The Last Barbarians

by Michel Peissel

  My hopes were brought up short, however, when our lead muleteer, who had until now professed a knowledge of the land and even a familiarity with the source, suddenly admitted that he needed help, in that he didn’t know the way. Having confessed as much, he galloped off toward a distant tent we had just sighted.

  I was a little bit rattled. Had I given our muleteer the benefit of the doubt too often? Was he just a crook, lying to us about his knowledge of the land, lying to us about the three horses escaping and the third man not returning? What did it all mean? Were we about to join the ranks of Dutreuil de Rhins and others who had been murdered by sly Khambas along the isolated trails of eastern Tibet?

  I have often been called naïve, and my passion for Tibet has undoubtedly often obstructed my good judgment. We might just have hit upon a bad egg. Was our man a collaborator of the Chinese? His family’s tent had, after all, been pitched beside the abandoned garrison, where the drunken administrator also resided. Had we fallen in with a local mafia, and were we now at their mercy miles from nowhere?

  Bandits are somewhat like saints—one can know their real identity only when it is already too late. Could our young guide be a bandit? He seemed so physically weak, and, anyway, we outnumbered him—indeed, it was unlikely, unless of course he could find reinforcements or a third man lay in ambush somewhere.

  I dispelled these thoughts when the young man returned at a gallop. Now he seemed rather more ridiculous than ferocious, not the least because he had attached the solar-powered flashlight to the already-strange cap he wore atop his braids.

  We took to riding in the very bed of the upper Mekong. In spite of the fact that rounded pebbles are not the best support for horses’ hooves, our animals seemed to manage all right. The Nangchen breed is so surefooted, I had never known any to falter or trip. This surefootedness, so useful along the edges of rocky vertical mountain trails, might seem wasted on a flat high plateau, but, in fact, the flat plains of the high plateau are one vast death trap for conventional horses, filled as they are with minute hoof-sized burrows of glacier rats, millions of them everywhere, three feet or less apart, making the entire tundra a sponge of these deadly holes. The horse that didn’t have total control over where it placed its four hooves would in an instant break a leg and die or have to be shot. That our horses could trot and gallop on this terrain required of them at all times an amazing mastery of their gait. They advanced as if dancing to avoid the deadly burrows.

  In comparison, the gravel bed of the river was easy going. Once our guide had made his inquiries, we raced up to where the river split in two at the foot of a steep and rocky moundlike hill.

  To the left a small clear stream joined the large muddy waters of the main river at the contour of the hill. Our guide explained that the Drug-di chu-go, the headwater or spring he had referred to, was up this small clear tributary. He said that the spring was a holy place whose waters were beneficent. We needed little more to understand what we had suspected all along—that what our guide and everyone else had mentioned as one of the sources of the Dza Nak, the black Mekong, was in fact a bubbling source of water known to be a holy place. It is common in Tibet to consider as holy and auspicious, and worthy of being turned into a shrine, practically every unusual work of nature. From springs to cliffs to caves and stalactites and stalagmites, everything is considered miraculous and a work of the gods.

  Believing us to be pilgrims rather than geographers, Tibetans quite naturally would wish to show us the “sights” and here in the Drug-di range was one such spot, a clear, deep, gurgling spring.

  No need to follow the stream up to the spring, in that it was obvious that the main course of the Mekong lay beyond this little tributary and flowed from the west between the two ranges. After consultation with my companions, we decided to carry on up the main stream.

  Since the river made a large arc behind the hillock, to save time we decided to ride up on the northern bank and cut across dry land. This route led us toward what we had mistaken as a pass linking the two mountain ranges. We now realized that the saddle-like pass was just a buttress of the Sag-ri range that eventually fell to the Mekong.

  After a grueling ride to the top of the ridge, we saw in the distance the black outline of yet another tent. From this ridge, I believed for sure we would be able to see the land in all its expanse and have an idea as to how much farther the river flowed to the west. Only then would I decide what to do: turn back to rejoin our camp or carry on.

