by Ray Kreisel
After the ordeal in Drongba I wanted to get past the checkpoint in Paryang as quickly as possible. I arrived on the outskirts of town during midday with little interest in waiting until dark to get around the police. It looked like there would be enough space between town and the foot of the mountains to skirt through the sand dunes unnoticed. From what I could tell it looked like most of town sat a couple hundred yards south of the foot of the Gangdise Mountains. After a short rest and strategy break, I started working my way from one sand dune to the next, trying to stay out of sight as much as I could. While I rested behind a dune about halfway around the checkpoint, I heard the bells of a Tibetan horse behind me. I left my bike to climb the dune and investigate. A handsome Tibetan sheep herder rode on horseback surrounded by a flock of thirty or forty sheep. A few minutes later he passed right by where I rested with my bike. I nodded and said “Tashi Delag” as I sat at least a quarter mile from the nearest road without a single trail insight. My mind wondered what went though this man’s head, for encountering me must have been the Tibetan equivalent of sitting in the back of a pickup truck drinking a few beers while a UFO hovered over head.
It had been another hard day, well, for that matter I think every day was hard. I had been feeling a bit depressed also. Up ahead I saw a truck coming toward me. I pulled off the side of the road to let it pass. When I went off the side of the road the truck headed straight for me. With just forty feet [12 meters] between me and a couple tons of steel I recognized the Tibetan driver, this truck carried the group of Westerners whom I had met back in Lhatse. They had already made it out to Mt. Kailash, and now they were on their way back. I was ecstatic to see them. I quizzed them on all the checkpoints that lie ahead, all the places I could buy any food and what I could get. I heard stories about Chu Gompa (Tibetan for “Water Monastery”), located on shores of the sacred Lake Manasarovar with a hot spring deep enough to bath in. They were all going to the Nepal border, via the shortcut track that I had just come on. The entire group had all made it through the hardships of traveling to Mt. Kailash and now looked forward to the comforts and luxuries of Kathmandu. My friend, who had given me the peanut butter before, produced a small jar of honey and some packages of crackers. A few of the other people handed me any extra food that they carried. I enjoyed a feast that night as I sat inside an old stone sheep pen protected from the cold winds. A can of Chinese orange soda, noodles, honey on crackers, I could not have dined on a more delicious meal.
This section of road between Drongba and Mt. Kailash represented one of the most isolated and difficult parts of my trip. The road itself lies in the massive valley between the Himalaya and the little-known Gangdise Mountain Range of Western Tibet. For hundreds of years the main overland route between Leh, Ladakh in north India and Lhasa ran through this valley. During the summertime, the traders brought goods in from India and took back hand-woven Tibetan carpets and salt. Today none of the truck drivers likes to travel on the “south road” because of the fine sand and deep river crossing. They all follow the newer “north road” that cuts across an equally desolate part of Western Tibet that has less river crossings but more high passes. In Lhasa, I listened to a story told by a Tibetan guide about a time when he crossed one of the rivers on his way back from Mt. Kailash on the “south road.” The driver of their Toyota Land Cruiser did not know exactly where to enter the muddy water of the river. He ended up slightly off the main track, with waves pouring over the hood of the vehicle. It took three days before they could locate another truck to pull the Land Cruiser out of the river. Mostly the vehicles that travel this route today are a few Toyota Land Cruisers that carry wealthy tourists to Mt. Kailash with their official guides on organized trips from Germany, Japan and the USA.
From Saga to Mt. Kailash there were no places for me to buy any more food. That meant I had to travel for two weeks, and about 300 miles, without acquiring any additional supplies. I knew that there was no possible way that I could carry two weeks of food. Between cycling eight hours a day and the high altitude I ate at least double my normal food consumption. Fully loaded my bike weighed approximately eighty pounds, the only good part was that the more I ate the lighter it grew. I knew that there were some shops in Drongba but I could not afford to stop because of the police problems. That left me in a situation where I had to ration everything I had. I studied all of my maps and tried to estimate how many days it would be to Mt. Kailash. I then added another two or three days on to that in case I misjudged it. The problem then became that I could not stop for any real rest days, because then I would need to carry even more supplies for any additional days.
The practical result of all this logistical planning basically meant that I went hungry all the time. During the afternoon and evening I suffered from pains in my stomach from the lack of food. My blood sugar dropped as did my mental acuity, but I could always ride my bike in a coordinated fashion even when I found it difficult to walk. I ate enough so that the pains would not be that bad, but I was always hungry and weak.
The trip would not have been possible without my sturdy Katadyn water filter. Whenever I found any water I would first filter all the water I could possibly drink. Once my stomach became full, I spent ten minutes filtering water for all my various water bottles. I carried a few that I could reach while I rode and a few that I stowed down in my packs. By the time I finished filling all my bottles, I could drink some more, once again filling my belly with as much water as I could. In this way it became possible to travel sections of road where I would only find water two times in a day. But, there were days when I passed by a water source because I thought that I already had enough or because I thought that there would be more water farther on, only to find myself a few hours later in desperate need of liquids. On a few different occasions, I was totally dehydrated and would continually search the horizon for any sign of water, looking for plants, nomad tents, reflections on ponds, or ditches left by road construction crews. With my filter I could drink just about anything from mud puddles to the dirtiest ponds. Sometimes I would see some sign of possible water in the distance. When it led me away from the road, I would have to decide if I should walk ten or fifteen minutes each way for the chance I’d find water. I would study all of my different maps to see what lay ahead and which valleys had any markings of rivers. Sometimes there would really be something there to drink and sometimes not. The stream beds were often dry and all the water ran underground, or salt water filled the ponds and lakes.
