Though the herders seem not the slightest bit sentimental about their furry charges, theirs is one of the most one-sidedly symbiotic relationships between man and beast. In return for some grass the yaks give their owners milk, cheese, butter, meat, fuel, building materials, clothes and transport.
I join the herders around a fire of brush wood and bamboo kindling, which they keep alive by tossing on the odd yak nugget and pumping hard with an ancient sheep’s bladder bellows. Sitting in a circle, eating cake made from tsampa, the barley flour and tea mix, they’re jolly company, naturally given to smiling and cracking jokes, most of which are at my expense.
Their clothes are made from skins and fur and look as if they have been part of their bodies since they were born. Their complexions, skin textures, their whole physiognomy is a reflection of the life they lead. Coloured by the wind and rain, stunted by the bitter cold, their features sculpted in a craggy resemblance to the weird and wonderful landscape around them, they’re elemental figures, created by and in the likeness of the mountains.
Maybe all this accounts for the ease of their manner. They know what to do here. They know what to expect and how to deal with it. They have slope cred.
This morning means having fun with foreigners, and being paid for it. First of all, it’s tea, invigoratingly salty, with a knob of yak butter thrown in, then it’s time to get out the chang, a fermented barley beer, for me to try. It’s poured out of a stained, dusty container, the sort of thing you might find at the back of the shed ten years after you put it there. Before drinking, Migmar shows me the important procedure of giving thanks. I must dip my third finger into the brew, and, flicking it each time, give thanks first to the mountain, second to the Buddha and third to the assembled company. It’s a pleasing taste, chang, like chilled ginger beer, with a hint of apples.
This is the start of one of those magical meals that may not win any gastronomic medals but are unique and unforgettable - a Sunday lunch 16,900 feet (5150 m) up in the heart of the Himalaya. The ingredients include perfect weather, cloudless blue sky, light breeze, generous sunshine, the comforting presence of the yaks and the cheeriness of their owners, the reassuring company of big black crows, and the presence, at our backs, of the highest mountain in the world.
The conquest of Everest in 1953 was one of the milestones of my childhood. I was ten at the time and, like every other Briton, bursting with national pride (we somehow dealt with fact that Everest had been conquered by a Tibetan and a New Zealander). What happened on the mountain behind me 50 years ago defined the heroic, and led to a fascination with exploration that I suppose has brought me here today, completing the circle.
Only later did I learn that Everest might have been conquered 29 years earlier, when George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared into a cloud close to the summit and were never seen again.
As the years went by, this heroic failure came to fascinate me more than Hillary and Tenzing’s success. The fact that Mallory and Irvine left from a base camp almost exactly where we are now and lost their lives on the face of the mountain I can see so clearly ahead of me makes this a very special place, somewhere that has been in my imagination for so long.
Lunch completed, the yaks are loaded up, the tents struck and we begin the walk up to the glacier.
The warmth of the sun and the gentle tinkle of yak bells makes up for the grimly lunar landscape of grey stones and boulders. The herders seem in no hurry, whistling every now and then to keep the yaks together and occasionally singing as we plod slowly upwards. As the afternoon wears on, and the snowdrifts become less avoidable, it becomes increasingly obvious that the requirements of filming are slowing us down and we shall not reach the glacier before the light goes. We’ve also lost Basil and John Pritchard, both of whom seemed fine at lunch but, unable to cope with the increased altitude, have had to turn back.
We carry on for as long as we can, past valley walls hung with rocks eroded into wonderful sculptural shapes: pinnacles of mud with enormous boulders poised on top of them and Stonehenge-like slabs teetering on the edge of mud cliffs. At just over 18,000 feet (5480 m), I get as close to Everest as I think I ever shall. A moment of regret as we turn back. The ribbed stone pyramid above looks daunting but beckoning at the same time. I can see why it makes people do crazy things. In the 1930s a man called Maurice Wilson planned to crash-land a plane on the side of Everest and climb on up to the summit. In 1980 Reinhold Messner made a successful ascent of the North Face, on his own, there and back, in four days, without oxygen.