  The sun continued to beat down on us relentlessly, and the sky remained so clear that I was not overly concerned with the fact that we were getting even farther from our base.

  As we rose we had an increasingly precise view of how the main bed of the Mekong cut an arc into the northern flank of the Dragon range.

  We were now well up the flank of the buttress of one of the tallest summits of the Sag-ri range, crossing a great spill of loess and gravel that issued from what seemed like a valley but turned out to be no more than a gully of dry rocks.

  It was four o’clock when, after having scanned what seemed like an ever-receding horizon, we came within earshot of two furious dogs guarding a solitary tent.

  Dismounting and waiting for someone to come out and hold the brutes, I turned my head to the east and caught sight of one of the most majestic landscapes I had ever seen, although “landscape” is perhaps too narrow a word to encompass the true immensity of the view. As I had in Mustang thirty years before, once again I understood why Tibet is called the roof of the world, for truly from here one looked down on the world, down over the horizons onto high mountains as the earth curved and dropped away.

  A handsome man in his early forties with a scruffy braid at his back, a green waistcoat, and a broad friendly smile came out of the tent. Having quelled the mastiffs, he asked our guide who we were and what we were up to. A young boy of about fifteen came and joined the jovial man while three tiny children in homespun woolen miniature Tibetan gowns crawled out of the tent and then sat on a bale of wool and stared at us, amazed, with immense eyes.

  The tent was not quite upon the summit of the ridge, so we could not yet see the Mekong on the other side. Ling asked the man a question or two and explained to me that the Sino-Japanese party had been seen to pass by behind us. The Tibetan confirmed the news: He had seen that party cross over the Dza-chu going in the direction of the holy Drug-di spring, from which we had turned away to carry on up the main river.

  This was tremendous news. Now we knew that our would-be rivals had not traveled to the source, which, we were now convinced, must lie somewhere to the west up the main branch. If all went well, we might yet win the race.

  Above all else, I was ecstatically happy to have found a local man living so close to the source and able to give us the names of the various tributaries. After all, the mapping of the source or sources required not just latitudes and longitudes, but names.

  I obtained the names of the two tributaries we could see running off the Sag-ri range. Moving over to the ridge behind the tent, I then got the names of three small rivulets that flowed into the main Dza-chu where it made a large arc along the contour of the foot of the ridge upon which we were standing.

  Pressing on with questions, I heard mentioned for the first time the name Rupsa. Was it a river? No, it was the name of a pass. The Rupsa-la. This pass, I was led to understand, was possibly the watershed, beyond which lay the basin of the upper Dri chu, or the Yangtze River.

  Where exactly was the Rupsa-la? The man pointed to a hill to the west. The pass lay beyond that, out of sight, he said. I speculated that this pass was no doubt set upon the ridge that linked the two ranges. The source should lie somewhere near there, unless, of course, there was another surprise in store for us.

  There was only one way to know, and that was to keep going. It was now four-thirty, and we risked being caught out with no food or shelter in the dark. Should we go back to our camp and move forward the next day?

  In my head I
was coming to another conclusion altogether. Why go to the source anyway, now that we were practically certain where it lay? Why bother? Why not just turn back and go home, or rather carry on with our initial project and go back down the Mekong to Nangchen Dzong and then to Nangchen Gar, the fascinating capital of the nomad kingdom?

  I was tired and must have spoken aloud. Sebastian looked at me in shock. “Go back now?” He thought either I had gone mad or, as a result of altitude and fatigue, I had lost all determination.

  I called our guide. “Listen,” I heard myself say, “we go on, with or without you, right up to the very end of the river. We must hurry.”

  Sebastian looked relieved. “I thought you were crazy wanting to turn back now.” He had been right: I had lost my reason for a moment. Or had I?

