The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  ‘Being condemned to death is unlike any other feeling one could possibly experience,’ she says. ‘To await death as a convicted murderer is vastly different from knowing you are dying of a terminal disease. Dying of an illness is at least acceptable and prompts sympathy. At least that person will die among friends and family. They may not know the hour when death comes, but there is no dishonour in their passing.’

  ‘There is a curtain of empathy between the women here on Death Row,’ Linda whispers, ‘facing what few women will ever have to face. Only the strong can maintain hope and faith under these conditions. But I am a survivor. Even if I lose my fight, despite my best efforts, I will accept my fate with dignity.’

  N.B. Linda Block was electrocuted on May 10th, 2002.

  TRAIL OF FEATHERS

  In Search of the Birdmen of Peru

  TAHIR SHAH

  SECRETUM MUNDI PUBLISHING

  Contents

  Quote

  Flight

  ONE - The Feather

  TWO - Valley of the Dead Pilots

  THREE - Inca Trail Warriors

  FOUR - Cusco

  FIVE - A Sacrifice

  SIX - Tower-Jumpers

  SEVEN - Festival of Blood

  EIGHT - Susto

  NINE - The Trophy Head

  TEN - Vampires

  ELEVEN - Conspiracy

  TWELVE - Guinea Pig Healer

  THIRTEEN - The Tsantsa’s Cheek

  FOURTEEN - Iquitos

  FIFTEEN - Big Bug Business

  SIXTEEN - Vine of the Dead

  SEVENTEEN - Saigon of South America

  EIGHTEEN - Green Hell

  NINETEEN - Two Wishes

  TWENTY - River of Lies

  TWENTY-ONE - Gold Teeth

  TWENTY-TWO - Wawek

  TWENTY-THREE - Ancient Ballads

  TWENTY-FOUR - Trumpets of the Devil

  TWENTY-FIVE - Love the Jungle

  TWENTY-SIX - The Avenging Soul

  TWENTY-SEVEN - Flight of the Birdmen

  Appendix 1 - Amazonian Flora-Based Hallucinogens

  Appendix 2 - The Shuar

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Perhaps where Lear has raved and Hamlet died

  On flying cars new sorcerers may ride.

  Samuel Johnson

  Flight.

  Did it really begin with the Wright Brothers?

  Perhaps.

  But the idea that ancient Man flew long before the rise of Occidental society, is something which transfixed me from the day I first heard that the Incas may have flown, or at least glided, with primitive canopies.

  Delve into the prehistory of humanity and folklore, and you find dozens of accounts of primitive flight. Almost all societies have their own version. Reading the history books, I found myself drawn in to an idea that seemed to contradict what we all take as rote.

  Nothing is quite so sacred to me as the body of material and belief passed down through folklore. It’s one of the reasons I became easily entangled in the idea of Incan flight.

  My travels in Peru opened up a new world – one poised between historical conjecture, and cultural fact.

  They challenged me in ways I never thought possible. Running a jungle expedition was something I found extremely hard going. Part of the reason was my guide, a burned out Vietnam veteran eking out a living in the margins of the Upper Amazon.

  The jungles of Latin America have a power, a darkness, one that’s almost impossible to accurately describe in ink. I first traveled through the Amazon as a student, and remember coming to the conclusion that I was moving through the heart of the Earth.

  There was a sense that I was a part of something colossal, and that I was connected in the rawest way. Since then, I have returned time and again to the jungle, and have been touched by the harmony of the natural world. It sounds like an empty cliché, but it’s not. The jungle is perfectly in balance, perfectly choreographed. And, the people who reside there are part of the harmony, never taking more than they need.

  During the journey up river on the Pradera, I gleaned for the first time the astonishing value of shamanistic knowledge. In the West, we base almost all our pharmacological remedies on a handful of plants, whereas there are tens of thousands of flora that have never been tested — a great many of them located in the Upper Amazon.

  The experience of taking Ayahuasca – the so-called Vine of the Dead – was one that changed me from the inside out. I think of it constantly, even now.

