Himalaya (2004)

by Michael Palin

  I have been asked to give a short address before the play begins.

  ‘What is your name again, please?’ asks the young captain who’s been asked to introduce me. ‘Palin…Palin.’ He tries it out a few times before giving me an apologetic smile.

  ‘I’m the entertainments officer. I do bingo, mainly.’

  At 7.30 precisely he pushes aside the decaying velvet curtain, tells a few nervous jokes and then I hear my moment of glory approach.

  ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, may I ask you to give a very warm welcome for our special celebrity guest, Mr Michael Plain!’

  This sort of sets the tone for the evening. Despite the best efforts of Mrs Neelam Dewan, both as director and leading actress, some of the colonels and majors in the cast do have recollection problems, and I understand now why the two prompters are given such prominent mention in the programme and why, when they come on stage at the end, Mrs Punam Gupta and Mrs Vijaylaksmi Sood receive thunderous applause and garlands of flowers.

  Afterwards we all repair to the Green Room and tell each other how wonderful we were and the Commanding Officer, Lt-General Singh, a Sikh in a handsome rose-pink turban, insists that we return to his house for a drink. It’s a short walk from the hotel and Roger is much impressed that the guards on the gate snap to attention and present arms as we enter. It’s after midnight when we leave, and they totally ignore us.

  Day Thirty Five : Shimla to Dharamsala

  Pack up. Take a last look out of the French windows I’m not supposed to open. Expect the monkeys to at least look up, but they’re all gathered around a rubbish skip, picking around in the contents as if it were the first day of Harrods’ sale.

  Or perhaps they’ve heard what’s happening to their brothers and sisters in Delhi. The Times of India reports that the authorities there have decided to start rounding up some of the monkeys that roam the city and deport them. More controversially, they’re to take 2000 cows out of circulation as well. Not, I notice, to improve road safety, but, so they say, to curb the illegal milk trade.

  We leave the bow windows, pebble-dash walls and wrought-iron balconies behind and continue north by car to another hill station, Dharamsala, best known for being the headquarters of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile.

  Our driver, like many middle-aged men in India and Pakistan, has coloured his greying hair with henna, in his case so generously that it’s almost bright scarlet and a tell-tale contrast with his grey moustache. Basil has christened him ‘Red’.

  Outside the village of Ghumarwin Red gives an agonized cry and swings the wheel frantically.

  ‘That is very bad,’ he says, in genuine distress. ‘That was a snake on the road.’

  Basil is unsympathetic.

  ‘You swerved to avoid a snake?’

  ‘It is Monday. Shiva’s day. It is very bad luck.’

  ‘No, it’s not, it’s Tuesday.’

  A great weight seems to fall from Red’s shoulder.

  ‘Ah, yes, that’s good. That is Hanuman’s day. He is the monkey god.’

  ‘So you’ve got to watch out for monkeys.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  Basil, proud owner of a lovely wheaten terrier called Ed, asks which day he should avoid dogs.

  ‘Dogs?’ Red laughs dismissively. ‘No. Always killing dogs.’

  The country road is undulating and undramatic, rising and falling as we cross the valleys of modest rivers running down from the mountains into the Punjab. Reminders of worship are never far away, from brightly painted roadside shrines daubed in mauve, bright pink or orange, to busloads of pilgrims in yellow robes with red and gold sashes. They’re causing traffic jams as they converge on the temple at a place called Jawalamukhi. The attraction here is that natural gas issues from the cliff in the form of an ‘eternal’ blue flame and feeds a constantly boiling pool of water. This is considered magical proof of the power of the local gods.

  By evening we’ve reached our hotel, once a tea-planter’s bungalow, with fine views over the green Kangra valley below and the Dhauladar Mountains above, on whose wooded slopes Dharamsala and its sister McLeodganj are set like Tuscan hill villages.

  No monkeys to besiege us down here but caged dogs bark all night long.

  Read The Art of Happiness and try to avoid feeling murderous.

