The Last Barbarians

by Michel Peissel

  Several times in the night, in the semidaze of the painkillers, I imagined I heard voices and shouts, and then all was quiet.

  With the first glow of dawn filtering through the pale green nylon of our tent I was wide awake, feeling my stomach. I realized, in disbelief, that the pain had practically vanished. Was I cured?

  I was the first outside to watch the sun slowly invade the limitless horizon and then, in a silver flash, catch the snowcapped mountains. The snow entirely changed my vision of the plateau—what had seemed to be hills were now clearly mountains. To the south rose a low range that cut us off from the Dam Chu valley, the very range whose summit had been the paradise of my wildest fantasies, with wolves and gazelles, kiang and coyotes all prowling around within eyesight of each other.

  We were camped a few yards from the now-widening gravel bed of the upper Dza Chu at the confluence with the Donak, a tributary from the south. Looking west up the gray gravel causeway cut by the meandering red waters of the Mekong, I could see a fair distance to where the plain opened up to fill the horizon.

  I was contemplating the landscape when a new attack struck and laid me low again. At that very moment the muleteers emerged from the tent talking excitedly. The way Ling followed them out, I sensed there was trouble. Coming to where I was, everyone began to talk at once. It took me some time to unravel what all the excitement was about.

  In the middle of the night wolves had attacked our foal, and one of our mares had ripped up the peg to which she was attached. In the chaos that followed, as the mare battled the wolves, two other horses had broken loose and all three horses and the foal had vanished.

  So I had heard voices in my doped-up sleep. Sebastian and Jacques also recalled a hubbub but had not imagined anything so dramatic as this. Had the foal been killed, I wondered, and what about the other three horses?

  In Zanskar I once saw the mutilated foal of a mare belonging to the old gyalpo, or king of Zangla. The poor little creature had had a huge hunk of its backside ripped out. I doubt it survived. The mare had fought valiantly and had at last chased away the wolf in that case.

  Now, our eldest muleteer, a man whose name I had not even had time to recall, saddled a horse and informed me he was setting out in search of the breakaways. The folds of his traditional chuba beating in the wind, he rode off across the grassy plateau at a gallop. That was the last we saw of him, and we never found out what became of him or the foal and three horses.

  With three fewer pack horses and one muleteer gone, we were now in a bit of a fix. The only good news was that I felt a lot better, thanks to Jacques, and yet I was utterly exhausted, and we had a long day ahead of us.

  Slowly, working as a pair, Topgyal, the head muleteer from Moyun, and his diminutive misfit partner, the third muleteer, began to overload our remaining horses. To saddle fourteen animals and attach packs to ten of them is a lengthy operation, which I had seen repeated a thousand times. First one must go out and catch the grazing pony, then put a saddle carpet on its back, usually a wool or straw-stuffed mattress-like affair, hinged down the middle. When this is in place it is covered by another carpet, usually of wool and formed of two identical flaps with matching designs and hinged at the weft. The panels are curved tulip fashion so that the front of the panel is longer than the rear.

  On this carpet (called a den) the ga, or saddle, is placed, attached by a single lo, or girth, unlike the Mongol saddles, which are fastened by two girths. Finally, yet another blanket is placed in the saddle to make the mount more comfortable; here, however, this element was sadly absent and replaced by my down parka and bedroll.

  The art of saddlery and riding tack is specific to each country and even each region. In Paris I had met an expert by the name of Dr. Langlois who was studying the migrations of peoples in Asia through the variations and similarities in their riding tack.

  It has yet to be determined exactly who invented the first saddles, stirrups, and bits. Some claim the Chinese were the first, but this has recently been contradicted—the Chinese took to chariots and riding late, six centuries after the Assyrians, and then only reluctantly, it seems, in order to defend themselves against horse-riding invaders from the west.

  The Tibetan tradition is itself hard to trace much earlier than the sixth century A.D. Baltistan and Ladakh, both integral parts of Tibet as far back as the sixth and seventh centuries, were sometimes called the land of the Asphasians by the early Greeks and Indians (Asp or Aps being the ancient Indo-European word for “horse”).