As I take one last look, I put myself, as I have done so many times in the past, in Mallory and Irvine’s stout walking boots and tweed jackets and feel what it must have been like for them to stand here 80 years ago, knowing that only two miles separated them from the top of the world.
Day Sixty Three : Rongbuk to Shigatse
Howling packs of dogs, yelping and snarling in the village last night, and, closer to home, some angry argument in the passageway outside my room, hoarse shouting and a man being restrained.
The words of Captain Scott on arrival at the South Pole come to mind: ‘My God, this is an awful place.’
Today, though, I wash in the metal bowl for the last time, pay my last visit to the stained, encrusted lavatory, and take my last look at Everest framed in one of the squares of my cracked and much-repaired windows.
A Dutchman and his wife who stayed here last night are on their way from Lhasa to Kathmandu, on bicycles. It’s taken them a month to get this far. I never thought anyone would make me feel pampered in a place like this, but as they wobble off on their bicycles and I climb into my four-wheel drive, that’s exactly how I feel. A sturdy, smiling nun in a maroon robe, with a milk churn strapped to her back, stands to one side as our convoy pulls out. I’m torn between admiration for her indomitable cheerfulness and indignation at the grinding poverty that is the way of life for her and the villagers of Rongbuk. This is a beautiful, bleak place.
We run down into the valley, stacked high with glacial rubble, then climb up through a landscape of bare, brown, undulating hills, over a couple of spectacular passes and down through villages with snooker tables in the streets and horses tethered up outside front doors. We’ve almost 200 miles (320 km) to go before Shigatse, Tibet’s second biggest city.
By the time we’ve passed through the town of Lhatse we’ve dropped down to 13,500 feet (4110 m) and are running past ploughed fields. There’s not much traffic on the Friendship Highway: a few trucks lumbering along, a lot of horse and carts but hardly a private vehicle to be seen. As dusk falls we’re in wide, desolate country, with dust blowing and the setting sun catching the tops of the smooth, brown hills and turning them a rich, mournful maroon. As we get closer to Shigatse we pass brand new electric pylons, at first lying in the fields awaiting construction, then, a little later, upright but unconnected and finally cabled up and striding over the last hilltops into the city.
It’s a major culture shock after Rongbuk. I really feel as if we’ve come in from the outback. With its red lanterns and gold and stainless steel trim, the Shigatse Hotel, in the heart of the Chinese-built new town, gleams and glitters like a Las Vegas gambling joint. As we wait to check in, three girls in white coats emerge from a door off the lobby, marked, in English, ‘Beauty and Massage’, and ask us, quite ingenuously, which one we would like to choose.
This is all too much for us to get our heads round and we politely decline their services and, joy of joys, are taken up to rooms with carpets, lights, double beds, hot running water, no dogs and, luxury of luxuries, a bedside table.
This has to be better than sex. Sorry, Beauty and Massage.
Day Sixty Four : Shigatse to Lhasa
Shigatse, with a population of some 60,000, is the second city of Tibet, and boasts the second largest monastery in the country, the Tashilunpo, which is the seat of the second highest incarnation in Tibet, the Panchen Lama. In many ways, his recent history has been more interesting than that of his mo
re illustrious superior, the Dalai Lama. In 1952, three years after the Chinese invaded Tibet, they brought the Panchen Lama to Shigatse and set him up, with his connivance, as their official choice of spiritual leader. After the Chinese had raided the Tashilunpo monastery in 1961, the Panchen Lama became increasingly critical. He sent a report to Chairman Mao calling for freedom of religion to be restored. Mao called the document a poisoned arrow and kept it secret. After a speech in Lhasa demanding Tibetan independence, the Chinese lost patience with their man and he was imprisoned for ten years in Beijing. His death, in Shigatse, at the early age of 50, created further confusion. The Dalai Lama and his advisers in Dharamsala found his reincarnation, a six-year-old boy from northern Tibet, and the Chinese promptly arrested him.
Tashilunpo once again became the centre of a power struggle, when, in 1995, Tibetan monks favourable to China came up with another candidate for Panchen Lama, and he was duly enthroned at the monastery.
