The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  Had ancient American cultures managed to construct a crude form of hang-glider? Surely it wasn’t so impossible for a mountain people to have designed a basic flying canopy? I wondered why such an obvious question was ranked as being on the lunatic fringe. Looking over at Deiches, his face pressed into the tattered file, I began to remember why. But even so, I found it strange that no mainstream scientists had considered the idea of gliding in ancient times.

  “I know how they made flying carpets,” winced Deiches, eager to regain his audience.

  “How?”

  “The designs of Persian carpets... they hold the secret blueprints,” he lisped. “Decode the patterns, and you can make a carpet fly.”

  Deiches smiled the smile of a man who had solved this, and many other riddles.

  “Your Incas flew all right,” he said. “How d’you think they built the gigantic lines in Peru’s Nazca Desert? Beware of the crackpots – like the ones who say the symbols were landing strips for aliens. That’s nonsense! They were no such thing... they were landing strips for gliders, Incan gliders.”

  With a deep sigh, I looked over at William Isadore Deiches, as he bobbed back and forth in his chair. Condemning him as a psychopath would have been too easy. Most of his expertise was beyond me, but he was the one man prepared to accept the idea of American flight in ancient times.

  I drained my tea and thanked Mr Deiches for his time.

  “You can’t go yet,” he said. “I’ve got to show you this...”

  The retired cash register repairman, turned aviation specialist, ripped a fragment of paper from his file. He passed it over. My head jerked back as I focused on the sketch. It depicted a glowering figure with outstretched wings, taloned feet, and a crown covering his scalp. Writhing sea-snakes and trophy heads decorated the motif, which was labeled at the bottom. The label read “Peruvian Birdman”.

  Deiches squinted, and wiped his nose with a grubby handkerchief.

  “Thought you’d like it,” he said.

  “Is it an Inca? Is there a link between the Birdmen and trophy heads?”

  “I’m not going to give you all the answers,” he riposted. “If you’re so keen, why don’t you go and do your own research?”

  “Where would I go?” I asked. “I’ve already been to the British Library and the Aeronautical Society.”

  Deiches wasn’t impressed.

  “You can’t do research sitting here in England,” he said.

  “But what would I look for?”

  The flying carpet expert took another gulp of his tea.

  “You have to look for the Birdmen, of course.”

  *

  A few days after my encounter with Deiches, I took the train down to Purley to visit Sir Wilfred Thesiger, who was living in a residential home nearby. I would always try to meet the veteran explorer before setting off on a journey. He is a master when it comes to advice on planning an expedition.

  While on the train, I scribbled what I knew on the back of an envelope: (1) Feather dipped in blood. (2) Spanish monk who may have thought the Incas could fly. (3) Many references to flight in ancient times. (4) Mystery of the Nazca Lines in Peru. (5) Picture of Birdman, decorated with trophy heads. It wasn’t much to go on but, as I stared at the notes, I felt a surge of adrenaline. The puzzle was without doubt cryptic, but I was sure there was a trail leading to an answer, a trail leading to a journey.

  The late-Georgian building, set in acres of lush grounds, was a far cry from Kenya’s Samburuland, where I had first met Thesiger a decade earlier. Even though in his ninetieth year, Sir Wilfred was still hard as nails, bursting with strength. Bounding up the stairs to the second floor, he led the way to his room. Knick-knacks from Africa and Arabia were dotted about: a curved jambiyah dagger from Yemen, an Abyssinian talisman, a Zulu shield and assagai.

  “So, tell me,” Thesiger said, once installed in his favorite chair, “where are you off to?”

  “I’ve decided to go to Peru.”

  “Never been to the Americas myself,” he replied. “Peru... was that the Aztecs?”

  “Incas.”

  “Ah, yes, the Incas,” said Thesiger, staring into space, “and what’s taking you down there?”

  Previous discussions with the great explorer had established his aversion to air travel. Most of his journeys had begun with a sea voyage. So it was with unease that I mentioned my interest in Incan gliders.

  “I’ve heard that the Incas could fly,” I said casually.

  Thesiger drew in a sharp breath.

  “Airplanes! Can’t stand the things,” he said. “That infernal combustion engine.”

