The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  A better meal came later in the form of smoked sockeye salmon – blood red and served as a chunky steak – fresh rye bread and a jar of gherkins all laid out on windcheaters spread over the fine volcanic sands of the Gorelaya Volcano. Here was honesty, health and hunger. The volcano puffed intermittently as though enjoying a pipe of Capstan Ready Rubbed and patches of snow covered its slopes like the flanks of a gypsy piebald. On the highest edge of the tree line, some trees were still bandaged in snow. Intent on filling my cup from the stream that flowed through our encampment, I was quickly prevented by Victor who then explained the toxic cocktail of volcanic run offs. In the distance, the Avachinskaya volcano sent out its own smoke signals. Any plant here that is not herbaceous and has wisely disappeared into the ground for the long winter tends to be prostrate. To be flattened by snow up to 40 ft (12m) deep from October to May and then battered by wind would keep anyone prone on the ground. The carmine flowered Rhododendron kamcatchiensis, which covered hillsides in splashes of blood, was no more than a foot high; even lower was a willow (Salix acturus) that crept sideways for perhaps 100 years and there was an azalea that barely achieved three inches. Elsewhere, larches had been so buffeted that they leant over at an angle of 45 degrees.

  ‘On Wenlock Edge the wind’s in trouble,

  The gale, it plies the saplings double.’

  Heaven knows what Houseman would have made of the saplings here.

  One evening at Patunka we were invited to a local knees-up. Alexander Yastrebov, “Call me Sacha,” also called himself a farmer running to two sheep and half an acre of cabbages and whose ramshackle establishment was indistinguishable from any other of the litter covered, half built, half broken ‘farms’. He was a bear of a man and had a sideline in entertaining tourists who wandered to this remote place. “I am the best musician farmer and the best farmer musician,” he growled as he introduced us to the meal that he was to serve. It was growing wild beside the track – artemesia, hogweed, thistle, garlic and a couple of other unlikely candidates and we looked at each other in much the same way that those gathered at Tyburn may have considered their imminent fate. However, seated in his giant tepi shaped chooma, warmed externally by a log fire and internally by vodka from a mountain of bottles, we tucked into all of these local weeds; cooked, sweetened and seasoned, they were excellent eating. All the while, we clapped to the beat of the bear’s Russian folksongs and marvelled at the ability of his piano to withstand the thrashing it got from his massive paws. We joined in toasts to friendship, marriage, health, happiness, universal tolerance and at least another seven and wobbled home singing Kalinka and Moscow Nights. Sobered and sore headed in the morning, the majority opinion was that Sacha was an incompetent farmer, a good musician and a genius at milking susceptible tourists. But who cared, we had all had fun.

  Flying back westward and homeward, I stopped off in Moscow. The city was sweating a temperature of 100°F (37.5C) and enveloped in smoke from 800 disastrous forest fires to the east. Hotel Kempinski offered salvation with a huge bed, a choice of five different pillows (including cherry stones and horsehair), a music system with seven pages of instruction and breakfast at £40. The contrast with Kamchatka could not have been greater and for two nights it offered outstanding comfort.

  At 9.30 am on a Sunday morning I shared the Kremlin only with a group of Japanese women, masked for a plague and waving menopausal fans. Large, bored women with dyed hair sat grumpily at the entrance to each of the eight cathedrals. The sublime interior of the Archangel Cathedral was almost as obscured with billowing incense as the absurd exterior of St Basil’s Cathedral which loomed up eerily in the noon gloaming. I felt sorry for the wedding couples who clearly did not expect their wedding day photograph in front of the cathedral to have the clarity of a November fog. At 3 pm five couples queued up for their murky reminders and five stretch limos each with a roof smothered with a confusion of organza and plastic roses waited patiently. I wondered if they had seen the advertisement in the Moscow Times, English edition (Editor, Scott Machesney) – ‘We will perform the wedding of your dreams with beautiful music, lovely photographs, a huge cake and a hundred metre wedding trail. (Yes, really!) Together we will build the Cathedral of All Being in Love. Also kid’s program’. Later at Dom Kingie, Russia’s largest bookshop, I wandered the un-airconditioned literary acres asking, “Vi gavarri pa angliski?” The po-faced staff had one reply, “Nyet,” but a friendly customer helped secure the Bears of Kamcatchka that I was searching for.