No-one seems to know where the Dalai Lama’s choice is at the moment. He’s been kidnapped, and the Chinese-nominated Panchen Lama is rarely seen in Shigatse.
We drive to the monastery along modern, urban streets decked with ads for China Mobile. The temple, however, is resolutely Tibetan and mightily impressive. Its complex of buildings is laid out on a slope leading up to the row of tombs of the Panchen Lamas and a chapel that contains the tallest Buddha in the country.
A steady line of pilgrims, many in sheepskin coats and clutching prayer beads, are making their way up the stone-flagged pathways, flanked by juniper trees, that lead between the low, long buildings housing the various living quarters (there are 800 monks here) and the colleges where they can study Tantric philosophy, astrology, Tibetan medicine and history. Inside the colleges, small courtyards and whitewashed walls give the whole place the look of a mediaeval Spanish village.
Migmar tells me that boys are sent away to monasteries from the age of six, and they’re only allowed back home once a year. He admits that when he was young all he wanted to do was become a monk, but his family sent him to school.
I ask him if it’s right to say that education at a monastery would be more exclusively Tibetan, and school would offer a more international approach.
He agrees but says things are slowly changing.
‘Today, in a monastery most of the monks try to study other languages, something like English or Chinese. In the past it was only Tibetan.’
We join the crowd, who seem to be heading for the Maitreya chapel to see the Buddha. Migmar says that the majority of the pilgrims are from the rural east of Tibet and some may have travelled over 1000 miles to get here. Not only that, but they would try and make the journey once a year.
Everyone who goes into the chapel, man, woman and child, has to squeeze up one of three steep and narrow stairways, about as precipitous as ladders, that can barely take two people abreast. The steps on either side are for going up and coming down and the ones in the middle are reserved only for the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Everybody struggles up and down. Quite happily.
Once up the steps the familiar sour smell of hot yak butter suffuses the chapel. Many of the pilgrims have brought butter and knives with them to cut slices, which they then drop in the copper bowls that contain the lighted candles.
Migmar explains that in Tibetan Buddhism the spirit leaves the body when you die and the more you can help the burning of the butter lamps, the stronger will be the light that will guide your soul to its next body.
The chapel has a powerfully devotional atmosphere. The lower recesses are dark and smoky, but a shaft of sunlight catches the face of the Buddha, 80 feet (24 m) above us. The lines of the eyes, nose and lips are beautifully drawn and, with elegant simplicity, create an expression of profound compassion. Buddha statues are usually made of stone, but this one, commissioned by the 9th Panchen Lama in 1904, is made of copper, which enabled it to be such a great size. And the size works: the expression, the long fall of the robes and the lotus leaf base combine to convey a feeling of strength, serenity and immutability.
The new paved road from Shigatse south to Gyantse runs alongside streams and between pollarded willows. We pass through a village that has a big wheel made of wood with boxes fixed to it for local children to sit in and be hoisted aloft. In a field a road gang are having a picnic lunch, shovels all neatly stacked to one side.
Gyantse was once a rich wool town, on the lucrative trade route between Lhasa and India. A huge fort (dzong) dominates the high ground to the south of the town. Migmar and I stand on the battlements and look out over a flat plain that belies the fact that we are at 13,000 feet (3960 m) and still way up in the mountains.
Migmar points out the plastic-sheeted greenhouses and the modern housing blocks.
‘This place has changed so much in last 20 years. Before, all houses were Tibetan.’
Whereas the Chinese seem to have invaded Tibet many times, the British largely left it alone, though in the mid 19th century they did train up Indian spies, known as pundits, to infiltrate this secretive land. In 1903, however, on a trumped-up pretext, an army, under Colonel Francis Younghusband, crossed over from India, fought a bloody battle not far from Gyantse, in which some 3000 Tibetans died, before storming the fort from which we’re looking out and going on, unopposed, as far as Lhasa. The British left four years later, leaving behind in Gyantse a post office and a public school. All that remains now is the Anti-British Museum, housed in the dzong.
