Wednesday, June 27, 2001

The Pilgrimage Path (16 June)

Juliette and I were still getting used to the idea of being in Tibet -- until now it had never been sure whether we'd actually make it. Ali didn't do much to speed up the realization; with its streets lined with Chinese restaurants, hair salons, and karaoke bars, it was easier to think of it as a Chinese city than a Tibetan one. Almost every Tibetan we saw held a shovel in his or her hands, laboring on one of the infinite construction projects under development. The town gave the impression of having sprung up nearly overnight, fulfilling the single purpose of providing a place to buy Chinese products trucked in from Kashgar.

One night in the overpriced dorm with no running water was enough taking it easy for us, so the next day we made ready to begin hitching to Lake Manosarovar, where we hoped we could rest in a pleasant environment before beginning the trek around Mount Kailash. We camped on the outskirts of town to wake up in time to catch the trucks as they pulled out towards Kailash at five in the morning. After four days, neither we nor our German and New Zealand compatriots had had any luck, so we took an opportunity to take a bus instead. We were fortunate to have this possibility, as there is no regular bus service to Kailash; normally you either have to hitch a ride on a truck, hire a jeep for $200, or sometimes you can arrange a lift with a postal delivery truck. The next mail truck wasn't leaving for another four days, and predawn hitching was getting old fast, so we gave in to the Chinese gangster running the travel agency and plunked down $37 for the twelve hour ride in a deluxe super-fast souped up "magic bus" with sleeper beds, specially designed to handle the rough roads of western Tibet.

So we were off, glad to say goodbye to Ali and looking forward to a liesurely time on the lake. I was surprised by the number of passengers on this unusual route, mostly westerners who'd come from Lhasa on the same bus. For hours we bumped and lurched along the dirt road, driving through small rivers and past herds of yaks and Tibetan nomad tents. By nightfall we'd settled into a state of half-slumber, punctuated by particularly violent rocking back and forth. Around midnight the bus stopped, and a discussion ensued among the drivers. We were lost. After a few moments we began moving again, full speed ahead in the darkness toward some unknown destination. Five minutes of this mad dash ended abruptly with a final dive into a thick patch of mud which left us lying at an odd angle on our beds. Now we were lost and stuck too. Nobody seemed much bothered by this turn of events, and we settled in for the night, happy enough not to have to set up a tent in the dark.

The morning sun brought some perspective to our situation. The bad news was we were really really stuck -- the bottom step leading out of the bus rested comfortably on the ground, the front tire embedded deeply in the muck. The good news was that Mount Kailash was visible in the distance and it was a beautiful day. With the mountain as a reference point, it was clear that in the night we'd passed it altogether, and were stuck midway between Kailash and Lake Manosarovar.

The drivers hired some local Tibetans and they tried half-heartedly to dig the vehicle out of the mud. After noon there was no progress -- in fact, the bus was leaning more than ever, making me a little wary of spending another night inside. On the other hand, everyone on the bus was prepared for adventures so we were all in good spirits. A jeep com ing from the lake stopped and three Americans hopped out, offering us bags of nuts and snacks -- they felt sorry for us! "What a nightmare," one of them empathized as we grinned happily back at her. For us, this was a day in the park -- she obviously hadn't hitched any rides on a pig truck.

As we began to lose hope in freeing the bus (the drivers and Tibetan helpers were doing more napping than digging) a caravan of jeeps pulled up, also from the lake. It was an Indian tour group on their way to Kailash. For Hindus, Kailash is one of the holiest pilgrimages in the world, but only the rich and devout can afford to do it. They lavished us with Indian sweets and spicy snacks, and tried to convince their drivers to help us. Suddenly most of our fellow passengers were piling into the jeeps to go to Kailash, while Juliette and I stood paralyzed by indecision -- we didn't want to stay with this disabled bus, but we weren't ready for Kailash yet. Soon the decision was made for us as the last jeep sped away. Only five of us remained, and we donned our backpacks to hike the 15 kilometers to the lake, leaving the drivers to fend for themselves.