  “I don’t think they were actual planes with engines,” I said weakly, “probably more like gliders.”

  Sir Wilfred cocked his head back.

  “You’re going to need some good equipment,” he replied. “What’re you taking?”

  Until that moment, sitting as I was in Sir Wilfred’s study, I hadn’t given much thought to the technicalities of the trip. A trailblazer of the old school, Thesiger judged expeditions on the quality and amount of equipment taken along. He was a man who’d never been hampered by the stringent luggage restrictions of modern air travel.

  “I’ll be taking all the usual stuff,” I said, motioning sideways with my arms.

  Thesiger scratched his cheek. He was waiting for an inventory.

  “Ropes,” I mumbled, “lots of rope... and some mosquito repellent, a good water-bottle, and of course some tins of corned beef.”

  “Rations... very important,” wheezed Sir Wilfred. “But what about transport once you’re there?”

  In line with his dislike of aircraft, I was aware of Thesiger’s hatred of all motor vehicles. Stretching in my chair, I announced: “Llamas, I’ll be using llamas.”

  “Ah,” he said, slapping his hands together with relish, “animal transport. Can’t beat it. Never used llamas myself.”

  “They’re basically camels,” I said knowledgeably, “just with smaller humps.”

  “A camel could take you to the ends of the Earth,” he replied dreamily. As someone who had twice crossed Rub” al-Khali, the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert, barefoot, Thesiger was a man who knew his camels.

  Satisfied with my transport arrangements, he swivelled in his chair. Another pressing question was concerning him.

  “What if the rations run out, and you’re starving?” he asked darkly.

  My eyes widened at the thought.

  Sir Wilfred leaned forward, the shadow of his towering frame looming over me like a storm-cloud.

  “You may have to turn the transport into food,” he said.

  *

  A large-scale map of Peru was unfurled at Extreme Journey Supplies, a trekking shop in north London. The salesman cast an eye across it and shook his head.

  “Peru,” he said with loathing, “it’s a hard one.”

  “Hard?”

  “There’s mountains,” he mumbled, running a thumbnail down the Andes. “Then you got desert over “ere, jungles down “ere, and coastline... lots of coastline.”

  “Diverse little country, isn’t it?” I said.

  “Gonna cost “ya,” he replied, fishing a check-list from a draw. “What d’you want first?”

  “I think I’d better start with a knife.”

  “What sorta knife?”

  “I’m going to need one with a sharp blade.”

  “How sharp?”

  “Sharp enough to skin a llama,” I said.

  An hour later I found myself inspecting a mass of gear. The shop’s manager had come to attend to me himself. A major journey called for the best equipment money could buy. I surveyed my purchases and grinned, Thesiger would be proud. Like him, I was becoming preoccupied by inventories.

  Realising that I was every salesman’s dream customer, the manager went over the check-list. A team of assistants scrambled to pack the gear into bags.

  “Water purifying pump, Force Ten high altitude tent,” he
began in a baritone voice, “Omega Synergy sleeping bag, mosquito net, half a gallon of Deet, jungle hammock, trekking pole with built-in compass, thermometer, signaling mirror and distress whistle, titanium Primus stove with extra fuel, six carabiners, two hundred feet of caving rope, a four-cell Maglite, self-inflating mattress, wire saw, hypothermia blanket, folding spade with combined entrenching tool, fire-lighting flint, lightweight mess tin, more rope, emergency surgery unit with brain drip, mentholated foot powder, ergonomic water bottle with inbuilt drinking straw, and twenty-two family-sized sachets of Lancashire Hot Pot.”

  “What about the knife?”

  The manager tapped the sheet with the end of his pen.

  “And last but not least,” he declared grandly, “a sixteen-inch, nickel-coated Alaskan moose knife, with a blade sharp enough to...” the manager paused to look at me. “Sharp enough to skin a llama,” he said.

  THREE

  Inca Trail Warriors

  It was well below freezing as I stumbled out of my tent into the blackness, a flashlight in one hand, a soggy roll of loo paper in the other. With the night to cloak me, I went in search of a patch of field in which to purge my faltering digestive tract. Within a week I’d ripened from headstrong adventurer with a quest, to incontinent wreck.