When I am in the USA logic and reason control my life. It is all part of a way of thought that is integral to life in the Western world. The culture in the US operates on a premise that we can control and manipulate the environment around us to suit our needs and desires. Everything from meetings to TV shows happen at precise moments in time that are scheduled months or years ahead. All of this leads to the illusion that we as humans can actually exert total control on the universe around us.
Three months before I had left the land of the logical. Tibet is most certainly not a land of precision, logical thought and control. Tibet remains a land of mystery and the unknown. I have heard fantastic stories from other Western friends of seemingly supernatural events. But somehow, when I listened to them talk about things like lamas that knew the future, they fit in with my model of what was possible in this part of the world. If I had heard the same stories back at home, I would have instantly discredited any such notions. In the West we have heard stories of supernatural feats that Tibetan monks are capable of, levitation, trance walking, and foreseeing the future. I have been told that when Tibetans first started hearing stories of the magical objects from the West these also sounded like impossible feats. They heard about boxes that have moving pictures of distant lands inside them and of objects that let you talk to people located on the other side of the country. In the West commonplace telephones and TVs produce seemingly supernatural events.
Blue green paint covers about half of all Chinese trucks, light blue covers
the other half. China is a Communist country, and in that country all trucks are equal. A German couple passed me in a blue green Chinese truck. They smiled and waved from the cab as they went by. I rode on at a good pace and caught up to them at the next river crossing. Their truck driver had to remove part of the exhaust system for them to make it through the deepest water of the river. The Germans worked in China doing medical research in Shanghai. They traveled to Tibet on a vacation and to scout out possible research opportunities for the future. Their Tibetan guide, from Lhasa, jumped down from the truck. A mixture of excitement and disbelief filled him when he greeted me. I asked him who he worked for in Lhasa, much later I learned that the People's Liberation Army owned his tour company. Recently the PLA has run low on money because of budget cutbacks from Beijing, so they started a few different companies to bring more money in for the army. It seemed ironic that one of the ways that they would make money was by running a tour company in Tibet, the very place that the PLA was instrumental in destroying. The young guide offered me a ride across the river in the back of his truck. When I did not take him up on the offer, he climbed back up into the cab and fetched a can of soda for me. I welcomed the gift. I took my shoes off and crossed the slow-moving thigh-deep water on my own. So far, the ferry full of sheep across the Tsangpo marked the only part of this trip that I had not traveled under my own power.
By the end of the day I made five more river crossings, in the middle of the last one I almost lost my bike. I had committed the mistake of putting my bike upriver from my body. The swift current of the river pounded up against the packs on the bike, the bike pushed against my legs. I could barely keep my footing, but I had to keep moving so my feet would not become too numb from the ice cold water. It took every ounce of energy I had to make it to the far shore. I collapsed in the sunshine on the grassy bank, and tried to thaw out my toes.
Rivers and streams crisscrossed this section of the road, that is why the truck drivers did not want to risk traveling on the “south” road. When I was not struggling through the white water, 20-30 mph [33 to 50 kph] head winds hit me. Head winds on a bike are always worse than the toughest uphills. Passes always have a top, and best of all a downhill, but head winds can go on for days and weeks, they have no defined end, it is just at the whim of the planet that any relief can be had.
While I beat my way into the wind, I lifted my head up to see two pilgrims carrying heavy packs walking toward me. I passed the last small village almost 100 miles back. These two must have come from Mt. Kailash, for there was no other reason to be out here. When I finally reached them, I stopped to exchange a few words. Unfortunately they immediately asked me for a Dalai Lama picture. In my exhausted state I did not want to deal with people that just saw me as an opportunity to get a Dalai Lama picture. After I started riding again, I realized that I had been looking for some kind of respect from these pilgrims, some kind of acknowledgment that we all had a tough trip. It took me a long time to ever fully realize that no one will ever be able to totally understand and appreciate what my trip was all about.
By late afternoon I started the climb up the 16,600-foot [5060 meter] Marium La, the last pass before Mt. Kailash. In the distance up ahead I saw a truck off to the side of the road. As I got closer, I realized that it was the German couple whom I had seen the day before. The Tibetan pilgrims who had ridden in the back of their truck built a fire on the side of the road. They spent their time having a Tibetan “tea party,” while the truck driver and guide fiddled with the broken truck. When I stopped, the guide ran over and greeted me, his smile showed that he was happy to see me again. He begged me to rest for a while and have something to eat. He took me over to the fire and made sure that they fed me well with all the hot tea I could drink and tsampa I could eat. When I talked to the older pilgrims around the fire, one man asked me for medicine. He described problems with his left leg. Unfortunately I could not do anything for him, and it required at least a week's trip, in the back of a truck, to arrive at the most basic medical clinic. I often wondered what I would do if an injury befell me in this desolate land so far from modern Western medical care.