  What is interesting is that the Tibetan equestrian tradition, and particularly Tibetan saddlery, is quite different from that of the Mongols, just as the Tibetan breeds, such as the Nangchen horse, are very different from Mongolian horses, in spite of what many writers have said.

  All this leads to one very interesting question: Who were the very first men to ride horses, and which horses did they ride?

  In the prehistoric cave paintings of France and Spain—notably in the caves of Lascaux, Niort, and the recently discovered caves of Chauvet (1994)—depictions of horses are numerous. These paintings have been dated as going back between seventeen thousand and thirty-four thousand years. In those days all horses were wild, or at least, no one rode them, which is not exactly the same thing.

  What kinds of horses roamed Europe in those days? Examination of the cave paintings shows that there were two types: the Przewalski horse, frequently represented and easily recognizable because of its white, donkey-like nose, its big jaw, short bristly mane, its arched neck, and short ears. Then there is another horse depicted in these caves, the mysterious horse number two. It is an animal with a triangular face, a flat forehead, and a straight nose without the white donkey muzzle, but with flat, elongated duck-bill nostrils, narrow slanted eyes, a weak jawbone, and very light hindquarters. What breed did this strange horse belong to?

  The first known tame horses, whose skeletons were found in a tomb by the Black Sea, were smaller than the wild Przewalski horse, but otherwise unidentifiable. Some experts believe that our domesticated horses actually came from two separate breeds, one rustic breed and one refined, taller horse, possibly akin to an Arab. Yet others believe that they all developed from crossbreeds of the wild Przewalski horse and other types. The problem remained unresolved in 1994, as we rode toward the source of the Mekong. Maybe it would never be solved. In practice, it was easier to follow the skeletal evolution of horses over millions of years from fossils around the globe than to determine the skin color and shape of a specific breed from a mere five thousand years ago.

  Sebastian and I would have been thoroughly surprised had we been told that in less than twelve months’ time, barely 200 miles from where we now stood, we were going to shed new light on the unsolved mystery of which horses were the first to be tamed by man.

  * * *

  By the time the horses were saddled at last, the sun was up and the snow on the hills around us was melting fast. In no time our pack animals were stretched out in disarray along the flat grassy south bank of the Dza Nak.

  Now my primary concern was to map the tributaries of the upper Mekong, which involved trying to learn their names and then recording the exact position of their confluence with the main river. Last, but certainly not least, we had to make sure that we were following the principal course of the Mekong. So far this had proved easy, as the gravel bed of the main river was very wide—between 200 and 650 feet wide and getting wider as we progressed west, passing the Donak and the Lungmo tributaries on the right bank while on the other side, passing between the two, were the Tranak oma, then the Tranak coma (upper and lower black cliff rivers). I gathered these names by questioning our horsemen and various nomads we encountered along the way.

  I presumed that the vast riverbed we were following must be filled with water only a few days, maybe a few weeks, a year when the spring brings on the thaw.

  I once witnessed the thaw in early June in western Tibet, and though it seemed a little foolish to draw too q
uick a comparison, there must be some analogy. The hot spring air reaches a critical point, and the frozen earth, pools, streams, rivers, and marshes all start to exude water, running at once, as if the whole landscape had been sprayed by torrential rains. In no time vast dry stony beds are filled to become huge moving lakes rushing away on this unexpected flood.

  Unlike the upper Dam Chu or the upper course of the Yellow River, the high plateau on either side of the upper Mekong was not dotted with lakes. After the famed junction with the Lungmo chu (mistaken by Dutreuil de Rhins for the main river), the right bank began to rise sharply, forcing us to cross to the other side. Hail began to fall, mixed, yet again, with rain driven by a sharp wind. I stopped to put on a rain poncho, and the rustling of its material in the wind frightened my already frisky pony, which started off at a gallop as I hung on, the poncho flapping more than ever, and driving poor Numbo on.

