Arkana Archaeology Mystery Box Set 2
Page 22
Rabten and Rinchen led them to the elevator, explaining that the hotel dining room was located on the top floor of the building. They also mentioned that the restaurant itself rested on a revolving platform.
When the elevator doors parted, the group was treated to a spectacular vista of snow-capped peaks silhouetted against the setting sun.
“I think you were wrong about no time for sightseeing,” the pythia remarked. “We’re getting a bird’s-eye view of the whole city without ever having to leave the building.”
A waiter seated them immediately and handed out menus. A quick scan told them that the entrees included a number of standard western dishes. Neither Cassie nor Griffin seemed inclined to sample anything exotic nor did the twins. They all ordered steaks and settled back to await the arrival of their food.
“I must admit, I’ll be sorry not to visit the palace of the living goddess,” Griffin ventured. “But our schedule won’t allow it.”
“Living goddess?” Cassie asked. “That must mean Nepal follows some sort of matristic religion.”
“Only indirectly,” the scrivener countered. “The practice of venerating a pre-pubescent girl as the living embodiment of the goddess Durga started as a Brahmanic ritual in historic times. In some branches of Hinduism, Durga is considered the source of all creation and she is believed to incarnate in the body of a female child. There are many living goddesses found throughout Nepal, but the one in Kathmandu is the most important. She is called the Royal Kumari. ‘Kumari’ derives from a Sanskrit word meaning ‘virgin.’ A child from a specific caste is chosen when she is very young—sometimes only three or four years old—and she continues in that role until she reaches puberty and another takes her place. The selection process is quite rigorous. The Kumari of Kathmandu lives in a palace in the city where she receives visits from people seeking blessings or healing. Believers gather in the courtyard of her palace hoping to catch sight of her because even the barest glimpse of a Kumari is supposed to bring good fortune.”
“You said this started as a Hindu practice,” Cassie remarked. “Is a Kumari in India as big a deal as in Nepal?”
Griffin shook his head. “There are festivals in India where a Kumari is honored for a day or two, sometimes only an hour or two. However, in Nepal she’s a permanent fixture.”
“Then why is she so important here?” the pythia persisted.
The scrivener paused to consider her question. The twins remained silent during this interchange, listening intently.
“I suspect the importance of the Kumari to the Nepalese may stem from the importance of the divinity she represents. Although Durga is the name of a Hindu deity, her origins can be traced back to an ancient mountain goddess worshipped by the tribes who inhabited the Himalayas.”
“Wait a second.” Cassie stopped him. “I remember you saying there was a sky goddess who lived at Mount Kailash and that she was older than Hinduism and Buddhism.”
“Well spotted.” The scrivener smiled approvingly. “The sky goddess Sipaimen of the indigenous Bön religion is said to dwell at Kailash. In all probability, she is the prototype for the Hindu Durga. Since the people of the Himalayas already viewed the source of creation as female, that tradition continues in their reverence for the Kumari.”
Griffin’s lecture was interrupted by the appearance of their waiter bearing a tray of salads. Hands flew in all directions as condiments and plates of bread and butter were passed around the table. After that, conversation was suspended while the quartet gave their undivided attention to their food.
As they ate in silence, Cassie carried on an internal debate regarding the qualifications of her new associates. She liked the twins, but they both exuded an air of innocence and joviality that made her question whether they were up to the challenge of a relic hunt, especially one as dangerous as the pursuit of the Sage Stone. She realized she was the last person who ought to discount them simply because they were young. The pythia remembered her own resentment when Erik dismissed her as incompetent without even giving her a chance to prove herself on their first mission. Still, she felt that somebody ought to vet the twins before she and Griffin trusted the newbies with their lives.
When the waiter returned to clear the plates away, Cassie folded her arms on the table and leaned forward to scrutinize the twins. “You say you’re from California? When did your family come to America?”
“Some time after World War Two,” Rinchen replied.
“They were the lucky ones,” Rabten remarked. “Our grandparents on both sides of the family lived in Lhasa. They were prosperous enough to afford to leave when they saw the way the political wind was blowing. Right before the Chinese invaded Tibet, they made themselves scarce.”
“Then where does the Arkana connection come in?”
“Our parents met while they were both studying at Berkeley,” said Rinchen. “The Tibetan-American community on the west coast is pretty small, so everybody knows everybody else. Our dad majored in archaeology and mom was an anthropologist. Both of them ended up as professors. Eventually, the Arkana found them, and they were recruited—”
“—when we got old enough they told us about their work and offered us a chance to join. We decided that the family business sounded pretty interesting.”
“But why did you guys get picked to work with us on this retrieval?” Cassie still couldn’t see an obvious reason for their involvement other than ethnicity.
Rabten looked at Rinchen. They seemed to hesitate.
“I’ll start,” offered Rabten.
“No, you always get to start. I’ll start,” Rinchen countered.
“Fine.”
Rinchen, the twin in the black shirt, began the narrative. “We were doing research interviewing villagers in some of the more remote parts of the country where polyandry is still being practiced. It used to be the norm throughout the Himalayas.”