  Day Thirty Six : Dharamsala and McLeodganj

  It’s six o’clock in the morning and the first streaks of light are in the sky as we drive along the narrow streets of Dharamsala and continue up the road that climbs through pine, oak and rhododendron woods to the less mellifluous-sounding village of McLeodganj. (‘Ganj’ means market and McLeod, presumably, was a Scotsman.) To complicate matters, this place with a Hindu-Scots name is filled with Tibetans.

  The reason they’re here is that the Chinese, having invaded Tibet in 1949, began to consolidate their political power by eliminating any opposition. In 1959 this resulted in an uprising in Lhasa, which was put down with such force that, fearing for his life, the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism and Head of State, decided to flee his country.

  He crossed the Himalaya into India and in a brave gesture of generosity, Prime Minister Nehru gave him sanctuary and later a more permanent home in Dharamsala. (Many other countries would have had misgivings about what this would do to their relations with China.) Chinese oppression of Buddhists is less virulent now than it was at the height of the Cultural Revolution, but they have tightened their economic and political hold on Tibet and 44 years after his flight, the Dalai Lama, and the Tibetan government, remain in exile.

  We’re up this early to catch a dawn ceremony at the Lhagyal Ri Temple, just a short walk down the hill from the monastery where the Dalai Lama now lives.

  On a terrace of land with tall pines falling away to one side are a series of stupas, the dome-shaped shrines in which are kept scriptures or remains or clay likenesses of the gods. A great wall of prayer flags forms a backdrop behind them. There’s a residual night-time chill in the air but already a line of devotees are quietly moving along a line of brightly painted prayer wheels, which culminates in one huge wheel about eight feet high. They spin them and murmur prayers as they go. They then feed sprigs of juniper branch into small open ovens and leave gifts by the fire, a flask of tea or a bottle of barley wine. The aromatic, spicy smell of the wood smoke mingles with the pines to give a strong heady flavour to the dawn.

  As the sun rises its rays hit the columns of smoke and turn them into long diagonal shafts of light. At that moment four monks, cross-legged on the floor before a microphone, begin to recite prayers.

  Dogs sniff around. A herd of cows plods slowly across the front of the temple past the prayer wheels and on into the woods. No-one seems to bat an eyelid. It’s part of life and all life is sacred to the Buddhist.

  The only organized part of what seems to me a delightfully laid-back, unstructured ceremony is a ritual throwing of tsampa, barley flour. I’m encouraged to join in and, picking up a handful of the flour, I take my place in line facing the stupas. Prayers are recited, hands are raised three times and then, altogether, we toss the flour forwards, an offering to the gods, and a wake-up call to their protectors.

  On the way back up the hill a driveway turns sharply right, up to the Namgyal monastery, or Little Lhasa, as it’s known, where the Dalai Lama is currently in residence. An inveterate traveller, he’s just returned from a five-city tour of the US. Our appointment to see him is in two days’ time, but there is a flurry of activity around the buildings and word comes through that he is leading prayers in the temple and if we’re lucky we might be able to get in and film the ceremony. From then on everything happens very quickly. We’re introduced to one of the Dalai Lama’s private secretaries, a tall young man in immaculate grey suit, with a Tibetan waistcoat to match, who ushers us through a side entrance, up a flight of steps and through a metal detector. We’re then body-searched quite thoroughly and led up into a light, airy courtyard, half covered with a corrugated plast
ic sun-roof. The floor is packed with people, many of them robed and beaded Westerners, but we are led on past them to the edge of an inner area, where, surrounded by a sea of shaven-headed, saffron-robed monks, the familiar bespectacled figure of the best known Buddhist in the world, the incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Love and Great Compassion, sits on a cushioned platform leading the prayers. Every eye and ear is concentrated on him and yet he seems a modest figure, swaying slowly as he speaks and sounding profoundly weary. Occasionally he leans forward to shake a small bell.