  I had arrived in Lima with the intention of picking up the trail to the elusive Birdmen, whoever they might be. I had no idea where the path might lead, or the hazards which might line its route. My modus operandi was to forge ahead, quizzing anyone and everyone for scraps of information. Looking back, I can only marvel that I embarked on such a long journey with so little in the way of concrete data. But, in hindsight, this lack of research may have been my greatest asset.

  Weighted down instead with equipment, I made a beeline to the ancient city of Cusco. From there I signed up for the Inca Trail, the trek across the mountains to Machu Picchu. The Incas’ most sacred city seemed the obvious place to pick up the trail in search for the Birdmen of Peru.

  The four-day hike was described by my guide-book as “ten times harsher than Everest”. Waving it off as no more than a piffling stroll, I had thrust my trekking pole into the dirt. A man with as much gear as me, I mused, was surely unstoppable.

  Since my rendezvous with Deiches, I’d read what little I could find regarding flight in antiquarian times. The line between myth and fact was clouded in uncertainty. Cold hard facts were few and far between. I scrutinized the more reputable ancient texts, hunting for clues.

  I read of a man named Ki-Kung-Shi who supposedly built a chariot with wings in the reign of Chinese Emperor Ch’eng T’ang, eighteen centuries before the birth of Christ. The chariot looked rather like a paddle steamer. Another source recorded that two thousand years ago, in the Chinese kingdom of Ki-Kuang, (its people, supposedly, had one arm and three eyes each) flying machines were common. And, in Ancient Greece, Archytas of Tarentum, a friend of Plato, had constructed a wooden dove. When it flew it became one of the wonders of the ancient world.

  Dig deep in folklore and you start unearthing examples of primitive flight. Most test the boundaries of belief. Danish legends tell of flying sun chariots over Trundholm two millennia ago; the Indian epics Ramayana and Mahabharata contain references to flight – the most famous being the zeppelin-like Vimana aircraft. Zimbabwe had “towers of the flight”; the Maoris had a tradition of flying-men, as did the English, beginning with King Bladud.

  For some reason the notion of Incan flight shone more brightly for me than all the rest. Perhaps because the empire of the Incas rose at a time when a few scientists and free-thinkers in Europe were working on the idea of flight. Roger Bacon, Leonardo Da Vinci and others, gave serious thought to the problem of sustaining a man’s weight in air. But they were lampooned for using hammers and nails rather than magic, alchemy, and other accepted tools of the time.

  *

  On the third night on the Inca Trail, after a suspect bowl of stewed cuy, which we know as guinea pig, I asked the guide, Patricia, if she had heard whether the Incas flew. A sensitive woman with deep-set eyes and an infectious smile, she’d laughed at my question. Only when I declared that I wasn’t joking, did she become more serious. Like many Peruvians I quizzed, she was capable of extraordinary perception in esoteric matters. And, as with many others, she had a nugget of information to pass on.

  “When my grandfather was a young man in Urubamba,” she said, stirring her guinea pig goulash to cool it, “he was walking in the woods near his home. At the foot of a tall tree he came across a young condor. Its wing had been broken. Taking pity on it, my grandfather gave the bird a little meat. He took it home, where he cared for it through the winter. After many weeks, when it had recovered, he let it go free.”

  Patricia slurped her stew and stared into the camp-fire.

  “From that day on he had wild, vivid dreams,” she said. “He dreamt he was an Inca flying, gliding through the empty sky... he dreamt he was part condor, part man, a man from ancient times.”

  *

  By the time I had struggled back to my tent from the lavatory field, Patricia was ready to leave. It was just before three a.m. She supervised the porters, two of whom had been assigned to haul my luggage across the passes to Machu Picchu.

  Laden down with non-essential knick-knacks, I limped forward on bleeding feet. I cursed myself for giving in to the salesman’s tempting merchandize, and I damned Deiches. If it hadn’t been for him, I would have been tucked up at home dreaming of adventure. The porters scuttled ahead under the weight of survival gear, their sandals biting into the granite-paved path. All around us the jungle slept.