Later another truck rolled around the corner. I could see the bright-colored clothes of Westerners inside. I had learned to the tell the difference between Tibetans and foreigners from a long ways off, just by the way they walked and the color of their clothes. With the aid of another truck there was a good chance that the Germans would be able to get their vehicle on the road again. The second truck also carried a few folks who were doing research in China and on a bit of a vacation. I walked down to meet the newly arrived visitors. They said they knew something strange was going on, because back at the last river crossing they saw what appeared to be bicycle tire tracks in the sand at the river's bank. As it turned out, we all decided to camp where we sat and enjoy a dinner together. This was a delight for me, to have a conversation in English with interesting people.
For the first evening in a long time, I sat out and enjoyed intriguing conversations about setting up national parks in Tibet and Nepal, about Chinese politics, and the politics at the United Nations. When I first started talking to the gentleman who just arrived in the second truck, I thought for sure it could only be George Schaller, the famous Himalayan biologist. It seemed that this man worked on all the same projects as Mr. Schaller. He talked about working as one of the original people who helped set up Chomolangma National Park, the new park on the Tibet side of Everest, and the new Chang Tang National Park. I had just seen an article by George Schaller about the Chang Tang Park, in National Geographic a few months earlier. Only much later did I learn that his name was Daniel Taylor-Ide. Daniel had spent a good part of his life doing ecological research in various parts of the Himalaya. Later on in the evening we all shared some excellent chocolate that one of Daniel’s friends had just brought from the USA.
By the time I was ten days out from Saga, the last place I bought any food, tiredness sapped most all my remaining energy. I had never had enough to eat since I left Saga. I needed a couple days to rest but I did not have the extra food to just spend even one day in the same place. I had to move forward every day. While I rode I would often find myself singing the same line of a song over and over to myself as sort of a mantra. I would never consciously pick what songs to sing. At some kind of subconscious level, the words would just come out. During this part of the ride my mantra became “I'm so tired, so tired of waiting for you…” as weariness filled my body, speech and mind. Much later in the trip, while riding at 17,000 feet [5182 meters] in the Askin Chin, the words changed to “Knocking at Heaven's door, 'cause I don't think that I'll be coming 'round here anymore”, a verbal distillation of thoughts regarding the thin line that separated me from death both on this ride and during all of life.
Some of the only times that I got to talk to any Westerners out in the Chang Tang occurred when their vehicles broke down. The drivers and the passengers do not like to stop out in the middle of nowhere. They would drive all day and sometimes into the night to get to some place where they could stay inside away from the freezing temperatures and howling winds. While I descended from the Marium La Pass, I encountered an American woman and a French woman whom I had met back in Shigatse. These women had originally told me the story of Jay, the American who had so many problems on his way to Mt. Kailash. A clogged fuel filter, in their Land Cruiser, left them stranded on the side of the road. Both of these women showed extreme kindness and compassion toward me. They gave me some extra supplies that they had, and told me where I could expect to buy more food. My life had started to become focused on food, more and more, and staying alive for that matter. They had just left Lake Manasarovar early that morning, I ran into them during mid-afternoon. The distances involved in traveling in Western Tibet are often difficult to understand. They told me, “Oh, you'll be at Mt. Kailash tomorrow.” I did a quick mental calculation, I was only cycling about 30 miles a day at that point. “It is four more days of riding fo
r me to get to Kailash,” I replied. They had no real understanding of exactly how far they had traveled. “Do you know how many kilometers it is back to Shigatse? We had heard that it was only 300 KM.” I pulled out my Chinese maps that had all the distances marked, it looked like it would require about 900 KM or 540 miles. My answer surprised and disappointed both of them. The French woman had felt sick. The high altitude aggravated a heart ailment that she suffered from. They had hoped that they could return to Shigatse in just two or three more days. For the last five minutes the driver tried to start the engine. He had removed the fuel filter and tried to blow the gasoline through it with his mouth. After a few attempts and a spoonful of swallowed gasoline he got the filter unclogged. Once he finally started the truck, no one wanted to sit around and exchange stories if the engine ran fine. Besides, they could not take the chance of it not starting next time and being stuck for another couple of hours, or possibly days until it got fixed again.
While everyone else traveled in trucks and Land Cruisers rushing from town to town, trying to avoid the desolate expanses of the high altitude stony desert, I lived my life in the places between the destinations. I would wake up in my tent by myself in the desert and ride for most of the day by myself through the middle of nowhere. Only maybe once every week or so would I see a road sign or some kind of building. I would fall asleep in the dusty dirt by the side of the road during the afternoon for a nap, or walk five feet [1.8 meters] off the road to go to the bathroom. There was no one else around and nothing to even go behind. On another trip in Tibet, I spent a couple days traveling on a bus with an Australian woman and her wonderful nine-year-old daughter. When the bus stopped one time, Delia asked, “Mom where is the toilet?” “The whole world is your toilet,” her mom replied, embarrassing Delia a little.