  We watch all this from a side door, not 20 feet away from him, which gives onto a stage, dominated by a statue of the Buddha and stacked with piles of sweets, biscuits and fruit such as you might find in a church at Harvest Festival. When we have finished filming we’re moved smartly away, as the prayers come to an end and the assembled throng rises to its feet and begins to move forward for a glimpse of the great man as he leaves, preceded, I notice, by a guard with a sub-machine gun.

  In the crush, I lose sight of the crew and find myself at the bottom of a wide flight of stairs, with everything apparently going on above me. Then, out of the melee, the Dalai Lama appears, descending the stairs on the arms of two assistants. I step back out of the way but my retreat is blocked by a crash barrier, so I just bow my head and try to look invisible.

  As he comes down off the steps I notice that the set gaze with which he intoned the prayers earlier has gone and he’s looking around him with an animated smile, seemingly delighted to make eye contact. A few feet away from me he stops, looks over in my direction and waves. I cast a quick look behind me, but there’s noone there. I look back and he’s waving again, almost as if he’d seen an old friend. I take one last quick look round then walk forward and shake his hand. I seem to have done the right thing, as he beams at me and, behind heavy dark spectacle frames, his eyes sparkle.

  I mutter something about looking forward to talking to him later in the week. He nods, squeezes my hand and looks at me again in that pleased-to-see-you sort of way before moving on. The crowd, temporarily halted, passes by after him and I reassume my role as man at the crash barrier.

  ‘He probably did recognize you,’ says someone as we eat breakfast on the terrace of a pretty guesthouse overlooking the monastery. ‘He loves showbiz folk.’

  This barbed compliment comes with little evidence other than his wearily over-quoted association with Richard Gere, who has stayed at this guesthouse and whose name appears, interestingly, among a list of sponsors of the Sulabh Public Toilets, Baths and Sanitary Complex by the temple car park. Among the other dozen or so donors listed I couldn’t help noticing the name of Mae Loo.

  Public relations are important to the Tibetans, for McLeodganj is more than just temples and the Dalai Lama’s residence. It is home to a flourishing number of enterprises, political, religious and commercial, all of which are designed to demonstrate the seriousness and competence of the government in exile. Everywhere we go we are handed well-produced information sheets by well-dressed, knowledgeable and patient young men, who do a thoroughly professional job of marketing the mysteries of Tibet. I discover a perfect example of old traditions and modern delivery when I visit the Tibetan Medical and Astrology Centre. Though there are beggars at the door, inside all is clean, whitewashed and businesslike. The ground floor is more like a warehouse, with sacks of herbs coming in and boxes of medicine going out. Upstairs the astrologers work away on quietly humming computers surrounded by the intricate Buddhist paintings on cloth that they call thangkas (pronounced ‘tankers’).

  Outside the window prayer flags are tied to nests of satellite dishes. One sending out messages, the other receiving them.

  Knowing I was coming here, I sent details of my place and time of birth to the Astrology Centre so that they could prepare a chart for me. The service costs around PS50 a time and is available to anyone, as are the protective amulets that I notice they sell here (with instructions to wrap in yellow cloth and wear around the neck).

  A young man, with curly dark hair, introduces himself as Phurbu Tsering, the astrologer in charge of my case. He is, like most of the young men here, neatly turned out in Western style, with sports jacket, jeans and Gap shirt.

  He it is who has calculated my incarnation prospects. As reincarnation is one of the basic beliefs of Buddhism (the Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of the last Dalai Lama, who was a reincarnation of the Dalai Lama before that, and so on), it helps to know what your chances are. There are six realms in which you can end up. God, Demi-God and Human Being are all good and Animal, Hell and Bad Spirits all less good.

  With a certain amount of apprehension I open my chart, which is headed with my Tibetan birthdate, the 1st day of the 3rd month of Water-Sheep year. With mixed feelings (mainly of relief) I read on. ‘You were likely to be an elephant in your previous life, but you are going to be born as a daughter of a rich family in the West.’

  Basil finds this particularly funny and is convinced that I’ll be reincarnated as one of John Cleese’s grandchildren.

  The rest of the chart has mixed news. I’m told I ‘believe in honesty and logic feeling, not emotion’ and ‘never indulge in meaningless gossips and talks’. That doesn’t sound right.