“Polyandry,” Cassie repeated. “You mean one wife with multiple husbands.”
“Yes,” Rabten agreed. “But in these cases, it’s usually fraternal polyandry meaning all the brothers in the family marry the same woman.”
“I always thought polygyny was screwy enough where one guy marries a dozen women,” the pythia observed. “But why would anybody think polyandry is a good idea?”
“Allow me to explain,” Griffin interjected. “Polyandry is a natural form of birth control. It limits population growth. Whereas polygyny can produce a frightening number of offspring, polyandrous families are limited to the breeding capacity of a single woman. In geographic regions like the Himalayas where resources are scarce, polyandry prevents the land from becoming overburdened with excess population. Fraternal polyandry, where all the brothers in one family marry a single wife, is also very useful in preventing squabbles over property.”
“But how do they know who fathered each kid?” Cassie protested.
“The mother always decides,” Rabten answered.
“Of course, the eldest brother is called ‘Father’ by the whole family and all the younger brothers are called ‘uncle,’” Rinchen said.
“And everybody is happy with this arrangement?” The pythia’s tone was dubious.
“They seem to be—”
“—from what we’ve observed.”
“Polyandry has been around for thousands of years,” Griffin remarked. “In Kerala which we recently visited, the Nair caste was polyandrous until about a hundred years ago. In contrast, polygyny is favored by overlord cultures. Because overlords live by the sword, a certain percentage of the adult male population is always killed off in their endless bouts of warfare. This would leave a surplus female population and also a need to produce more male offspring as cannon fodder. Actually, spear fodder might be the more accurate term.”
“If polyandry is still so popular in the Himalayas, I’m guessing overlord values didn’t gain much of a foothold here,” Cassie speculated.
The scrivener nodded. �
�You’re quite correct. Polyandry seems to spring up primarily in societies which are egalitarian in nature. It has been practiced by gatherer-hunter tribes stretching from the arctic to the tropics and always where greater gender balance prevails than is the case with overlord societies. Himalayan culture was originally matrilineal, and women controlled their own property. Divorce among monogamous couples was a simple matter of dividing up each partner’s belongings and going their separate ways. Likewise, extramarital affairs were tolerated for either partner without social stigma. Of course, when Europeans first came to this part of the world, they criticized the moral laxity of the natives. The combined pressure from overlord Europe, India and China eventually caused the indigenous culture to erode.”
Cassie switched her attention from Griffin to the twins. She still had a few more questions about their qualifications and didn’t want to get sidetracked no matter how interesting the discussion of polyandry might be. “It makes sense that Home Office tagged you two to guide us to Mount Kailash. If you’ve been interviewing families out in the sticks, you must know this terrain pretty well.”
“We do,” they both answered.
The pythia frowned. “But we also need security back-up. Have you had any training in self-defense?”
The twins looked at one another in surprise.
“Didn’t we tell them that we’re both martial arts experts?” Rabten asked. “Or that we’re both pretty good with firearms?”
Rinchen shook his head. “I don’t think that ever came up.”
“Or that we’ve handled artifact transfers under the radar before?”
“Nope. That didn’t come up either, bro.”
“Oh.”
At that moment, the waiter returned with their entrees.
While the plates were being handed out, Cassie leaned toward Griffin and whispered jokingly, “Well, they’re not Erik, but I guess they’ll do in a pinch.”
The scrivener smiled at her and winked. “Quite.”
Chapter 39—Simply Breathtaking
In the town of Darchen at the foot of Mount Kailash, Cassie lay on her hotel bed struggling to fill her lungs with air. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been warned, she told herself. Most people had difficulty adjusting to the extreme change in altitude. Given her famously sensitive nervous system, she’d felt dizzy and light-headed ever since they’d left Kathmandu.
When she and Griffin had originally planned their journey, she’d pointed out that there were direct flights from Lhasa to an airport about two hundred miles east of Darchen. They could have reached their destination in about a day. Griffin rejected the idea because he said the four-day trip from Kathmandu would allow them time to acclimate to the altitude. Cassie now realized that four days weren’t going to be nearly long enough. If they had taken a direct flight from Lhasa, the abrupt change in altitude might have killed her outright.
As it was, their staged journey had been challenging enough. To begin with, they’d flown in a tiny plane from Kathmandu to a town called Nepalgunj. The ride lasted a mere hour, but there was only one flight per day. After an overnight layover, they’d rushed to catch the sole flight of the day that would take them to their next stopping point. It left at 6 AM, but since the weather was cloudy, the plane was delayed a few hours. The twins repeated a bit of folk wisdom about not flying through clouds in the Himalayas because the clouds had rocks in them. Cassie took their advice to heart and waited without complaint until the plane was cleared for departure.