  There were in fact good reasons (as we were about to discover) to have been a little more cautious. I knew, of course, that there was little chance we would be able to go to the source and come back to our camp in daylight. Yet the horizon was cloudless, the night would be clear, and finding our camp should prove easy. How could we get lost when all we had to do was follow our steps back down the river itself?

  My reasoning was a little bit simplistic. “On y va!” I exclaimed to Jacques, and we all mounted and rode up and over the ridge down to the river.

  We had won the first race, against the Japanese who were, no doubt, now on their way home, out of sight behind us. Now began another race, the race against the setting sun.

  I kept on telling myself we had plenty of time, yet how far we had to go nobody knew. Not even the nomad knew for sure.

  It all depended now on the river and its tributaries, on our determining which was the largest and the longest. We would now have to measure the relative flow of each tributary carefully, and as it had not hailed or rained or snowed, this was an ideal day to make such measurements. The water level in each of the rivers and streams we would encounter could be considered representative of its normal mean relative flow. In simpler terms, the water in the rivers would not be freak high water due to rains or storms. By following the widest stream we would be sure to follow the principal fork of the longest branch of the Mekong River.

  Below the nomad’s camp we reached the Mekong just where it received the waters of a large torrent coming down steeply from the Sag-ri range. The torrent was half the size of the main river, whose bed here was very much wider than that of this affluent. Looking up we could see the craggy rock heaps that had given the Sag-ri its name. No doubt up there lay the second, “sacred” source, but not the geographical source we were seeking. We carried on up the main river bed, now about thirty yards wide.

  Two hours later we passed a clear mountain torrent perhaps ten feet wide, and we saw then that the main river’s width had diminished. Here and there more small yet not insignificant lateral streams rushed down from the mountains that slowly had begun to close in on us.

  With a feeling of great anticipation mingled with urgency, we pressed on, now and then breaking into a little canter in spite of the pain to our rear ends.

  I would be embarrassed to describe these last moments of our quest in those moving terms that made the readers of Victorian tales shudder. There were no heroics, and there was no danger. For the moment the sun shone golden upon the mountains, which were now so close that we could actually see the water of the streams tumbling down toward us.

  The Mekong, although ever smaller, seemed endless. Around a bend, on a broad rocky flat, we came upon the confluence of three streams of approximately the same size. We stopped, unsure of which branch to follow. We could see that one tumbled down from a cliff face in the Drug-di range, another came from a slope leading up into the Sag-ri. The third, slightly larger but only slightly, flowed between the two.

  Which to take? Where did the principal source lie? I felt in all logic the answer could be found only at the end of the central torrent that rushed between the two ranges. In all probability it would lead us to some sort of a pass or would extend beyond the mountain face from which the other two streams rushed.

  Half an hour later the sun had begun to set, casting the long shadows of our horses on the gravel while a golden light grazed the rocky hills. As we began to rise, following the central stream, the landscape slowly opened outward, and then, looking up, I saw the crescent-shaped slope mountaineers call a saddle—a ridge that links two ranges.

  The river was now reduced to a bubbling stream barely a yard and a half wide, and yet it seemed that it would extend forever. We followed it up for another mile and a quarter; and then, right before me arose the saddle, whose lowest point was marked by a cairn. We had reached the foot of the pass, the Rupsa-la (perhaps derived from Nubsa, which means “sunset”), and indeed the sun now shone in our face, its yellow rays combing the barren ridges around us. The stream was very small, and it now fanned into three rivulets. Looking down, I saw that the stony ground was pale green with moss and short grass into which the rivulets merged and vanished. Above the green fan all was stony and brown, and then above that was the golden, darkening sky over the pass. Here just below the pass, in the fanlike bowl of a spring field, the water ended, or rather began. Here was the mythical line marking the existence, the birth site, the source of the easternmost and longest of the many branches of the uppermost extremity of the great river. Here at the foot of the Rupsa-la we had found the principal source of the Mekong.

