handy tips on how to bivouac, build a camp, or cross quicksand in heavy rain, there was an invaluable guide entitled The Art of Travel. The book’s editor was Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin and a renowned scholar and adventurer in his own right. Galton’s book, which was first published by John Murray in 1855, ran to four editions, the final and most comprehensive one appearing in 1872. It was carried by explorers and soldiers, missionaries and government officials, and is an encyclopaedia of ingenuity. Much of it is regarded now as horrendously politically incorrect — especially the section on “the management of savages” — but it contains many titbits of invaluable information. Fortunately, The Art of Travel had recently been reprinted. It was the last purchase I made and, without doubt, the best value.
The day after buying the equipment, I was talking to a television-producer friend, blustering on about my grand plans to find the lost city of Paititi. Like my wife, he rolled his eyes for, again like her, he had heard of my grand quests before. Just before we parted, he said that a friend of his, a Swedish film-maker, might be interested in coming along. I barked at the thought of European company; my friend pointed out the benefit. Find Paititi, and the film-maker could record my discovery: surely it would only add to my glory. After all, who would have cared about the lunar landings if we had not received the grainy footage of Armstrong climbing down from the NASA module on to the dusty lunar surface?
I took the Swede’s number and gave him a call. We arranged to meet next day in an East End coffee-house where the grease on the walls reflected the mud on the floor. I lurked at the back, away from the usual assortment of weirdos, a soft-covered book of Inca textiles on the table before me. As I sat there, staring at the geometric designs, two men approached. One was a good twenty years older than the other. They were both dressed in leather, the first in black suede, the younger in tan-colored buckskin. The older was short, five foot three at the most, with dark, receding hair, swarthy complexion, pursed lips, and shoulders that were noticeably relaxed, so much so that his hands hung down at his sides like cured hams in a butcher’s window. The younger had long, russet-brown hair, which covered his ears and curled down over the collar of a torn denim shirt. His face was tight and energetic, partially concealed by a straggly beard and moustaches. He looked as if he had stepped from a seventies pop-idol poster.
The pair introduced themselves as Leon and David Flamholc. They worked as a team, the father producing, the son directing. They made art-house feature films in Sweden, but they had come to London to break into the English language. Sweden was too small, too conventional, they confided darkly, and its people were too easily shocked.
I told them about my plan to venture deep into the densest jungle in the world on the trail of the fleeing Incas. “I could do with someone to document the ruins,” I said.
I expected a barrage of questions, beginning with “Do you really think you’ll find the lost city?” But the Swedes didn’t ask any questions at all. They cackled enthusiastically in their mother tongue, and noted down a few details. As they did so, I noticed a man with a large video camera standing outside the café. He was pointing the device in our direction, filming through the filthy window. “Do you know him?” I asked.
“He follows us everywhere,” said Leon, distantly.
That afternoon I visited the hallowed halls of the Royal Geographical Society in London’s South Kensington. I was in search of a map. The RGS takes the subject of exploration very seriously indeed, and tends to frown on low-budget expeditions. As far as they are concerned, the business of exploration is best left to professionals.
The secretary wrote my name in a ledger and ushered me past long, dark oils of the great explorers, Stanley, Livingstone, Burton, and some others of equal fame. The
n he marched me down a corridor, striding solemnly as if we were pall-bearers in a funeral cortege. A central carpet, laid over the parquet, cushioned the sound of our steps. Along the corridor ran a finely tooled display case. It housed the holy of holies, Livingstone’s peaked cap and Stanley’s jungle kepi, Amundsen’s cooking stove and Sven Hedin’s sextant. Each item bore the scars of ordeal: the ordeal of exploration.
The Map Room was lightless and cold, its walls lined with cabinets, each filled with charts and plans and miniature globes. Every inch of available space was stacked with clusters of maps, a million, billion maps. There were maps of hamlets in obscure corners of the southern African veld, city maps of Shanghai, Manila, Santiago and Trieste; maps of rivers and mountain ranges, of endless deserts and deltas, Arctic tundra and trenches on the ocean floor.
