Blue Sky Kingdom

by Bruce Kirkby

  I moved my mouth, but no words came out.

  A great chorus of Jullay! Jullay! followed the truck as we bounced off down the dirt track. Taj was soon asleep, flushed and sweaty. Bodi’s bony hip ground against mine. From across the cab, Christine rested a hand gently on my arm.

  I was gasping, every breath an effort. My heart felt heavier than an anchor on the ocean floor, and through damp eyes I looked east, toward a yellow moon rising behind us.

  5 IMPERMANENCE

  A country at the crossroads between modernization cum destruction and an isolation that would preserve its identity has no real choice: others have chosen on its behalf. Businessmen, bankers, experts from international organizations, officials of the UN and half the world’s governments are passionate prophets of “development” at all costs. They believe unanimously in a kind of mission not far removed from that of the American general in Vietnam who, after razing a Vietcong-occupied village to the ground, said proudly: “We had to destroy it to save it.”

  —Tiziano Terzani, A Fortune-Teller Told Me

  20 THROUGH THE BARRICADES

  Sonam’s truck followed a dirt track into the high peaks. We could have driven right to Leh of course—a jarring two-day journey—but walking seemed the only proper way to relinquish this stillness.

  Three months earlier, we had arrived in Zanskar from the south, trekking over the Great Himalaya Range. Now we would depart to the north, a two-week foot journey crossing sparsely inhabited ranges and fourteen soaring mountain passes, en route to the ancient monastery of Lamayuru, on the Leh–Srinagar Highway.

  Bodi noticed that the speedometer in Sonam’s pickup was broken, which upset him greatly. “I want to know what speed we are going!”

  I explained it was more important that Sonam drove safely, and suggested we were probably travelling about fifty kilometers an hour.

  “How do you know it’s not fifty-one?” Bodi demanded. “Or forty-nine?”

  “What type of bozo needs to know the precise speed of the truck?” I joked.

  “Me. I’m that type of bozo. OK?” Then Bodi cracked an enormous smile.

  The valley narrowed, and slopes of rust, black and sulfurous rock soared above. Winds raised dust devils on the flats. Heat shimmered on the horizon. Many of the glaciers in surrounding peaks had disappeared during recent years, Sonam explained, and without runoff even the scrub brush was dying.

  A toothless elder stood by the roadside outside Pishu—a forlorn scattering of homesteads on sun-scorched plains—and I waved as our truck bounced past, but she stared through me, expressionless. Not far beyond, the truck jolted to a stop on the grassy banks of the Zanskar River.

  Inside a blue cook tent, we met the three men who would accompany Sonam and our family across the mountains. The cook, Sundup, sat cross-legged behind a kerosene stove, frying rings of battered onion. A cook boy, fourteen-year-old Tsewang, hovered close by, wearing a brown beanie, tattered fleece, britches and knee-high socks. Stretched on the floor was an athletic-looking fellow in black tights and a Gore-Tex jacket: Tundup. All hailed from Sonam’s village of Shegar.

  After helping Sonam unpack his truck, Christine and I lazed on a riverbank, while Bodi and Taj floated sticks downstream. Wagtails flitted near our feet, and nearby, an extraordinary bridge of woven twigs—more than one hundred meters wide—led across turbulent waters to the village of Zangla.

  Sonam’s white pickup belched to life and started to drive away. Sensing something amiss, I sprinted after the truck, banging on the tailgate. Sonam stopped and rolled his window down.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Me no trek coming,” he admitted, looking sheepish.

  I was speechless.

  Sonam explained that plans had changed, and instead of coming on the trek, he was instead going to join a group of Zanskar businessmen on an economic mission to southern India. Clearly he’d known for days, and I was frustrated that he hadn’t told us—almost surely because he didn’t want to disappoint. But more than anything, I felt sad, for the quiet man was a good friend, and I valued his insights. Our trek wouldn’t be the same without him. Before Christine and the boys could say goodbye, he revved the engine and was gone.

  As the sun dropped behind tall peaks, I pulled Lama Wangyal’s coats onto the boys. Frigid shadows grew, and the stars beckoned.