  For the Shuar, former head-shrinkers, Ayahuasca is a way by which they can access the “real world”. This world, the one all round us, is for them an illusionary one. Only by taking Ayahuasca do they believe they can fly into the real world, to find answers for problems in this realm.

  Whenever I meet someone with problems in life, I suggest a hard journey, away from the comfort zone in which they’re cocooned. There’s nowhere on Earth better for graphic adventure than the Peruvian Amazon.

  I wish more ordinary people would see that real adventure is so easily within their grasp. Beyond that, I wish people would get to grips with the notion that you don’t have to be a so-called explorer to get out into the jungle, or to take a great journey.

  The business of exploration is packed chock full of twenty-four karat fakes, those who like to keep everyone else down, by insisting they’re not worthy or capable of adventure.

  That’s baloney.

  Anyone can be an explorer.

  It’s not about your equipment or your preparation, but the way you see the world. Appreciate what’s around you with fresh eyes, and an invisible realm materializes.

  And so begins an adventure…

  Tahir Shah

  ONE

  The Feather

  The trail began at an auction of shrunken heads.

  Anxious with greed, a pack of dealers and curiosity-hunters pushed into the library where the sale was about to begin. They had come by strict invitation, as the learned British society was eager to avoid the press. In the current climate of political correctness trophy heads are regarded as an embarrassment, something to be disposed of as quietly as possible. For years I had been an admirer of this unusual handicraft, and was desperate to start a collection of my own. Even though I’d managed to squirm my way onto the underground auction lists, I was lacking the funds of a serious collector. The shrunken head business is a small one, with only a few major players world-wide. I recognized most of them, as they lolled back on their chairs, their wax jackets wet with rain, their hands damp with sweat. All were well aware that such exquisite tsantsas are rarely put up for sale.

  Wasting no time, the society’s secretary held up the first miniature head. Framed in a mane of jet-black hair, its skin was gnarled, its facial features distended. The nose was dark and shiny, and the lips had been sewn together with a magnificent length of interwoven twine. The dealers leaned forward, and swallowed hard, as the bidding began.

  Fifteen minutes later the auction was over. All eleven heads had been sold to the same Japanese collector. Well-known and equally well disliked, he’d been trying to corner the shrunken head market for years.

  As we filed out, I got chatting to an elderly Frenchman. He was wearing a Norfolk jacket and brown suede brogues, and said he’d come from Paris for the sale. Like me, he was going home headless and empty-handed. We shared a mutual interest in ethnographic curiosities. I lamented that, once again, the crème de la crème in tsantsas was going East, to Japan.

  The Frenchman looked me in the eye and said that if he were forty years younger, he would drop everything and go to Peru.

  “To search for tsantsas?”

  “Not for shrunken heads,” he replied, “but for the Birdmen.”

  “Who are the Birdmen?”

  The man buttoned up his jacket, smiled wryly, and walked off into the rain. I didn’t go after him. For, at shrunken head sales, you get more than the usual smattering of madmen.

  A week later a long
manila envelope fell through my letter-box. It was post-marked Paris. Inside was a rust-colored feather and a slip of paper. The feather was evidently old. Three triangular notches had been cut into one side. It appeared to have been dipped in blood many years before. On one side of the paper was a crude sketch of a man with wings; on the reverse was a single sentence in classic French script. It read:

  “... and the Incas flew over the jungle like birds. Calancha.”

  I assumed that the Norfolk-jacketed Frenchman had sent it, and I wondered what it meant. Was there a connection between shrunken heads and men with wings?

  While at the British Library a few days later, I looked up “Calancha”. There was only one author by this name, Friar Antonio de la Calancha. A single work was credited to him. It was entitled Crónica moralizada de la orden de San Agustín en el Perú. Bound in dull speckled calf, with dented corners, it was a huge book, as long as the Bible. The tooled spine was embossed Barcelona 1638. Eight woodcuts adorned the title page. They showed Catholic monks civilising a tribal people, whose bodies were decorated in feathers.

  Were these the Birdmen?

  From what I could make out, the text rambled on about taming peasants and teaching the Catholic message. I could see no mention of Birdmen.

