Border Crossing

by Rosie Thomas

  In the end, as I should have guessed, he was perfectly matter-of-fact about it. As a mountain guide he had had to deal with enough delicate medical matters. He had even told me about the worst of them – on one long trek a woman had become so constipated that she was faced with the choice of either being flown down to hospital, or submitting to a faecal extraction. She had agreed to an extraction, and Phil had performed the operation with a spoon from the mess tent.

  'I warmed it first,' he said.

  He asked me if I felt ill, which I didn't. Just rather weak and insubstantial. We both knew that a sudden haemorrhage was not the only worrying possibility to be faced. A low haemoglobin count can increase the risk of high altitude cerebral or pulmonary oedema – which are potentially life-threatening conditions – and I was afraid that my blood-count was dropping by the minute. Meanwhile we would be climbing steadily, towards the highest road in the world, up and over at 17,000 feet.

  Lhasa seemed very far away.

  Phil didn't waste many words on sympathy or on consoling affection, but I trusted his good sense, and I felt better for having told him what was happening to me.

  Xining was the last point of any kind of civilisation before Lhasa, and after we left the city behind the road began to climb steadily through a gorge towards the Tibetan plateau. Phil was looking forward to seeing all his friends amongst the Nepali sherpas and porters who had been brought over into Tibet by Exodus, to service the campsites between Lanzhou and Kathmandu, and he was happy to accept my driving for an hour or so. The road levelled out across a huge, wind-bleached yellow plain, featureless except for a few yurts and a melancholy string of black telephone poles. The sky clouded over and it began to rain. The route was as straight as an arrow, but the sudden rain made it slippery. Two or three times I had to brake to avoid an obstacle and the rear of the car warningly slithered.

  We were almost at the camp when a large black pig strutted across the road. I swerved and skidded and finally missed it by a couple of inches. Phil had covered his face with his hands and looked back in disbelief when there was no thump of metal ploughing into pork.

  The campsite was on a flat spit of land separated from nearby hills by a wide river. On the other side of the road lay the Koko Nor, the biggest salt lake in China, 10,000 feet above sea-level. Grey waves broke against a muddy shoreline and horizontal rain drove into the Amazon's windscreen.

  'It's going to be an uncomfortable night,' Phil said happily. He loved tents and camping and all varieties of physical privation, most of which promised to be in store for us tonight.

  The Exodus team had the camp fully prepared. In spite of the frozen ground latrine trenches had been dug, and enclosed with green canvas shelters. There was a row of mess tents, and a big tent where the time control had been established. We parked the Amazon and ran through the icy rain. The big white tent was a haven of warmth. I handed my book to the marshal for stamping, and saw RO slumped beside a table in a folding chair, looking as sick as a monkey. Unlike Phil and me, it seemed, he didn't go well at altitude. There were also half a dozen familiar, beaming Nepali faces. Among them were Sering and Himal, sirdars who had often worked with Phil, and Mingma and Namgel who had accompanied our Gokyo trek, and Arkle the cook, who had the most beautiful face, male or female, that I had ever seen. It was an emotional reunion, up in that cold plateau campsite. For most of the Nepalis it was their first trip out of their home territory, and they must have felt as displaced as I did. They all loved Phil, and clustered round to shake his hands.

  'Namaste,' they welcomed us. 'Namaste, Mr Phil.' They put enamel mugs of hydrating hot lemon juice into our hands, just like on the trek. It was almost like coming home.

  Cars were arriving in a steady stream, bumping across the rough plain. Tents were being unfurled all along the line. Phil and I put our two in a circle with Dan and JD and Melissa and Colin, and we unpacked our camp kitchen and got the gas burner going. I shook out my wonderful sleeping bag, and blessed Rebecca Stephens yet again from the bottom of my heart. Melissa produced tins of beans and frankfurters and we heated and greedily ate them. I felt happy, in spite of the rain and the cold and the medical situation. Camping was good, after the sterility of the Lanzhou conference hotel.