  * * *

  Six horses appeared on the dusty flats the next morning, driven by two weary farmers. The pair had been up all night searching for an escaped mare, and collapsed in the kitchen tent, hungrily dipping chunks of bread into milky tea. When I asked which horse Bodi would ride—Sonam had assured us he’d arrange for one—Tundup shuffled uncomfortably.

  “Pony Men say riding not possible.”

  The horses were exhausted from harvest, he explained, and with sparse fodder in the mountains at this time of year, they would only grow weaker. All six were required to carry gear. I wasn’t pleased, and nor was Tundup, for the news meant he would have to carry Taj. Once again, Bodi would ride on my back.

  Christine glanced at me and then began to laugh. “Oh well. Guess it’s time for you to open a can of toughen up.”

  Bodi and Taj returned to camp dragging poplar branches behind them, which they explained would be their walking sticks. I tried to quash the idea but Christine shot me a sharp look, and I acquiesced. Instead, I snapped the tree limbs into a reasonable length using my knee.

  “Ready to go?” Tundup asked, tinny music escaping from his earbuds. I gave the thumbs-up, and our boys raced off along the banks of the Zanskar River—a blur of dust, heels and swinging sticks.

  We followed a well-trodden path that once stood among the world’s most popular trekking routes. But twenty years earlier, when a road was first carved along the opposite bank—part of the goliath, but as yet uncompleted, Zanskar Highway Project—the backpackers dried up.

  As we walked, occasional white pickups raced past on the far shore, heading deeper into the mountains, and I spotted a yellow excavator, half submerged in the river, giving itself a bath with its own bucket, like an elephant. Apart from groves of yellowing aspen and scrubby sea buckthorn laden with orange berries, the land was relentlessly brown. Overhead, the sun floated like a diamond in an unbroken sky.

  Not until dusk did we stop, in a clearing on the outskirts of Hanumal village, where sun-bleached chairs and a shack plastered with Godfather Beer posters were reminders of the hordes that once passed this way.

  “Spooky spot,” Sundup the cook whispered.

  A snow leopard had attacked their horses in this clearing, he told us, a year earlier. The great cat managed to tear a mare’s stomach open before the men chased it away. Later, it killed fifteen sheep in a nearby stable. “Blood everywhere.”

  After setting up our tent, Bodi and I sat in the sun-bleached chairs. While I made notes in my journal, he sketched a Ladakhi flag, taking inspiration from a string of plastic versions fluttering overhead. Soon he was kicking his feet in frustration, and tears streaked his cheeks. One of the stripes he’d drawn was too narrow.

  “It looks great,” I assured him. And I honestly thought it did.

  “Maybe it looks okay for you, Dad. But I happen to be an Ass Burger. And that means I like things to be right.”

  I felt a sharp pang at his mispronunciation of Asperger, worrying the term might hang over him in future schoolyards. But my unease was overshadowed by disbelief that, in just a few weeks, he’d already gained such self-perspective.

  * * *

  A snow leopard didn’t materialize during the night. But a domestic cat did, sneaking into the cook tent and stealing our supply of mutton.

  “Very smart cat,” said Tundup, who had spotted the feline skulking in the bushes before retiring. “She comes slowly, slowly, and then…” Tundup made a sudden motion of yanking the bag away. So it would be a vegetarian trek.

  We were shouldering packs when a short man in a blue puffy jacket and dark sunglasses dashed up. Bowing lo
w, he introduced himself as Tenzin and offered his services as a porter. A scruffy beard was shaven from his upper lip, like an Amish farmer, and his smile revealed teeth so perfectly white and large they reminded me of piano keys. Tundup pointed to Bodi. Tenzin nodded. And just like that, our party had grown by one.

  We set off in single file, navigating a narrow path carved into the edge of a gorge. Vertical layers of black rock soaring overhead were reminiscent of stacked vinyl records.

  “Dad! You better get up here,” Bodi suddenly yelled. “Bear prints!”

  And he was right. Two bears had walked down the trail before us: mother and cub. The animals had passed recently, probably within the last few hours, for their prints were unaffected by winds. The tracks looked remarkably similar to a barefoot human’s, Taj observed, apart from the claws. We passed frequent piles of scat, laden with orange buckthorn berries.