  I left the library but couldn’t stop thinking about the flight of ancient man.

  We all know the tale of Icarus. When he flew too close to the sun, the wax on his wings melted and the feathers fell apart. There’s an Arab version as well: Abu’l Qasim ibn Firnas, the ninth century “Sage of Spain”, who made a pair of tremendous wings, cloaked himself in feathers... and flew. But like Icarus before him, he crashed to Earth.

  The more I ran the Frenchman’s quote through my mind, the more it teased me. Had the Incas glided over the jungles or had flight begun, as we are always told, a century ago with the Wright brothers? Days passed, and I found myself thinking of little else. I tried to contact the Frenchman, but without luck.

  An old fixation was coming to life again. As a teenager I had been obsessed with aircraft and flying. At sixteen I nagged my parents into buying me an air-pass valid for unlimited flights around the United States. For a month I flew from one airport to the next, without ever leaving the aviation system. I slept on departure lounge floors or, better still, took night flights across the nation. I lived on airline food, and prided myself on the fact that I never once paid for a meal. I remember thinking that I’d hit upon a new form of existence, and wondered whether in the future everyone would live like me.

  A friend suggested that I check for a mention of primitive flight at the library of the Royal Aeronautical Society. At noon the next day, I cycled through the pouring rain up to the Society’s lavish headquarters, a stone’s throw from Park Lane.

  By any standards the Royal Aeronautical Society is a mysterious institution. Rather like a gentlemen’s club, it is shrouded from the prying eyes of commoners. Once you’re inside, you wonder how you could never have known about it before. Strangely, the Society was established in 1866, a full thirty-seven years before the Wright brothers made their first powered flight. The eighth Duke of Argyll, its founder, must have known he was onto a winner. Perhaps, I pondered, he had known of flight in more ancient times.

  Pushing open the door to the library on the third floor, I slipped inside. A modest-sized room, looking out onto the gates of Hyde Park, it was laid with maroon carpet and cluttered with desks. Half a dozen wintry gentlemen were sitting in silence, poring over picture books of early fighter aircraft.

  I trawled the rounded shelves for a mention of the Incas or Calancha. Most of the books were concerned with twentieth century aviation.

  A handful of forward-thinking pamphlets about aircraft had been printed during the 1800s. None referred to the Incas, though. Dismayed at the lack of relevant information, I approached the librarian’s office.

  From the moment he first saw me, I could sense that the thin, bald librarian had branded me a trouble-maker. He glanced down at a half-eaten Marmite sandwich, in a nest of tin-foil on his desk. Then he looked up and blinked. I explained my interest in the Incas. Had he heard about Calancha’s chronicle? Did he know whether the ancient Americans had actually flown? Was there a connection between ancient flight and shrunken heads?

  Spreading a single curl of hair across his polished head, the librarian gnawed at the sandwich, and grimaced.

  “Incas?”

  “That’s right, I’ve heard they flew... over the jungles of Peru.”

  The librarian raised an eyebrow.

  “When did all this happen?”

  “Oh, um,” I stammered, “ages ago...”

  “Before the Wright brothers?”

  I did a quick calculation.

  “Almost certainly.”

  Choking down the last bite of bread, he said he’d see what he could find.

  Half an hour later, he stumbled over with a single A3 sheet.

  “This is all we have,” he said.

  I glanced at the page, a clipping from The Brentwood Review, 8 March 1985. The main photograph showed a moustachioed man hurling into the air what looked like an oversized pillowcase. I scanned the columns. The article focused on a retired cash machine repairman, called William Isadore Deiches. A self-proclaimed expert of flight in ancient times, Mr Deiches, so the article said, had cracked a secret code, and could build a flying carpet. He could even make a doormat fly – for Deiches had deciphered aircraft designs from several countries, including Egypt, Japan, Tibet, Mexico and Peru. And, the piece explained, he had even written a book on the secret lore of the Pyramids.

  Mr Deiches was my only lead. Somehow he must have worked this out when I called him. His response implied that only desperate people telephoned the Deiches residence.

  A child-like voice answered the phone.