  Patricia told me to keep a look out for Cuscomys ashaninka, a new genus of mammal, the size of a domestic cat, which had been discovered in the hills for the first time a few days before. But I was in no mood for nature. I inched forward through the darkness, my hand on Patricia’s shoulder, like a gas victim from a forgotten war.

  Four hours later the undergrowth appeared to know that dawn was near. The food chain had woken and was hungry. After breakfasting, one creature would become an early meal for another with wider jaws. A thousand birds nudged about in the foliage, restless to take flight. Each nest sheltered a clutch of mouths waiting to be fed. Darkness lifted by gradual degrees, although there was still no real light. At last the first shades of cypress and olive green came to life.

  The track had levelled out, and was now clearly visible. I responded by moving faster, bounding across the neatly-fitting flagstones. A thermometer, distress whistle, and signaling mirror clattered from my coat, like tools hanging from an astronaut’s suit.

  Turning a sharp bend, I was struck dumb by the view. Stretching out ahead was a valley. At its centre lay the ruins of a city. The valley was like none other I have ever witnessed, just as the city itself has no equal. The colors, the shadows and the sense of secrecy, were bewitching.

  I rested there at Intipunku, the Gate of the Sun, before starting the short walk down into the ruins. The air, which had shed its nocturnal blanket, smelled of fennel, although I could not see that aromatic herb growing among the smooth-edged granite stones. As I descended, the first fragment of dawn rose out over the dark peaks, giving them color. No more than a glow of light at first but, as the moments passed, the glow transformed into a bolt of gold. I watched transfixed and, as I did so, it struck the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu.

  The Spanish ravaged the Incan kingdom, stripping away its riches. But they missed this, the greatest jewel of all. Before walking the Inca Trail I had wondered how the sacred city could have eluded the Conquistadors. Far too steep for their horses, the trail – supposedly the original route of pilgrimage – appears to lead nowhere. Only after four days of hiking across mountain passes, do you reach the city itself. The elusive path had kept the Incas’ secret safe.

  Current thinking says that Machu Picchu was probably deserted before the Conquistadors arrived. Some experts say it was abandoned after a plague; others that the religious centre may h
ave moved elsewhere.

  The American scholar Hiram Bingham is credited with rediscovering Machu Picchu. Leading a Yale University team to the site in July 1911, he claimed to have found the Incan stronghold of Vilcabamba. A historian rather than an archaeologist, Bingham knew how to put together an expedition and his team was remarkably well-equipped. When I read his book Inca Land, I wondered if he’d visited the same mountaineering shop as me. The inventory of his equipment suggested that superior salesmen had been at work.

  Bingham’s gear included: a mummery tent with pegs and poles, a hypsometer, a mountain-mercurial barometer, two Watkins aneroid barometers, a pair of Zeiss glasses, two 3A Kodak camera, six films, a sling psychrometer, a prismatic compass and clinometer, a Stanley pocket level, an eighty-foot red-strand mountain rope, three ice axes, a seven-foot flagpole with an American flag and a Yale University flag, four Silver’s self-heating cans of Irish Stew, a cake of chocolate, eight hardtack biscuits, as well as raisins, sugar cubes and mock-turtle soup.

  Gazing down across the valley, it was hard to imagine that until Bingham’s arrival Machu Picchu was lost in jungle. The canopy of trees which had hidden and protected the sacred city for centuries has long since been hacked down. Modern times have brought mod cons in abundance, paving the way for the tourist bandwagon. The most notable additions were an exclusive hotel and the railway, which runs from the nearby town of Aguas Calientes down to Cusco. Each year brings newer and more costly comforts. The latest idea is to build a cable-car which will ferry even more tourists up to the sacred city from the valley floor.

  But for two hours each morning, Machu Picchu belongs to the weary, stomach-clutching legion of Inca Trail warriors. The ruins are deserted and lie silent. For those who have staggered over the passes, the reward is like slipping into Disneyland before the gates open. You have a chance to breathe deeply, to soak up the textures, and to absorb the lack of human sound. But then, on the dot of nine, as if some invisible gong has been struck, the first of a thousand tourist coaches winds its way up the hairpin bends to Machu Picchu. Within moments, the turnstiles are spinning, the flush toilets are churning, and soft drinks fizzing, as the seething mass of Banana Republic explorers descends.