  Local people, with the silk hair braids and yak-bone ornaments of Tibetan costume, began to collect around us. They stated impassively at our hot food, and our merrily hissing camp stoves, and our thousands of pounds' worth of duck-down and Gore-Tex clothing. Children hung about their skirts, and then put out their hands for biscuits and biros. There were no dwellings visible anywhere in the landscape. After a while it stopped raining. Dan and JD and I set off with Phil to cross the river and climb the nearest hill, with the object of walking high and sleeping lower. It makes for a more comfortable night's sleep if you can drop down even a few hundred feet from the highest altitude gained in the day. Slow and steady climbing, Phil warned me. He had tried hard to persuade Melissa to come with him, but she had only laughed.

  At the top of the hill was a whitewashed stupa, a Buddhist shrine. Prayer flags carved a tattered arc against the pewter sky. Above were snow-covered mountains and below us, against the huge plain and the gunmetal water of the lake, the little line of bright cars and the dotted tents of their servants looked like a sci-fi fantasy.

  Back in camp, I continued my pursuit of women who looked young enough to need the contraceptive pill. There weren't that many, and none of them was able to help. Melissa found a strip of her ordinary combined pills and gave it to me, just in case it might help.

  'I won't be needing them,' she told me firmly, which made me worry somewhat about Phil's chances.

  Arkle's dinner, served by the porters in one of the five mess tents on a strict ticket-issue and timed shift basis, was the best meal of the trip so far. Good, solid, nourishing meat stew and pasta and fried vegetables. Afterwards, Greg the medic came to find me.

  'Any luck with the other women?'

  'I'm afraid not.'

  I must have been looking a bit pallid. He shook his head, seeming even more like a worried hedgehog.

  'Lhasa's too far. We'll have to try for some progesterone for you in Golmud.'

  Golmud was tomorrow night's stopping place.

  'And if you really insist on going on, Rosie, I may have to ask you to sign a medical disclaimer, to make it clear that you're doing this at your own risk.'

  'Of course.' I put as unconcerned a face on this as possible, but I was worried. I wasn't sure where it would put me in regard to my medical insurance, even life insurance, but I had my suspicions. Of course Greg had to cover himself against potential negligence claims, I fully understood that, but his suggestion made me feel lonely and in danger. I crawled into my tent in the darkness, and zipped up the flap. A minute later Melissa was unzipping it and crawling in beside me.

  'What's up?'

  I told her, and she took hold of my hand and held it.

  'Should I turn back?'

  'Look,' she advised, 'let's get to Golmud and see if there's any medicine for you there, and then you can decide whether to go on or not. There's nothing to be gained by turning back from here.'

  She was right, and I loved her for her good sense as well as her hand when I needed some warmth.

  'Come on. Don't sit here on your own, worrying. Come in the big tent and have some coffee and a fag and let's talk to some people.'

  It was more excellent advice. I sat and chatted to Thomas and Maria and Mick Flick, and the dogs of anxiety stopped their yapping. Furthermore, via Sarah Catt's laptop computer and printer, the day's results were posted on one of the tent poles. The Marmon and the Stutz had now joined the list of retirements. The hot Peugeot 404, in a shock development, had been given a 6 hour 53 minute penalty because the navigator had left the road book behind at the Lanzhou hotel. A large number of other cars had also incurred time penalties including Melissa and Colin, 2 minutes, JD and Dan, 5 minutes, and Jennifer and Francesca, 17 minutes. Phil and I h
ad cleaned the day, and were now in first place with no penalties at all. Although it had to be admitted that that was equal first, with fifty-four other cars.

  Chapter Seven

  We had left the frosty campsite at Koko Nor after a hearty Sherpa breakfast of hot porridge and fried eggs, the car heater was pumping out warmth, we had slept well, and we were a few minutes into our drive to Golmud, 580 kilometres further towards Tibet. I looked up from the route notes and saw a car flying towards us, headlamps blazing. A second later it flashed by, travelling very fast. It was Mick Flick in the blue Mercedes.