  In the huge amusement area of Gorki Park, the grass was brown, the trees withered, the booths shut, the rides unridden and the pools algae green, and it was August holiday time! Only the fountains displayed any pleasure. Scarcely any birds fluttered in the reeky haze.

  ‘….few sparrows twitter in the smoky trees as though they called to one another “Let’s play at country”.’

  The city was domineering and graceless with streets motorway wide and buildings of great size and solidity. There were no cyclists or mopeds and no taxis. The Russian soul, so deep and so full of passion, was absent. Paris has beauty, London is cosmopolitan, Rome has history and Vienna elegance. Moscow has only brutality but this is leavened by the world’s most lavish and gilded underground stations, exquisite 13th and 16th century churches and art museums of world class. I admired the Metro, delighted in several churches but being a Monday all the galleries were shut. Instead, I took a long and dreary walk along grand but grey streets to the Novodevichy Cemetery, the resting place of the country’s great and good. The giants of literature, music, the military and politics were scattered among other lesser notables. I had marked my map for the tombs of Chekhov, Eisenstein, Gogol, Khrushchev, Oistrakh, Prokofiev, Rubinstein, Scriabin, Shostakovich, Stanislavsky and Yeltsin. Such was the tangle of headstones (some large and beautiful) and the difficulty of interpreting their Cyrillic inscriptions that I found none of them. There were many fine and distinguished faces – aviators, commanders of all kinds and heroes of the Soviet Union; they were cast or chiselled as they no doubt lived, proud and distinguished. It seemed a sad end to a visit full of expectation.

  ‘Thus step for step with lonely sounding feet

  We travelled many a long, dim, silent street.’

  I headed for the indulgent arms of the Kempinski and then the green, green grass of home.

  Postcard Home

  The wild and lonely landscapes of Kamchatka

  Have barren beauty but here the gnats are

  Spitfire sized and meals are fish with vodka.

  (The dateline could provide a stimulant –

  Another mile, it’s up my fundament!)

  By helicopter or by truck our days are spent

  Discovering the flora – stunted, rare,

  With eagles, reindeer, salmon everywhere.

  Volcanoes steam, bears roam without a care.

  Tomorrow Moscow and nothing clean to wear.

  Ladakh

  March 2011

  ‘Mountains are not chivalrous. Indifferently, they lash those who venture among them with snow, rock, wind and cold.’ – George Schaller

  To camp at 15,000 ft (4,500m) in a Himalayan winter needs help, at least it does for me, and I sought this at Atkinson’s homeopathic pharmacy in New Cavendish Street. With 1,000 little boxes arranged round the walls, it is like a Chinese herbalist but without the romance and intrigue. Strangely the assistant was Chinese; an attractive young woman with a green butterfly slide in her shiny hair and nail polish to match.

  “Some coca pills please.”

  “What strength you like?”

  “The strongest.”

  “To suck or chew?”

  I was thrown off balance as I looked at the exquisite young lady and hesitated.

  “Melt in mouth or crush with teeth?”

  Crushing sounded more fun.

  “How many?”

  “About 50 I think.”

  “Ah, big expedition. Please wait.”

  She was back
soon with a small glass tube of saccharin sized pills – not much to chew on.

  “One, three times a day. Not too many at once. Might make you little bit happy.”

  Really? Perhaps another 50, just in case. But reason got the better of romance and I left Miss Green Nails to her next customer.

  The crumple zone of the Himalayas reaches five miles into the sky, its snowfall is the largest outside the poles and its glaciers feed the great rivers of Asia; the Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Salween, Mekong, Yellow River and Yangtse. Here, the power of raw nature cradles the fragility of life. Bar-headed geese fly higher than Everest (their blood is high in haemoglobin to increase oxygen takeup at -50°). Snub nose monkeys live on lichens at 14,000 ft (4,200m) and a four eyed spider lives at 22,000 ft (6,700m), the highest living animal in the world. At around 15,000 ft (4,570 m) live about 4,000 snow leopards in an area that stretches from Afghanistan to Mongolia and I had come to find one.