A clerk asked me to write my destination on a scrap of paper. I did so, inscribing “MADRE DE DIOS” in small, neat capitals at the centre of the page. I slid it back across the counter. The clerk licked his thumb, scooped it up and strained through bifocals at the words. Then he scratched a rounded fingernail on his cheek.
“No, sir,” he said, in a shrill tone. “No, sir, there is no map of Madre de Dios. There is no map at all.”
Before I knew it, I had been ushered back to the street. I felt like an outcast, as if I had sought to embarrass the Map Room by seeking out its Achilles’ heel.
Much time has passed since brave Englishmen dressed in tweeds were dispatched by the RGS to fill in the blank outlines of the continents. The business of exploration has changed. There is still danger, but these days when you embark on an expedition you expect to return alive. Adventure is no longer about providing a service to humanity, but about bettering yourself, testing yourself and striving for glory.
Two days later, I had a second rendezvous with the Swedes. We met in the immense tropical greenhouse at Kew Gardens. On a hard jungle journey nothing is so important as having a team you can trust. The Swedes symbolized a lucrative source of TV funding, but there was no point in having them along if they would crack up in the climate.
As before, they arrived trussed from head to toe in leather. And, again, they were being stalked by the broad-shouldered blond man, armed with a video camera and an oversized microphone. He tracked them through the undergrowth, moving between the shrubs and fronds with impressive nimbleness.
“Who is that man?” I asked.
“It’s Boris.”
“Boris?”
“He’s a Bulgarian film student,” David replied.
“Oh.”
“We have a cult following in Bulgaria,” he added, by way of explanation.
Miniature beads of condensation had formed on David’s costume. They grew larger and larger and ran together, then dripped silently to earth. This time his outfit was complemented by a golden medallion, hanging at the centre of his bald chest. As he moved through the festering humidity of the hothouse, it caught the light, which broke occasionally through the layers of rubbery leaves.
I warned him and his father of the certain hardship that lay ahead. The Swedes seemed unfazed by the prospect of adversity. They had been preparing, they said, grinning.
“What do you mean, preparing?”
“We sealed up the windows in our flat,” said Leon, “and installed a heater from a sauna. It’s a hundred per cent humidity at home, and as hot as Hell.”
I was struck by their dedication, and comforted myself that Swedes knew about saunas, and could probably endure the heat better than I. The conversation moved on quickly to money. I asked what their budget was for equipment and supplies. Their confidence plunged.
“There’s no money yet,” said Leon.
“But we’re leaving in five days!”
“Don’t worry, we have a patron.”
“Who?”
“A banker, a very rich Ukranian banker.”
“Excellent.”
“There’s a small catch,” said David, wiping his medallion with his thumb. “We can sting him for lots of cash, but he wants to come along.”
At first I disapproved of my expedition to find the lost city becoming an upmarket package tour for middle-aged bankers, arty Swedish film-makers and their Bulgarian groupies. But the more I thought of it, the more I came to understand that there might be strength in such an odd line-up. Ours was not going to be a clone of the usual expeditions, oozing with sleekness. It was clear from the start that oddity was our advantage.
There are two ways to find a lost city. The first is to rely on luck alone; the second is to control all the information. My historical research had filled in some of the gaps, but it was important to hear first-hand from other Paititi-hunters. I wanted to know where they had been and what they had found. To this end, I interviewed as many as I could find, pretending that I was preparing an article about the search for Paititi. The cover story seemed to put the explorers at ease. They spoke freely about locations and methods, without fearing that I was about to steal their information. It might have been underhand, but successful explorers have always resorted to scheming, even depraved methods to ensure success.
Exploration is a dirty game. I sometimes wonder with what red herrings the great adventurers like Captain Cook and Columbus, Walter Raleigh and Drake had thrown their competition off the scent. Perhaps they were more gentlemanly then as there were more unexplored chunks of the world to go round. But now, with so few jewels in the crown of exploration still remaining, the competition is cut-throat.