  I was astounded, for the Himalayan brown bear (a subspecies of the grizzly) is critically endangered, facing precipitous habitat loss, population fragmentation and poaching across its range. But here they were, still in Zanskar.

  Our boys were eager to spot the pair and scanned the hillsides, but at some point the prints simply vanished from the trail, and the bears eluded us.

  * * *

  We were grinding up our first pass—a relatively gentle ascent to the Perfi La—when we caught a glimpse of the Zanskar River, languid and green, snaking away into canyonlands to the east. This marked the mouth of the legendary Chadar gorge; sheer cliffs and ferocious whitewater downstream acted as a barricade to Zanskar.

  Traditionally, the Chadar was only passable in the depths of winter, when brave Zanskari butter traders tiptoed over uncertain ice. Travelling in jato (leather-soled, straw-stuffed woollen boots with upturned toes), the men used walking sticks to sound for thickness. When water flowed over the ice, as it often did, the men walked barefoot. Elsewhere, they inched precariously along ledges on canyon walls. By night they slept in caves, huddled close beneath robes, on their knees.

  This extraordinary practice of sleeping balanced on knees—arms laid backward and hands grasping ankles—was once common throughout Zanskar, and children were taught the skill from the earliest age. It was a habit born of necessity, leaving only shins and forehead in contact with the ground, for to lie flat on a cold surface exposes one’s entire body to substantial heat loss. And it speaks to a toughness that has since passed from our world.

  Today, the Chadar represents the final and most challenging link in the Zanskar Highway project. Road surveys began here in 1971, and dynamiting started soon afterward. But progress has been painfully slow, with annual gains measured in meters, exacting terrible loss of life. Despite legions of foreign laborers and fleets of heavy equipment, completion targets continue to be pushed back, and there still is no end in sight.

  But at some point, traffic will flow.

  As I stared down at the tiny road carved into the walls of the canyon, I saw a crack in the natural dam protecting Zanskar. When the road is completed, this millennia-old barricade will fail, flooding the hidden valley with modernity. And while undeniable benefits will arrive, including improved education and medical services, other more insidious changes will slip in too, such as real estate speculation, cheap labor, foreign-owned factory farms, poverty and homelessness. Within one generation, Zanskar’s co-operative, self-reliant lifestyle will be extinguished.

  Buddhists accept impermanence unhesitatingly. Why did I struggle to do the same? Was it just nostalgia? And was it even fair for me, a transient visitor, to mourn such a loss?

  These were questions I’d wrestled with all summer.

  * * *

  That night we reached a deserted mud-brick hut on the banks of a turquoise creek, bearing a lopsided sign: WELCOME T-STALL, DINK HERE ALL.

  Tsewang, the cook boy, forced the lock and Sundup set up the kitchen inside, cooking chapattis while Hindi pop music blared from a phone. Tundup and our new porter, Tenzin, dozed on the steps.

  Seeking quiet, Bodi and I leapt naked into the creek’s crystal waters, the current whisking us through a marvellous slot canyon. Clambering atop a mid-stream boulder, swirled red and green like a bowling ball, I wrapped an arm around my son’s goosebumped shoulders, as we were warmed by sun above and stone below.

  Later, I joined the Pony Men, who were sorting halters and ropes. Sixty-three-year-old Phuntsok, the older of the pair, was a giant by Zanksari standards: broad-shouldered and six feet tall. Well-polished mala beads hung atop his grubby red fleece jacket. The father of four had worked as a Pony Man for fifteen years, he told me, to supplement his subsistence farming income.

  Geyatso—Phuntsok’s younger companion—reminded me of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, with a sharp chin, wispy beard, long hair and golden hoops in both ears. Across Zanskar he was known as TongTong, a reference to the threadbare stovepipe hat with upturned earflaps that never left his head.

  “TongTong even wearing hat in bed,” Phuntsok laughed.

  “Very good hat,” TongTong retorted, explaining he bought it twenty years earlier in Leh. “Good for cold. Good for rain. Good for sun. Good for wind.”