  When I managed at last to slow the pony down, the hail and rain had stopped, and although wet and miserable, I took solace that I could contemplate the vast horizons around me in air that was newly clear and washed.

  Off to the west, the direction in which we were heading, lay two ranges of low hills, white with hail, now clearly visible on either side of the river flowing past us. To the left (on the south bank) was the Drug-di range, to the right, the Sag-ri range; these two names were soon to become a part of our daily conversations, but from where we now stood we couldn’t see if the two ranges eventually merged, closing the gap that separated them on the horizon.

  Various nomads offered me what they believed were the origins of these ranges’ name. Druk means “dragon,” and so it seemed that the hills to our left might be the “dragon hills.” The other’s meaning was less clear: Sag means “pile”; could it be the “rock pile range”? This seemed possible, since the highest point we could see on our right was rocky, as opposed to the rounded summits of the Dragon Hills on our left.

  Once again we were told by our muleteer that there were two sources, two heads of the Mekong, one in each range. What could that mean? Which one of the two should we choose to head for?

  We stopped for a brief lunch. As our cook had nothing to offer but his infamous plastic pink-red sausage, the time had come to tap our precious stores brought all the way from France. Food was not just a necessity but an obsession. Even the frugal Jacques could not help but talk about it all the time. We would list aloud how many chocolate bars we had, the types of sweets, the varieties of French saucisson and the cheese. Where were they packed? How many could each of us have? How delicious they would be! We recounted gastronomic orgies from our previous lives in what seemed like a very remote land of plenty where people ate with knives and forks instead of sticks. My kidneys were forgotten for now—it seemed that I had survived, and I was now just ravenous, if bone-tired.

  Looking at Sebastian I felt somewhat reassured that I wasn’t the only one who was drained of energy. Jacques, too, seemed washed out, but I couldn’t help admiring his determination, for as we literally flopped to the ground after dismounting and lay there waiting to eat, he somehow found the energy to shoot film of our horses and our makeshift camp. Having eaten, I immediately fell asleep on my back in the sun, protected by a thick coat of white zinc oxide that made me look like a scarecrow.

  Getting up half an hour later, we started to follow the river along its north (left) bank, which began to rise slowly, giving us a good view of the broad flat plain on the other side of the Mekong—a plain covered with short, dry golden grass. Far in the distance I could make out the familiar black dome of a solitary tent.

  It is hard to describe a full day’s riding, for there is both an element of sameness and a constant stream of novelty about it. Unlike journeys by plane, train, or even car, it is hard when riding or walking to ignore one’s surroundings. When traveling at high speeds one must be constantly alert, with an eye on the road ahead. One is apt to forget what has just passed. On the other hand, from atop a horse, minutes slowly turn into hours, the sun becomes important—the way it moves through the sky—and the heavens themselves make a difference, not just the clouds but the birds. The call of the great black common Tibetan crow is one of the strangest sounds in the feathered kingdom: a deep honk, a sort of hoarse foghorn alternating with a metallic sound, like a low-key tuning fork. These birds are the size of chickens, and, in spite of their blackness, are not sinister, just strange, an odd and always surprising sort of company in the most desolate areas of the highest passes of the remotest regions.

  More than ever we began to understand that here on the highest tundra, life for the wolf and the gazelle, the great Tibetan vultures, and the smallest of sparrows was carried out in the open with nowhere at all to hide. Only the lowly fox, the large marmots, the little glacier rats, and the giant-eared Tibetan hares had burrows as a refuge.

  The fact that there were no woods, bushes, or even solitary rocks behind which to hide had a strange effect on us. I felt vulnerable, totally exposed. Looking around I knew I could see and be seen a hundred miles away.

  No need for smoke signals here to announce the approach of intruders—I knew from experience that one could often watch a caravan coming for two full days before finally meeting it!