A smiling lady attendant gestures to me to go inside. She makes sure all the lights are switched on in the ‘Memorial Hall of Anti-British’, where murals depict the ghastly acts of Young-husband’s army and the heroic resistance of the Tibetans. This is echoed on a TV screen on which runs a recently made Chinese epic called Red River Valley, which also deals with the British invasion. There is nothing here, of course, that deals with their own invasion of Tibet.
We have a cup of tea (black tea this time, not yak butter) in front of the ruins of a walled monastery that contains an enormous and very ancient chorten. According to Migmar, there were many such monasteries here. Now they have been cleared and in their place are wider roads, high-rise buildings of tinted blue glass, and, as we drive down from the fort, a concrete pleasure garden, half completed, with ragged grass, fountains that don’t spout and twee, concrete bridges running over a stagnant pond.
The road from Gyantse to Lhasa runs through lonely and very wild landscape, first of all beside a rocky, steep-sided reservoir, then curling round the sinuous shoreline of Yamdrok Tso (Turquoise Lake), the biggest single stretch of water in land-locked Tibet.
Night falls and we’re still hugging the lake. Eventually the road rises steeply and winds slowly over what seem interminable passes over interminable switchbacks. I must confess to being fast asleep as we roll across the Yarlung Tsangpo (the mighty Tibetan river that U-turns round the end of the Himalaya and enters India as the Brahmaputra) and when I wake we’re on a fast dual carriageway that is the long, western approach into the world’s highest capital. We’ve reached Lhasa, the Forbidden City where, judging from the rows of shining, gaudy, neon-encrusted buildings on either side of us, it doesn’t look as if much is forbidden any longer.
I want Lhasa to be as dark and different as I’d long imagined it, a remote place of romance and possible menace, but the drive up the long approach road along West Dekyl Yam dispels illusions. The buildings we pass are more Las Vegas than Lhasa and to be welcomed into the world’s highest capital by flashing neon palm trees suggests the Chinese have well and truly won aesthetic control of this ancient city.
I’m aware that the bludgeoning tiredness I feel after crossing the mountains may well be souring my judgement and that once we’re bedded in at what is purportedly one of Lhasa’s swankier hotels all will be well again.
The shining, recently built Himalaya Hotel rises portentously from lower buildings in a quiet but characterless side street. It’s clad in glass and as we pile wearily from our vehi
cles we’re greeted by smiling doormen protected from the cold by fur-trimmed greatcoats. Unfortunately, the staff at reception are also protected from the cold by fur-trimmed greatcoats, as are the waitresses who take our orders at the Yak Bar. The Himalaya Hotel may have glittering, gold-wrapped pillars, shiny mirrors and ceilings encrusted with every shape and size of light fitting, but it is the dazzling gloss of an ice castle.
I pile all the bedclothes onto one bed and, stripping down to a vest, sweater and thermal underwear, climb in. I feel desperately disappointed. This was to be our reward, a hotel in the heart of the capital, the Holy Grail after some pretty savage days on the road. As it is, the Himalaya Hotel seems to be everything its name might suggest.
Day Sixty Five : Lhasa
Though for a while suffocation seemed more likely than sleep, I actually pass a reasonable night beneath my sarcophagus of blankets and when I wake a pale morning light is leaking into the room. My bags, still packed, squat around the doorway where I dropped them last night, looking mournful and expectant, like neglected pets.
With an enormous effort of willpower I heave myself out of bed and across to the window. The curtain opens jerkily to reveal a mottled sky and an horizon of crumpled, grey mountains framing dusty, undistinguished, largely modern buildings.
A view that could only lower already jaded spirits, were it not for one thing. Away to the northeast, rising gracefully above the city, like a mountain in its own right, are the white walls, russet towers and gold-tipped roofs of one of the most dramatic and serenely powerful buildings in the world, the Potala Palace.
It’s probably a couple of miles away, but even at this distance and this oblique angle it is mesmerizing, especially to one brought up with its black and white likeness in a volume of The Children’s Encyclopaedia. To be honest, I was never quite convinced of the existence of the Potala Palace. Because its size and shape was so unlike anything I’d ever seen in the West, I always assumed that it was something mythical, an ambitious piece of artistic licence.
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