  The rain in Delhi had helped to clear the gutters but not the smog. I took a nostalgic ride in an Ambassador car to look at the 12th century tower of Qutub, drove down the Rajpath and left for the dry, clean air of Ladakh in the Himalayan foothills and the most northern state of India. The capital Leh has a winter temperature of -20° and a height of 11,200 ft (3,400m) and is a town of dogs, tourists and poplar trees. The dogs were large, woolly beasts and when they were not scavenging in ditches they lay around in the sunshine like somnolent bears. They left their faeces everywhere and fought noisily for territory and mates during the night. Donkeys and cows also populated the streets and care was needed as to where you trod. In winter, the town hibernated but spring would bring trekkers, river rafters, botanists and those intent on yoga, Zen and meditation.

  Over two days we took a car and driver and Sonam Gyapso to visit the hilltop villages of the surrounding valleys. Sonam was a marvel; soft spoken with excellent English, he was a man of culture and humour whose severe military moustache was at odds with his broad smile and impossibly white teeth. He was the leading expert on the region’s historical buildings but was also keen to ensure that his guests understood the Buddhist way of life and its deities. My western mind cannot grasp the concept of a family of gods or the fact (and they truly believe it to be a fact) that a person can be transfigured to return to earth as the embodiment of a previous being. In Tibetan Buddhism a tulku (a high ranking lama) can choose the manner of his (or her) rebirth; it could be the same again or even an animal or insect. Not only that, they can make known the place of their next birth and details of the house etc; this greatly assists the monks who are assigned to locate the reincarnated being. But engagement in metempsychosis, metamorphosis, materiality or any other such wordy mores would have spoilt the day. The poplars with their uncannily slim posture reached up to an azure sky and marked the roadsides like sentries along a ceremonial route. Dzos, dzomos (the females), donkeys, cattle as small as their owners (some of the cattle apparently crossed with Jerseys!) and shaggy ponies wandered the tracks and withered apricots still clung to bare twigs. Great wide plains of uninhabited gravel stretched to the snow clad mountains and down the centre of this dry, uncompromising landscape flowed the River Indus, benign in broad reaches but savage in ravines. The previous August, engorged by exceptional rain, the river had carried away property and lives.

  At the village of Basgo, we happened upon their annual puja under the direction of a wizened lama whose embroidered tunic and various elaborate garments had never experienced the cleansing properties of soap and neither, it seemed, had he.

  ‘A lama of the sect of Yuru

  Got more dirt as the holier he grew.

  He was once heard to say

  “It’s twelve years to the day

  Since I washed.” And to smell him it’s true!’

  In bright sunshine, 100 or so villagers ate a lunch of rice, lentils and beans served from great cauldrons with a side order of coleslaw. In an orchard of almond and apricot trees, families sat around gossiping while black cows with unkempt and hairy coats (no Jersey genes here) wandered amiably around hoping for an unfinished plate. These were polished off with a cinereous tongue as though they might be a hungry dog. Lunch over, the village assembled in the temple courtyard for an hour or so of chanting. In the orchard the cows scavenged the last of the rice and beans.

  With China to the east and Pakistan to the west, the Indian army has large cantonments spread throughout the valley. I was told that they numbered at least two divisions, along with the air force and the Ladakhi Scouts, ‘The Mountain Tamers’, who specialized in alpine warfare. Each regiment declared their motto of military bombasticism. ‘Faith and Valour’, ‘Fire, Fury and Fidelity’ and ‘We Serve the Nation’ were signposted in bright colours. Along the road, equally colourful signs warned ‘Stay Alert, Accidents Avert’, ‘After Whisky, Driving Risky’ and ‘Safety Brings Cheers, Accidents Bring Tears’.