  As we bantered, Phuntsok unstitched a burlap sack, no larger than a purse, which contained barley. Sifting through the grain, he removed pebbles and twigs, then divided the precious fodder into six equal shares, which TongTong placed in muzzle feeders for the famished horses.

  Later the pair crawled beneath a smoke-darkened sheet of plastic and fell asleep, using only saddles for pillows and horse blankets for warmth. They were the same stock of men that once slept upon knees and foreheads.

  * * *

  Moonlight cast shadows on the camp. Christine and I lay awake in our tent, discussing the journey ahead.

  The current arrangement for carrying our boys was not working. Tenzin and Tundup were struggling terribly: faces ashen, legs shaking, our pace often little more than a crawl. Tomorrow, we would tackle the gruelling Hanuma La (4,720 meters), and even more tortuous passes loomed beyond. In their exhaustion, I worried the porters might injure themselves—or our boys.

  The obvious solution was for me to carry Bodi, leaving Tenzin and Tundup free to share Taj between them. But I worried the pair might bristle at such a suggestion.

  “Let me try talking to them,” Christine said. “I think it will be easier coming from a mother.”

  So the next morning, as we prepared to leave, I watched as she sat beside Tundup and the pair talked briefly. Suddenly Tundup leapt up, and heaving Taj to his back, set off alone at a blistering pace.

  Christine looked at me and shrugged. “He thought I was questioning his strength.”

  Ten minutes later, with horses loaded, we followed in pursuit. I half-heartedly reached for Bodi’s backpack, but Tenzin laughed and wagged a finger at me. But soon he was bent in half, gasping.

  We finally caught Tundup, lying beside a stream, a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his lips. Taj crawled beside him, picking buttercups. After slurping water from cupped hands and nibbling chocolate, I simply scooped up Bodi and set off. No need to make a big deal out of it. Face was saved, and the new arrangement would endure.

  Wolf prints littered the mountainside. There were at least five animals, including two tiny pups and an immense male. We passed bleached bones, crushed in powerful jaws, and piles of white scat. I suspected the pack was denning somewhere nearby, but despite scanning the slopes, could spot no entrance.

  It took seven excruciating hours to crest the Hanuma La pass, its summit marked by prayer flags strung between rocky spires. In the uncannily dry air, it seemed we could see forever. To our back rose brooding Himalayan summits, plastered with snow and ice. Ahead lay a sea of shattered ochre peaks, seemingly bending away with the curvature of the earth. In all that vast land, I couldn’t spot a single sprig of vegetation.

  * * *

  It was two more days before we stumbled upon a sign that people existed amid such desolation.

&
nbsp; Nyalo, a native fodder shrub now orange with frost, had been cut and rolled into bundles. Stacked trailside and weighed down with stones, these loads would eventually be carried home by villagers, their homes still ten kilometers distant, in preparation for winter.

  An hour later, a distant gathering of homesteads came into view. This was the village of Lingshet, perched in a high mountain bowl. Sheer cliffs soared above, the color of cherry and smoke.

  We passed a deep pit on the village outskirts, its walls lined with stone. “Wolf trap,” Tundup explained, and it wasn’t hard to imagine a canine pacing those depths, lured by sheep entrails. Its howls would rouse villagers and lead to an inescapable fate, delivered by either rock or bullet.

  No sooner had we set up camp in the shadow of Lingshet’s small monastery than piano-toothed Tenzin announced he was leaving. Construction of a new school was about to commence in his village, and Tenzin needed the work. Minutes later he was running back down the trail.

  I was saddened to see the cheery man go. And concerned, for his departure left our party weakened. When Tundup noticed me studying maps, he hinted we might shorten our route by veering northward, toward a new road.

  “Snow’s coming soon. Maybe boys tired. Maybe road good?”

  I wasn’t interested in ending our isolation with a soul-crushing trudge on pavement, and I sensed a standoff.

  * * *

  One glorious autumn day rolled into the next. The skies remained clear and electric, the days pleasant, the nights bitingly cool.

  Our route traversed highlands sprinkled with orange nyalo, where glaciated giants sparkled in the distance. Migratory birds grew common. We disturbed a flock of chiffchaffs, and the small brown birds flowed away like water down the slopes, hundreds of wings flapping in unison.