Wednesday, June 13, 2001
Eating Dust
(June 6)
We didn't know why he left us there. Perhaps he became nervous
about being caught with foreigners in his truck, or maybe
he didn't feel up to dealing with us on top of his altitude
sickness, or maybe his other passengers complained that
there wasn't enough room. Who knows -- we were just glad that
we'd left nothing more on the truck than a cheap five liter
water jug. What's more, we'd gotten a free ride over a high
pass and back down to a comfortable elevation to allow us to
acclimatize. So we had a bowl of noodles and began waiting
for our next ride.
Waiting in Mazar wasn't so bad; at first we were a little nervous
about the military base and the army guys who kept asking for our
passports, but then we realized they were just bored. Mostly we
sat on a bench by the side of the road reading and writing, waiting
for the next truck to appear over the ridge. Juliette decided that
now was a good time to finally start her dreadlocks, so I spent many
hours entertaining the locals by combing her hair the wrong way.
The next afternoon (and about four bowls of noodles) later we finally
got a ride with a pair of Uygers going to Xiadulla -- not very far,
but after two days in the cardboard village of Mazar we would have
accepted a ride anywhere. As luck would have it, Xiadulla was
exactly the same, only bigger -- Chinese restaurants made of
pressboard lined the single road, and a large military base sat
on the far edge of town.
We stayed in a guesthouse that night, and the next morning we found
ourselves on the side of the road again, holding our breaths as
caravans of green military trucks kicked up clouds of dust, waving
as they passed to indicate they weren't going wherever we were.
One local man told us the road to Ali was closed for four more days.
We'd heard enough contradictory stories already that we took this
information with a grain of salt, but nevertheless our expectations
of getting a ride anytime soon dipped below empty on the hope guage.
We even took an afternoon off from making dreads in the dust to
skip stones across the river.
"A mnemonic is something that helps you remember something else,"
I finished explaining.
"Oh, I see," Juliette replied. "In German we say 'donkey bridge.'"
(June 11)
Sure enough, on the fourth day we began to be suffocated by the
exhaust from cargo trucks in addition to military vehicles, and
a few of them even stopped for us. The first was reluctant to
take us -- he was headed to Ali, with uncountable pairs of eyes
peering out from the darkness of the tarp covering the truck bed.
Road 219 semed to have developed its own style of public transportation,
but even stuffing us in the back with the others like sardines was too
risky for the jumpy driver. The next truck also carried human
cargo, and the driver seemed equally nervous -- even as we discussed
the price he gunned the engine to make the truck roll forward, but
perhaps that was merely a negotiation tactic. Eventually we settled
on a price and piled into the cab, thankful not to be crammed into
the black, stifling, dusty cargo space in back. For 75 yuan each
the driver had agreed to take us only as far as Hongliutan; still
less than half way to Ali, but as usual we were happy to move even
one village closer.
The dirt road was was in surprisingly good condition for being in the middle
of nowhere, which made me curious what the military was up to on some
of the side roads. The area we were crossing used to belong to India
until they discovered that the Chinese had surreptitiously built a
road across it in the sixties -- so uninviting was this mountain
desert terrain that neither India nor China, the world's two most populous
countries, had managed to settle it. Most maps these days label it as disputed
territory which is "Under Chinese Administration," meaning India
can't afford to sustain a border war but is still in a bad mood about
the whole thing. We passed the village of Kangxiwar, which is actually
just a row of military tents and a camouflage net over what looked
suspiciously like a tank.
Suddenly there was a commotion from the back of the cab. One of the
men, a Chinese who'd been silent until now, was speaking urgently
to the driver and overturning the bags and blankets looking for
something. The driver pulled over and the search continued, for
what I gathered was a wallet with quite a bit of money inside.
When I stepped down from the cab to use the bathroom, I turned
around to find myself a few feet away from the threatening blade
of a large knife, with which the missing-wallet man was threatening
one of the other passengers. I discretely stepped away to pee.
Eventually the situation was resolved somehow and we were back
on the road, pretending this kind of thing happened every day.
By dark we arrived in Hongliutan, only too happy to pay our
knife-wielding chaparones and vacate the truck. The truck stop
restaurant we were dropped at was run by a friendly Uyger, the
first chef I'd witnessed tasting the food as he was cooking it.
The people indiginous to southwest China are called Uygers.
They were given this name, I think, because of their habit
of getting your attention by shouting "Uy!", even if they're
close enough to poilitely tap you on the shoulder. In spite
of this jarring idiosyncracy, they're a friendly bunch by
and large. By friendly I mean that I can completely fail at
communicating anything with them and we both continue to
smile.
Word was that a few trucks were leaving for Ali at four the next
morning, so as we were too cheap to shell out ten quai each for
three hours' sleep in a dorm bed, we slept out back under the stars.
My sleeping bag had almost entirely shed the nauseating stench of
gasoline acquired from a leaky bottle a few days before, so with
the help of a crisp mountain breeze I managed to fall asleep without
being overcome by the smell. The 3:30 alarm was pretty brutal, but
not nearly so much as waiting in the freezing darkness for a driver
whose price went up from $30 the night before to a ridiculous $120.
We gave up on the truck stop and headed back to the road as the
morning sun peeked over the hilltops to comfort our cold weary
bodies. Also eager to comfort us were swarms of tiny biting flies,
which in return for an iota of my blood left itchy welts that lasted
for two weeks.
In the afternoon an army truck stopped and a handful of camouflage-clad
boys climbed out. Their mission was to convince us to rest in the shade
rather than hitch-hiking in the sun. Eventually we capitulated and
accepted a half-kilometer ride to one of the cardboard guesthouses,
where they reminded us to drink our tea if we set the glass down for
more than a minute, and we took turns pointing at words in the
Chinese/English dictionary in order to communicate. These boys were
very funny and innocent, and didn't want us to go to Ali because it
was too dangerous. One man sat with the photocopied pages for over
an hour, making phrases like "wild animals," "altitude," and "no food."
In turn, I pointed at "understand risk," "good health," and "food in
backpack."
The days and nights passed much as before -- again and again, we met
drivers who said they'd take us the next morning, but by the time we
hauled our sleepy butts out of bed in the darkness of 3:30 am they'd
raised their prices or changed their minds entirely. In these days
we were forced to learn lessons in waiting patiently, abandoning
expectations, and eating noodle soup for every meal. We made good
friends with the army boys, who always seemed to have the day off
for fishing. They let me drive their tractor around in circles, but
wouldn't sell it to me to drive to Ali.
With so much free time on
our hands, Juliette's dreadlocks were making fast progress. We joked
that it wouldn't do to enter Tibet with unfinished dreads, and
sure enough: after irreversibly entangling the last of her
previously healthy hair, we found a truck claiming they were
leaving that very evening to Ali. We ran to grab our backpacks,
said a teary goodbye to our closest Army buddy, and tried to let
go of expectations. Good thing too, because in fifteen minutes
they'd already decided to drive us only to Dolmar instead of Ali.
Once again we weren't in a great bargaining position -- it was going
on our fifth night in this stagnant Chinese army base truck stop and
we felt about one day away from giving up and hitching in the other
direction. So we quickly filled our pot with leftover rice from the
restaurant and climbed aboard what was to be the most difficult
ride in our lives.