  The gods of the mountains had blessed us on our first day of trekking with glorious skies; iridescent and cloudless, passionless and bitter, they were the deep, dark, saturated blue that is only found in the purest, highest and coldest areas of earth. The going was generally easy with a steady ascent up the winding valley of a frozen river. Granite walls 1,000 ft (304m) high sloped back on each side, occasionally overlaid with shale so small it was like pulverised bark. Sparse willow and poplar occurred in little naked copses and a sprinkling of withered sage provided seeds for coveys of mountain partridge. Jigmet Dadul, our snow leopard expert, dashed about setting up scopes to scan the mountains for signs that a leopard had passed though. Paw prints in the snow, scat, the discarded feathers of a meal of snow pigeon or the oily stain on an overhanging rock from its rubbed neck glands; all marked its passing. As the narrow path followed the valley that twisted as a vine searches for light, the sun and shade alternated. All around, the sun fired the summits yet this steep valley was so shut away that it remained dim and foreboding two hours after daybreak. A lammergeyer circled above on its great nine feet wide wingspan, trailing its shadow on the snow as it searched for carrion. In atmosphere this cold it seemed impossible that there could be sufficient thermals to ride but no beat was needed to keep it aloft. It vanished into the leaden light of the ravine and its place was taken momentarily by a golden eagle that alighted on a rocky ridge and sat haunched and glowing, its nape feathers lifting in the wind before it disappeared over the tops of the cliffs. Further on, a pair of blue sheep scurried up a slope to become silhouetted against the sky. Like tightrope walkers, they made their way along the ridge; perilous to an onlooker but an easy game for them. One, as though intent upon a demonstration of its skill, leapt to a pinnacle and while standing there with its feet clamped together on the rocky needle point, it turned its head to accept the applause. Later, in the violet light of dusk and the approaching bitter cold of the night, Eliot came to mind:

  ‘…the evening is spread out against the sky

  Like a patient etherized upon a table.’

  We pitched camp beside a track that linked the village of Zingchen on the banks of the Indus below us, with the hamlet of Rumbak that lay close to glaciers above us. Six shiny orange domes sprang up on stony ground in a grove of coppiced willow, through which small herds of sheep and goats came to nibble on the young shoots. Groups of pack ponies and donkeys regularly made their way down this local highway. Sometimes they were loaded with the equipment of an expedition, at other times with wood brought up from the valley or unladen, they wandered through the orange mushrooms risking entrapment from guy ropes and leaving piles of dung as they went. So mixed were the genes of the goats that their ragged and shaggy coats ranged from dark cinnamon to pale cream and their horns were straight, curved or corkscrew and swept backwards or sidewards. As they passed they tangled with the willow twigs or the briars of Rosa sericia and the coils of Clematis montana.

  Beneath the frozen surface of the Rumbak River, water rumbled like the grumblings of some mountain deity who resented our intrusion. Rusty, slud
gy green, black and beige daubs were splattered over rocks where an assortment of lichens cohabited. A waterfall, frozen with the stalactites that marked the sudden start of winter, was adorned with lengths of prayer flags which danced on its glassy surface and were so worn by the wind as to be diaphanous. In the river, stands of willow were up to their knees in ice; miraculously they were starting to bud. There were walnuts too entombed in the ice and on the river margins, 15 ft (4.5m) tall roses, protected by savage thorns from scavenging donkeys, still had scarlet hips clinging on from the previous autumn. Caragana thorns, their bare black snaky stems armed with clusters of pink but vicious spines were adorned with the wool of passing animals. Occasionally there was a scattering of hare droppings. The hares would make a good meal for the red fox I had heard barking in the night. In the shadow darkened creases of the ravine, the temperature dropped ten degrees from the sunny parts. I had on six layers of arctic clothing but in these darkened areas I was shivering. Two nights ago, under clear skies and a full moon, the temperature was -32°. We crossed and recrossed the frozen river, fearful that the groaning river god might have laid the ice thinly to catch a disbeliever. I trod warily, testing each step, glad of the earth that was sometimes scattered to provide a grip.

  Camping is no fun; it may be the only option in places such as these but it is uncomfortable, exhausting and in cold and wet conditions particularly unpleasant. On waking (something of a misnomer considering that one has no recollection of being asleep), there is a struggle against recalcitrant zips to rid oneself of the sleeping bag in which the night has been spent plugging draughty gaps. The inner surface of the cramped nylon igloo is covered in ice. Then, with courage akin to sea bathing at Christmas, the five layers that have masqueraded as warmth during the night are peeled off and gasping at the cold, the long johns are discarded and the daytime substitute, crisp with frost, is pulled on in feverish haste. A small bowl of hot water was placed outside the tent during these handicapped, hunchbacked, knock-kneed and misshapen movements. I was astonished to find that it was even colder outside the tent than inside. The flannel for the minimal of ablutions was as rigid as cardboard and the frozen toothpaste needed a good warm soak before it could be squeezed. The ironic wonder of all this unpleasantness is that I had paid for it.