  Looking east back down the broad bed of the Mekong, I could see the crystal-clear outlines of great snowy peaks and rock-crested mountains whose bases were below the horizon.

  Overloaded, our horses were constantly stumbling and losing their packs, and yet Ling, who had been up to now habitually somber, seemed pleased with himself as he rode the finest of our horses—a gray gelding with large flared nostrils, protuberant eyes, and very fine limbs.

  Blowing in from the west, a new bank of dark clouds soon invaded the horizon, and once again it began to hail. The marble-sized stones stung our faces like gravel, forcing us to close our eyes, leaving our horses to figure out where to go. We were lucky that it was not yet one of those storms whose stones can kill yaks, for here in the open, in a storm of that kind, with no available refuge, we might well have become casualties ourselves. Lightning scratched the sky, making us shudder as we recalled Jacques’s sinister warnings. We felt terribly vulnerable sitting erect on our horses, vertical marks in a horizontal landscape.

  Buffeted by the wind, we advanced, outlined against a backdrop of mountains and surrounded by endless vistas of inescapable nothingness. I now began to question not just the reasons for my being in this desolate place but the very essence of it all. For years I had been striving for a life that could match my dreams. I had dreamt of lost horizons, beyond which I imagined a utopia that would satisfy my cravings for the absolute. And now, here I was, as close to reaching the ends of the earth as was possible, and what was there for me?

  Where was El Dorado, Shangri-La, my paradise lost? So far there was nothing—nothing but the ever-increasing certitude that all I might encounter was what I had carried inside myself all along.

  Had I reached the mythical end of all exploration, in the words of T. S. Eliot? Had I come full circle from my dreams back into reality, back to where I had started, in a world where dreams and reality are one and the same?

  I had come full circle, but unlike Eliot, I recognized the place where I stood. Since childhood I had visualized this place just as it now appeared around me, immense, empty, forbidding. With this, my whole plan of finding the source of the Mekong lost the little significance it might once have had.

  I had thought of rivers only as roads of a sort, not as symbols. I had used rivers for transport, rowing up the Dvina and down the Dnieper on a wild journey across Russia in the footsteps of the Varangians, with Jacques, an eccentric Irish camel breeder, a dozen Russians, assorted hippies, philosophers, and even a physicist from Soviet Georgia.

  I had nearly drowned in a Himalayan river, the Arun, when my hovercraft overturned in an ambitious attempt to conquer white water with a new technology. After nearly ten years of playing around with nuts and bolts, trying to invent a means of sailing
over unnavigable waters, wishing to transform all rivers into highways, I had eventually given up on hovercraft, but not before I succeeded in roaring through the great Himalayan breach between Annapurna and Dhaulaghiri in 1972.

  I had dreamed that coming to the heart of the Tibetan highlands, to the source of the Mekong, I would somehow learn the secret of the nomads, the key to their insurmountable strength. I had hoped to meet a sort of superman whose words would suddenly put into perspective the chaos of our modern world, would give me the answer to all the queries raised by a century of wars and bombs, of fast planes and cars whizzing around in a cloud of polluting smoke. From their vantage point, I thought, surely I would see the smoke rise. The nomads surely could answer the unsolved problems of our world.

  So far the only sounds I had heard were the whistle of muleteers and the clatter of hooves. It was really all slightly ridiculous, even the little stream that we Westerners call the Mekong. Why carry on, why bother, was it not all as Buddha had said, an illusion of the senses, a sort of terribly bad joke?

  The fall of one of our overloaded horses made me realize that it was getting late. With the arrogance of the white man I decided unilaterally that we should stop and make camp immediately. The spot seemed perfect against the sheltering face of the steep north bank of the river. Here there would be little chance of our tent being blown away.

  The young head muleteer disagreed. I tried to explain in my best Tibetan that we needed the shelter from the wind, but still he insisted that we cross the river to camp on the other side, out in the open. We continued to argue until, exasperated, I grabbed the young man by the arm roughly, perhaps too roughly; he was frightened and turned to me saying he was going to head back.