  'Where's he going?' Phil wondered. He didn't seem to suffer from morning inertia on camping days.

  Two or three minutes later we came round a right-hand bend and saw a truck upside down in the ditch at the side of the road. It was one of the ubiquitous blue transport wagons; the four wheels stuck up in the air at a rakish angle. Phil had begun a sentence about taking a photograph when we saw simultaneously that it wasn't an abandoned vehicle, the relic of a past accident. There was a little group of men clustered around it. Another was lying on the ground.

  Phil wrenched the car in to the side of the road. As soon as we got out we saw how bad it was. The passengers, a group of Tibetan migrant workers, had been riding on top of the loaded truck. When it overturned some of them had been pitched into the road. The others were still underneath, trapped beneath a cultivator that had been part of the load.

  'Get the first aid kit. And the crowbar and anything else you can find,' Phil shouted to me. He was already on all fours, wriggling under the superstructure of the truck. The survivors of the accident had been crying and wailing but they fell silent as soon as they saw our western faces. 'And the Stanley knife out of the tool box.'

  I ran back with everything. Phil snatched the knife and over his shoulder I looked into the space beneath the truck. It had been carrying bags of flour, some of which had burst open. All I could see were terrified staring eyes, faces pasted white with flour, and seamed with tears and blood. Phil began working to cut the trapped men free. The others had sunk down on the frozen bank. They were shivering and moaning, and two or three of them were lying motionless. I wrapped one in my down jacket and took some bundles of their possessions from around the truck, looking for more clothes to cover them against the bitter cold.

  Mick Flick must have been the first to arrive on the scene and he had turned right round to drive back for help. I wondered distractedly where everyone else was, from the seven rally cars travelling between Mick's and ours, one of which I knew to contain a British doctor. At least some other cars from further back in the order began pulling in now. Jill and Richard Dangerfield appeared, and Chris and Howard, and Anton Aan de Stegge and his wife from the big yellow Dutch Citroen. We did what we could. We lifted the less badly injured ones and tried to make them comfortable on flour sacks. They were so small that they seemed almost weightless, no more than loose packages of bones and skin. They were shivering violently and their teeth were chattering with shock and cold. Their bundles of belongings that we plundered for heat insulation contained just ragged clothes and a few blankets. At the heart of the heaviest bundle was an ancient dusty cassette player, obviously the prized possession.

  Phil had first-aid training. When the last trapped worker had been pulled free and laid on a heap of sacks he moved round each of the injured men, checking to see what we might do.

  'Head and shoulder and chest injuries,' he said. And there was one little old man who was lying very still with his legs at a strange angle to his body. He must have broken his pelvis or his back. He had bitten his lips when he fell and the plum-purple skin was gouged with deep, bleeding holes. The contents of our first aid kit, rehydration salts and Paracetamol and Immodium, looked pathetically useless. We did have some sub-lingual morphine tables and we took them out now, wondering whether to give some to the ones who were whimpering with pain.

  'Where is everyone?' I kept stupidly asking.

  At home, or anywhere that any of us knew and understood, there would have been the blessed wail of oncoming police and ambulance sirens. In Tibet, nobody came. I could do nothing except sit and cradle the head of the old man in my lap. He was still conscious. His hair was white with flour, and his eyes held mine imploringly.

  At last there was a squeal of brakes. One of the official rally Fronteras pulled up and Mark Thake jumped out with his medical bag. He pitched in at once, his face grim with concentration.

  'We've got some morphine tablets. Should we give them any?' Phil asked.

  'We won't give any drugs at this time,' Mark said. He kept repeating it as he worked, like a mantra against this scene of horror that he had to deal with. 'We won't give them any drugs at this time.'

  The ones who were crying and wailing the loudest were all right, he told us. It was the silent ones we had to worry about.

  'What about this one?' I pointed at the little old man.

  'Oh, God,' Mark said and ran across to him.

  A woman from one of the press crews was threading her way between the Tibetans.

  'I've got some arnica,' she kept saying to Mark, over and over again. 'I've got some arnica. It's really good, shall I give them some?'