I would frequently root through library stacks only to find that the relevant page of a key text had been torn out. And seasoned trailblazers would often “shuffle” co-ordinates while recounting tales of their journeys. I didn’t blame them. As I progressed in my search, I became as conniving as everyone else. Obsession and greed can compel a reasonable man to behave in the most appalling way.
Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it. They forget that when Columbus arrived in the Caribbean he came upon an orderly indigenous society, just as Pizarro did in Peru, and Captain Cook did in the Antipodes. Of course, these native peoples were regarded at the time as wild and untamed, to be taught discipline and the wisdom of the Bible.
In the same way that newly discovered landmasses had always been known about by the people who lived on them, a lost city can never really be lost at all. Tribal people know their territory inside and out. They always know where the ruins lie although, unlike us, they may have little or no interest in them. When tribal warriors stumble upon ruins overgrown in their ancestral lands, they don’t waste time inspecting them. Their attention is focused on acquiring food, not antique possessions with which to spruce up their homes, indigenous people are not gripped as we are with notions of ownership, urbanism or cultural history. Just as the British developed a mania for climbing the Alps in the Victorian era, searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.
For this reason, I became aware early on that the best way to find Paititi was to go directly to the people who surely knew where it lay. Most expeditions don’t integrate with the societies through whose lands they travel. They remain apart, superior, judgmental. As a result they are mistrusted and disliked by the locals. I had heard of the Machiguenga, a tribe whose hunting grounds stretch across much of the Madre de Dios cloud forest. They have been portrayed as a ruthless, warlike people, more eager to slay invaders than to welcome them. Thirty years ago they wiped out a French-led Paititi expedition, near the jungle village of Mantacolla.
My approach was to venture to that same village and gain the trust of the Machiguenga, the very warriors who supposedly killed the French group. We would come as equals, as friends, rather than adversaries. Gradually, with time, I hoped to broach the subject of the lost city itself.
THREE
SIZE OF THE PARTY
In travel through a disorganized country, where there
are small chiefs and bands of marauders, a large party is necessary.
The Art of Travel
Lima is a frenetic mass of people, all residing beneath an impermeable blanket of man-made smog. There are those who have and those who have not. You get the feeling that the haves are clinging on by their fingernails, and the have-nots could do wonders given half a chance. From time to time the people at the top are forced into exile, chased away with their bulging sacks of swag. They’re simply replaced by the next tier of would-be swindlers, who start lining their pockets from the first moment of their first day in power. The clock is always ticking for such people, a fact of which they are very well aware.
Somewhere down at the very bottom, way below the desamparados, the Helpless Ones, who make up Peru’s silent majority, are the tribal people. Their voice is less than mute. To most Peruvians they’re at best a curiosity and at worst a faceless symbol of how far the urban society has come. The same people regard the asphyxiating clouds of pollution as an emblem of national prosperity.
The tribes have little contact with their national politicians. They hear from them only at election time, when the men in hand-cut suits send gifts in exchange for precious jungle votes. The lengths Peruvian politicians will go to in order to secure a few tribal votes suggest how desperate some of them have become.
Four years before I had ventured to Peru to make a long journey by boat through the Upper Amazon in search of the legendary Birdmen. These members of the Shuar tribe use a complex hallucinogenic preparation called ayahuasca to fly into what they say is the “real” world. The Shuar despised their political leaders, and boiled over whenever politics was mentioned. They shunned all politicians because they had placed their trust in another group of outsiders: evangelist missionaries from Alabama.
The missionaries had translated the Bible into the Shuar dialect, handed out little pink pills and condemned the tribe’s ancient and perfected tradition of shrinking their enemies’ heads to the size of grapefruits. I became outspoken on the curbing of the practice. Although it sounds barbaric, and it is, the custom held the society together and kept everyone on their toes.