Step by step, we trudged along the road, wishing in vain some truck would come along and take us the rest of the way. In the distance, a pyramid of Tibetan prayer flags fluttered in the wind, marking a pass and giving us a goal. Juliette and I were carrying all our gear, including two weeks worth of food, and by the time we reached the pass after three hours of uphill torture we were exhausted. In one step, however, a wave of relief washed over us -- the blue crystaline surface of Lake Manosarovar came into view. After a rest we pushed on, determined to make it to the lake before dark. Our three hiking companions were far ahead of us by now, and we abandoned the road in favor of a path which looked like a more direct route to the lake. We were running low on water, and really just wanted to get to the shore and camp. Just as I tend to get nervous about the prospect of running out of food, Juliette has issues with running out of water -- combined with our physical and mental fatigue from six hours of walking, tension was high.

The path was in fact more direct, and as the sun set we used our last reserves to make it to the water's edge. Unfortunately, it was fifty feet below us. We peered down at the shore over the edge of a cliff, with no visible path leading there. Utterly defeated, we set up the tent, cooked dinner with as little water as possible, and slept.

(22 June)

Next day we arrived at the part of the lake we'd originally been headed for, near a beautiful monastery set into a jagged hill along the lakeside like a fairy tale castle. There, we set up camp and hardly moved for the next four days. Except to visit the Indian tour groups, with hopes that they'd offer us a chai or some rice and dal -- mmm, I didn't realized how much I'd missed Indian food. With no fresh vegetables since Ali, we even made a few ground scores after the tour groups left; an onion here and a radish there, an almost-full bag of pasta, some garlic and some ginger, and we'd foraged an entire meal. One Nepali tour organizer even gave us three liters of petrol, which we needed for the stove; there are no gas stations in western Tibet outside of Ali, and even Ali had run out while we were there, leaving us begging for half a liter at a time from trucks that carried their own in giant steel drums.

With the Indian tour groups came strange news. In Nepal there had been a political upheavel, beginning with the king's son murdering the entire family and then himself. There was a new king which nobody liked, there were riots in Kathmandu, and the political instability allowed for the militant Nepali Maoist regime to move from the villages into Kathmandu itself. Hard times were ahead for Nepali people, it seemed.

The other strange news was that of the deaths of two Indian pilgrims; one on the pass at Kailash, and one right here on the lake. An important part of the Hindu pilgrimage rite is a purifying bath, usually very early in the morning. In the heat of India this is no problem, but at 4600 meters in near-freezing temperatures, the old Indian man's devotion took him straight to heaven.

The weather on the lake was a little capricious, with strong dusty winds and sudden rains, and the water was a little murky around the shore -- my water filter suddenly turned into a chest excercise machine as it became clogged with Manosarovar's sacred algae and holy muck -- but even so, we slowly recovered from the trials of our pilgrimage journey and finally felt ready to approach Kailash.

(26 June)

Hitching a ride to Darchen, the village where the kora begins, only took half a day and 20 yuan each. Having been warned about being charged exhorbitant rates for merely setting up a tent within the town limits, we skirted the stone walls and made our camp in the midst of the Tibetan tents east of the village. As we finished dinner, however, a woman from the Public Security Bureau asked to see our passports. Once we'd relinquished them, she refused to return them to us until we'd packed all our things and brought them to the PSB. "For your safety," she shouted at us, "Dangerous people!" -- as if the friendly Tibetans, who'd crowded around us in awe as we erected our fancy high-tech modern tent, would suddenly turn into murderers after circumambulating the mountain too many times. But without passports we were powerless to argue, so we unstaked the tent and carried it to the PSB office.

The PSB woman suddenly turned from evil Mrs. Hyde into a much nicer Dr. Jekyll, helping us find a place to camp and assuring us we wouldn't be charged. Our theory was that there were very strong orders from above not to allow tourists to camp with Tibetans, though we don't know exactly why.

So we fell asleep to the relaxing hum of the PSB generator, finally on the brink of the objective of this long adventure.