  Our first impression was one of surprise at being neither awed nor impressed. Dismounting, I slowly strode up the steep hill that formed the northern rim to the little green amphitheater from which the three rivulets ran. I saw before me how the rivulets from the spring field united to form the torrent that would become stream and then river, the river that roared across Tibet and burst through the Himalayas; the river that ranged across Yunnan before skirting the border of Burma and rushing between Laos and Thailand; the river that cut Cambodia in two with its brown and powerful breadth; the river that would finally explode into nine dragon’s tongues before commingling with the vast and deep salt waters of the South China Sea.

  Ling and Sebastian and I were filmed by Jacques as we inspected the spring field, examined our discovery: the long-secret source. It was amazingly unimpressive, but we had not come for theatrics. The source of the Mekong was as discreet as it had been elusive.

  It was past six-thirty on my watch.

  There was suddenly a lot to do. With Sebastian I photographed the site, snapping all four cardinal points as we examined the perimeter of the spring field. Then I took an altitude reading (4,975 meters, or 16,322 feet); and, most important of course, the exact latitude and longitude.

  Lat. 33° 16′ 534 N.

  Long. 93° 52′ 929 E.

  On the surface these numbers were the entire purpose of our venture, the figures necessary to be able to pinpoint the source on any map of the world. This was what geography and exploration were all about. Just a few numbers, yet what a struggle to record them—how much bloodshed, tears, and sweat so that what had been spelled out in 1866 as the goal of the Mekong Committee of the French Société de Géographie could at long last be fulfilled. Suddenly it became important to record the day, September 17, 1994. Twenty-five years after man had set foot on the moon, here we were recording for the first time the source of the third-largest river of Asia.

  As I stood there in contemplation, I began to appreciate that the struggle and the turmoil were over, and that we were living a very special and important moment. The spring field, the little trickles of water, the pass, the surrounding mountains—this was a truly magical place, for centuries the focal point of the dreams of millions of people.

  A slow delight and excitement seized us, and even Ling, generally so dour, was literally bubbling with enthusiasm. Here we were at last, we had made it, we had conquered, we had reached that spot where water, earth, and sky met and merged, where myth was one with reality.

  In spite of everything our expedition was a success. Only now did
I realize how much I actually cared about getting here. Maybe it was more important, I thought, than I had anticipated.

  We took photographs of each other straddling the little rivulet. Since leaving Paris we had discussed rather idly what we might place at the source if we found it. We had thought of flags, but then the question arose: what flag? The French, the Chinese, or the British? Sebastian was actually Anglo-Irish. Just in case, and partly out of curiosity, we had tried to buy a Chinese flag in Beijing, but that had proved not only impossible but embarrassing. Although the city was festooned with them in celebration of China’s independence day, none were for sale. We tried to persuade a shopkeeper to take one down from above his stall, but this was instantly construed as an unpatriotic gesture. We finally gave up, as we had no English or French flags either, and we were reminded that the source was technically part of greater Tibet, not China. Moreover, the whole flag-planting proposition reeked of Victorian nationalism. Still, I now felt we should do something to mark the occasion. The obvious answer was a katta, the white ceremonial silk scarf Tibetans exchange as a sign of respect and friendship. I had one such katta in my saddlebag. I found myself panting as I went to fetch it, for now we were nearly 16,500 feet high.

  I deposited the scarf at the juncture of the rivulets where the river was born. Jacques filmed the scene against the low rays of the setting sun, which sparkled on the clear bubbling water.

  Much to our delight, Sebastian produced a can of beer and we toasted each other over the Mekong. I was really, really happy and grateful to all.

  Only then did I notice it was already seven-thirty, a fact that quickly brought me back to reality. We had to head back and quickly, since our camp was so far away. We had been in the saddle since eight in the morning, practically ten hours, discounting the brief stops. Our return would be a long march in the dark; how long and how difficult?