  Blue, red and white are my lucky colours (which presumably means I can support Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United at the same time). Thursday is my worst day, Fridays and Mondays my best and my marriage has been ‘disheartening’. How can I tell Helen this after 38 years?

  Phurbu Tsering is sincere, friendly and speaks excellent English, and clearly believes in the truth of what he’s found in my chart. He takes me to one side as we leave and urges me to be particularly careful this year. He sees change and a crisis ahead. As I’m about to spend the next two months crossing the highest mountain range on earth, this is not exactly what I need to hear.

  I ask Phurbu if he has had his own astrological chart made. He shakes his head. There is no record of his date or time of birth. All this information, and everything else his family owned, was left behind when his parents fled Tibet.

  He smiles gravely.

  ‘I was born on the roadside.’

  Perhaps the crown jewel of the exiles’ achievement is the Norbulingka Institute, named after the Dalai Lama’s summer palace in Lhasa, and dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan craft and culture. Once through the gates we’re in lush, beautifully ordered gardens rising gently in a series of terraces to the gold-tipped temple at the top of the hill. The paths are paved with slate slabs, and soft, gently swaying stands of bamboo are both protective and mysterious. Flowers trail round columns and arches and water flows artfully down, bubbling from gargoyle mouths into a series of fishponds. The air is charged with the constant high-pitched trill of insects.

  It’s described to me as ‘a campus’ but with cell-phone beeps and a constant quiet coming and going between departments, another description comes to mind.

  This is a highly motivated Garden of Eden.

  It nevertheless retains a typically Buddhist character. There is an amiable sense of tranquillity, people don’t shout and everyone works with seraphic concentration, whether in the thangka workshop, painting fine detail on a banner of beasts, angry gods and flying horses, or in the metal shop, hammering out the base of a sitting Buddha from a sheet of copper, or in an inscription room, sitting beneath a framed picture of the Dalai Lama and copying onto long, thin, rectangular plates the text of Buddhist scriptures picked out in gold, coral and silver.

  Everywhere we go we are received with quiet cordiality and politely but persistently followed by a video camera recording our every move.

  It’s impressive, if a little tiring, all this courtesy and hospitality, and I’m not quite sure where it will all lead. The Tibetans in exile are skilful operators and I admire the tenacity and persistence with which they court world opinion, but as time goes by the Chinese are strengthening their hold on Tibet, while adopting more liberal policies towards the
Buddhists and better relations with the rest of the world. It’s hard to see where the leverage might be applied to get them to change their policy and allow a meaningful Tibetan government to work from Lhasa rather than McLeodganj.

  Another problem is that over the last 44 years increasing numbers of the people who are running the government in exile have been born and bred in India and have never seen the country they represent.

  As we saw at Norbulingka this afternoon, life is comfortable for the cultural executives and it would surely not be easy to uproot themselves from this congenial corner and relocate to a cold plateau on the far side of the Himalayan wall.

  Day Thirty Eight : Dharamsala and McLeodganj

  Our audience with the Dalai Lama is at 2.15 this afternoon. We arrive early and film in the streets of McLeodganj. It’s Gandhi’s birthday and a public holiday, but no day off for the desperate figures in vests and cotton trousers trying to mend roads as cars continue to drive along them, or for the limbless beggars squatting beneath a Western Union sign, or the bundles of rags with hands protruding outside the cyber cafe. I’ve never seen so many mutilated and deformed people in one place, and there’s not much you can do but walk on and try to avoid eye contact. Their own people, I notice, ignore them completely.

  I stop to make some notes leaning up against a metal post crowned with a thick mesh of unprotected electric cabling. A boy, not more than five or six, holds out his hand.

  ‘Hello.’ He repeats softly, ‘Hello.’

  An older man with a stick simply stands there with a small pail, whimpering soundlessly. Passing these wraith-like figures are the substantial, muscular, Western backpackers who home in on these places, looking for cheap accommodation while sporting designer shades that would cost a street mender six months’ wages.