  Phil and I looked up and our eyes met. An electric shock of hysterical, silent mirth flashed between us.

  'If you really want to,' Mark said between clenched teeth.

  Then I saw that the Chinese police had arrived. They were standing around with their hands in the pockets of their olive-drab uniforms, smart red tabs and flashes bright in the thin air, with their peaked caps pushed to the back of their heads. They were watching our efforts with mild interest.

  'Why don't they do something?' I bleated to Phil.

  'They will. When the Tibetans have gone they'll pinch all their stuff.'

  A van with bench seats down the sides pulled up. Mark was writing with magic marker on the men's foreheads and forearms, ?fract. scapula, ?chest injury. We made impromptu stretchers from blankets and loaded in the two men who looked to be most seriously hurt. Three of the ones who could walk folded themselves into the remaining space. Apparently there was a small clinic in the next village but one and they would be taken there for treatment. I wondered if anyone in attendance at a Tibetan village clinic would be able to read and understand Mark's black-ink messages.

  Most of the other cars were beginning to drift off, the crews seeing that there was nothing more to be done. I didn't even suggest to Phil that we might go too, even though I wanted to get as far away from there as possible. I knew without asking that he wouldn't leave until the last Tibetan had been taken away.

  Another truck stopped just after the van. This one was carrying a load of vegetables and we lifted or helped the remainder of the victims up on top of the knobbly sacks.

  At last there was no one left at the roadside but ourselves and Mark, and the flat-eyed Chinese police. Probably Phil's prediction was quite accurate.

  Mark thanked us for our help. I realised that we had been at the roadside for an hour and forty minutes.

  'You won't get any time penalty,' he assured us.

  We got back into the car and began driving.

  'Could you believe that woman with the arnica?'

  When we finished laughing Phil said into the sudden quiet, 'I'll never forget their faces.'

  Neither would I. Nor the childlike frailty of their bodies, nor the poverty of their belongings.

  'What do you think will happen to them?'

  He shrugged. We couldn't think of an optimistic scenario to offer one another. I thought two or three of them would almost certainly die, and most of the remaining ten wouldn't be able to work for a long time. If they were breadwinners for their families it was a bleak prospect, but the worst truth was that nobody cared at all about these people. The indifference of the police had been the plainest indicator of that.

  Even though we had spent so long beside the road the time allowance for the morning's drive was gener
ous enough for us still to make it to the time control, at a place called Qinghai, with 18 minutes to spare. Mark Thake had assured us that we wouldn't be penalised but we didn't quite trust the organisers not to decide against us, and we had driven there as fast as we could go. We joined the end of a long line of rally cars waiting in a pretty, tree-lined avenue with the leaves just touched with the straw-gold of autumn. Once the challenge of getting there was over, Phil seemed to deflate. He went very pale and quiet and just sat in his seat with his face turned away. I thought he was in shock.

  'You need a hot drink and some food,' I said. 'I'm going to fix us a time allowance.'

  As I walked up to the control I thought how good he had been in the emergency. I remembered how I had hung back, afraid of what I might see, and how I had sheltered behind Phil's back and waited for him to tell me what to do. I suddenly felt very proud and protective of him. I marched up to the chequered flag at the time control like a mother hen with a weak chick. The marshal on duty was a man called Mike Summerfield. I explained what had happened as he stamped my card.

  'My driver's shocked. He needs a rest, and I want to cook him some hot food. Can we have a 30-minute time allowance on the next section?'

  Mike shook his head regretfully. 'I understand, and I'm sure you won't be penalised, but I can't make a decision here. I can only make a representation tonight to the Clerk of the Course.'

  Mark Thake appeared beside us. 'Car 82 assisted me at a serious RTA this morning. They were there for almost two hours.'

  Embarrassingly, I found that I was crying. Mike Summerfield looked grimly sympathetic but he couldn't change the rules.

  'Take the time, Rosie. I don't have the authority to tell you it will be all right, but I wouldn't worry about it.'