  “I know how they built the Pyramids,” it said.

  “Is that Mr Deiches?”

  “You’ll never guess how they did it.”

  “I want to know if the Incas flew,” I said, changing the subject.

  “Course they did,” the voice replied easily.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’d better come round and have a chat.”

  TWO

  Valley of the Dead Pilots

  William Isadore Deiches opened the door to his Brentwood maisonette no more than a crack. The iris of a single ice-blue eye widened as it observed me. I whispered my name. The door slammed shut. I stood firm and repeated my name. A security chain clattered, and was followed by the sound of unoiled hinges moving slowly. I greeted Mr Deiches. A man of retirement age, he was of average height, with a slender neck, thin lips and an aquiline nose. His hair was concealed by a black Stetson, with a tan leather band; and his skin was oyster-gray, wrinkled like rhino hide.

  “Can’t be too careful,” said Deiches, leading the way through the hall, into the lounge, “there are a lot of crackpots out there.”

  It might have been a pleasant spring day in Brentwood, but the maisonette’s rooms were frigid, dank and smelled of death. Remembering that I’d come in the name of scientific research, I sat down in a low armchair and braced myself. Around me, the scarlet paisley wallpaper seemed to be closing in. Ring-binders were piled up everywhere, and a clutch of mangy soft toys poked out from under a coffee table. Crumbs from a thousand TV-dinners circled my chair.

  Deiches handed me a mug of steaming tea, and swept an arm across the coffee table to clear it.

  “The Valley of the Kings wasn’t that at all,” he said, settling into a rocking-chair, “it was really the Valley of the Dead Pilots.”

  “Egypt?” I said.

  “Of course,” he replied. “Who d’you think taught the Incas to fly?”

  I frowned politely.

  “Tutankhamen was their best pilot,” he went on, “but he crashed, poor chap, and died of multiple fractures.” Deiches paused to sip his tea. “The Egyptians based everything on watching birds,” he said. “You only ever g
ot a single-seater in Ancient Egypt, because they’d never seen a bird with two heads. Haven’t you ever heard of the Saqqara glider?”

  I shook my head.

  “In 1898,” said Deiches, “a model of a plane was discovered in a tomb there. No one knew what it was, because the Wright brothers hadn’t done their stuff yet, so it got tossed into a box. Then in the ’70s someone fished it out and realized it was a prototype of a high-wing monoplane.”

  “What about the Americas?” I asked.

  Deiches’ eyes glazed over. I sensed that it had been a long time since the last visitor had graced his living-room.

  “I’m the only man alive who can translate Mayan,” he announced proudly. “It’s a bloody nightmare of a language.”

  The expert took a gulp of tea.

  “They all had aircraft,” he said, “the Maya, the Aztecs, and the Incas. What d’you think Mexico’s Pyramid of the Moon was for?”

  Again, I looked blank-faced.

  “For launching gliders, of course!”

  A self-schooled authority on ancient flight, Deiches was having a whale of a time. Like a theoretical physicist, he could come out with the wildest ideas and get away with it. Despite my reservations, some of his facts did check out. The Saqqara glider, for instance, well-known to Egyptologists, is on display at the Cairo Museum.

  “I’m quite famous in my own little way,” he said, “everyone knows me in Brentwood. Some people think I’m a crank but I’m not half as cranky as the lunatic who’s been calling me with death threats.”

  Mr Deiches tugged a tattered folder from an upper shelf and rifled through it. Then he handed me a photocopy. The piece, from a 1934 edition of the New York Times, was headed “Aztec Gliders Flew in Mexico”. I ran my eyes over the article. It reported that an obscure Polish archaeologist, Professor M J Tenenbaum, was claiming he’d found stone etchings of Aztec gliders, which they had called crirs. Not unlike King Solomon’s fleet of aircraft (known as rasheds) the crirs had been made of stork feathers. Tenenbaum, the clipping went on, said that the primitive craft had been mentioned in Friar Clausijiro’s 18th century book History of Mexico, where it said the Aztecs “could fly like birds”. The similarity with the Frenchman’s quote about the Incas caught my attention.