They spent that night in the stark rural village of Simikot. The pythia thought back fondly to the good old days when she and her teammates had stayed in five-star hotels. Given the paucity of guest houses along their route, they were lucky to have a roof over their heads at all. Sleeping accommodations invariably consisted of mattresses flung on bare floors with all four of them in the same room. The cinderblock buildings in which they were housed had no indoor plumbing and drinking water needed to be boiled before consumption. A shower was out of the question.
Meals always included yak butter tea which tasted more like salty broth than a beverage. The staple food was barley flour noodles—bland but filling. Stoves were fueled by dried chips of yak dung. The local people had little enough to go around even for themselves, much less for tourists. Cassie made sure that the Arkana team gave far more money than was asked in exchange for the humble bed and board they received.
When they left Simikot, their last bit of air travel involved a forty-five-minute helicopter flight to the equally barren Nepalese town of Hilsa. While there, the twins managed to procure the use of two Land Rovers for the rest of their trip. Rabten took the wheel of one and Rinchen the other. They apparently knew the terrain and the local people quite well. When the pythia questioned the need for two vehicles, Rinchen reminded her that if their quest was successful, they would have to part ways at Kailash. The twins would take a separate route through Lhasa in order to smuggle the artifact out of the country, leaving Cassie and Griffin to return the way they’d come.
The Arkana group drove across the bridge that officially divided Nepal from Tibet. After the Chinese border guard checked their papers and put them through the other formalities of entering the country, they were allowed to continue on their way. Although flying from Kathmandu to Hilsa had been uncomfortable, driving on land didn’t offer any improvement. The roads in western Tibet were unpaved and bumpy. Their SUVs churned up so much dust that even if they’d wanted to roll down the windows for fresh air, it wouldn’t have been possible. Thankfully, it was only a short trip to Purang where they stopped for the night. Tibetan guest houses proved to be no better than what the group had already experienced in rural Nepal.
On the final morning of their trip, they drove three hours to Lake Manasarovar where they paused briefly to stretch their legs. According to Hindu mythology, the lake itself was the source of the Indus as well as the other three major rivers of the sub-continent. Even though it was a brisk October day, a few pilgrims insisted on bathing in its sacred waters. Across the lake, they caught sight of their ultimate destination at last—the snow-capped dome of Mount Kailash.
After taking a few moments to appreciate the view, they all piled back into the Land Rovers and headed for the village of Darchen which was situated at the base of the holy mountain itself. Many of the people who came to Kailash were content to pitch tents on the outskirts of town, but there were a few hotels offering indoor shelter. The Arkana group selected an establishment which advertised itself as a grand hotel. Considering the rest of the bare-bones lodgings in town, maybe it had a right to that title. It was certainly grand by the standards of what they’d encountered so far. Although the hotel didn’t have much in the way of amenities, at least the mattresses rested on bed frames. Cassie was even able to claim the luxury of a room to herself because it was the end of the season and business was slow.
A gentle knock at the door interrupted her thoughts.
Griffin poked his head in. “The fellows are waiting to guide us up the mountain. Are you ready?”
Cassie moaned, struggling to sit up. “Not even close but let’s go anyway.”
***
A half hour later, the little party had labored up the steep incline from the town to reach the path that circled the mountain. Unlike the balmy weather in Kathmandu, the temperature here was barely above freezing. The air felt bone-chilling and dry while the incessant wind blew dirt everywhere. The eeriest feature of the landscape was a complete absence of trees. There was no rustling of leaves. Out here, the wind blew unopposed, and the sound it made seemed hollow and ghostly. The mountains formed a pretty backdrop, but the plateau itself looked and felt bleak—an endless stretch of cold desert four miles above sea level. Even wildlife seemed to shun the barren expanse with the exception of stray dogs sniffing hopefully for scraps of food. Cassie found herself wondering how anybody could scratch out a living in terrain like this. Polyandry was starting to make sense to her now.
The site drew the faithful like a magnet. The Arkana group passed numerous pilgrims walking the path around the base of the mountain. A few of these parties were accompanied by guides and yaks to carry their supplies. The animals wore bells or brightly colored yarn twisted into their thick hair. They seemed unconcerned by the heavy packs strapped to their backs as they picked their way nimbly over the rock-strewn mountainside, occasionally stopping to graze on the pitifully sparse clumps of grass which grew at wide intervals.
The twins informed them that the trail around Kailash measured thirty-two miles. Hindus, Buddhists, and Jainists walked it clockwise. Followers of Bön moved counter-clockwise around the mountain. Some of the hardier pilgrims were making the journey by lying on the ground and creeping forward on their bellies.
The pythia noticed an elderly female pilgrim who knelt on the rocky ground to pray for a few seconds before lying down prone with her arms stretched forward. She made a mark in the earth with her fingers then rose to her feet again to pray before advancing to the marked spot to begin the process all over again.
“That’s gonna take a while,” Cassie confided to Rinchen who was standing beside her.
Today he’d switched his White Sox jersey for a warmer White Sox jacket and cap, but the color distinction remained. His brother wore a blue Cubs jacket and matching cap.
“Performing the pilgrimage by lying down prostrate between each step takes about four days,” Rinchen said.