To a Mountain in Tibet(22)
For an hour, as the sun descends, a hard wind blows dust up the valley and into our tents. The rain has lightened. Beneath us the last tributary has drifted and died westwards, and the balding slopes cradle a floor of sudden green called the Sipsip Meadows, strewn with isolated rocks. Snowmelt threads the grass in icy rivulets, while above us the Nara pass is black with cloud. In the dusk I go down towards a massive boulder stranded in the valley. The air is still, purified. The last birdsong has petered out. Only a half-tame finch with white underwings gets up from under my feet, and black butterflies are feeding on the dust.
All day the only plants I have noticed are the worn tapestries of broom over sheltered slopes, and a coral-coloured rock rose flaring alone. Hour after hour a colourless erosion has been setting in. But now, underfoot, spreads a glaze of delicate flowers I do not know, and the ground-hugging shrubs are starred with lemony blooms. It is easy to understand how the first field botanists here–men like Kingdon-Ward and George Sherriff–became obsessed by these brilliant outpourings into the void, and could risk their lives hunting Primula eburnea or the blue poppy. It is like spring in the Arctic tundra. Your eyes drop from the empty mountains to this fragile-looking parquetry. White anemones spring up among the brush, and nests of deep pink buds are opening.
It is nightfall when I reach the boulder. It bulges ancient and solitary above the valley. I can descry faint carvings on it, and somebody in these solitudes has picked out in blue chalk the Om mani padme hum inscribed on its northern face. But its sculptured Buddhas have almost faded. They float across it on their lotus thrones, their hands cupped or raised or vanished. They must have been carved here to sanctify the pre-Buddhist wilderness–the passes swarm with pagan spirits–but the hands lifted in blessing are barely discernible now, and the haloed heads have withdrawn into the stone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
At first light a herd of goats comes jostling and trampling through our campsite. Their herdsmen are Humla traders in conical caps and buccaneer headscarves, who let out whistling yells as their charges canter between the tents. Every goat carries on its back a little faded saddle-pack filled with salt from Tibet, which will be carried south for ten or fifteen days to be exchanged for grain or rice on the return journey.
This immemorial trade is dying now. Iodised salt from India is selling in the foothills, but a profit can still be made if the herd is as numerous as this one. Its goats are robust but mercurial. No two are alike. Dilapidated white faces peer from tangled black coats, and creamy fleeces charge alongside rufous and skewbald ones. Their horns are magnificently various. Some twirl upwards in barley-sugar spires, lending their owners a rakish and debonair authority; others sweep back as if wind-blown; still others coil demurely against the head, like old-fashioned curls, or droop uselessly downward. But one and all have insolent yellow eyes and devil-may-care tempers, so the stocky sheepdogs run busy alongside, and wherever the goats pass their grazing deepens erosion.
A century ago this traffic was the lifeblood of Humla. Salt and borax from the alkaline Tibetan lakes sold like gold dust on the Nepalese plains, along with the prized Tibetan wool; and the sheep and goat trains returned to Tibet with foodstuffs and the wares of British India: kerosene, soap, matches, even trilby hats. Before the Chinese closed the border in the 1960s, Tibetan tribespeople were a frequent sight on these paths, trading wool for grain. In winter they reached Kathmandu to deal in precious stones, and their communal friendships with Nepalese merchants would be sealed by vows to Kailas and its holy lake.
Chinese regulations have destroyed these old partnerships, or driven them underground, and the goods entering Tibet from China have drastically tilted the trade balance. In exchange for Chinese manufactures–including alcohol–comes the clandestine trade in timber, and now, as the goats flood down the valley in a commotion of dust and bells, a caravan of thirty yaks and jhaboos is heading the other way, shouldering pine logs towards the pass. Beneath the yaks’ shaggy petticoats their tread is slow, almost delicate. Their heads stoop, as if overwhelmed by the weight of their massive horns. Their manes jangle with tasselled bells. They are all but immune to the snow that can bury the sheep and goats on these high passes, and the isolated police are either bribed or turn a blind eye to their passage.
We break camp as they go. The tatters of night rain hang about the valley to our east. Clouds like battle-smoke drift against the farther mountains, parting here and there to reveal disembodied crags and ridges. Above us the Nara pass is misted into the sky, and our track thins to a stony path that curves around the shoulder of a mountain we cannot see. We climb by shelves of lichened rock and shale, and hear the last snowmelt trickling alongside. The air feels wrong, as if it holds nothing in it. We are ascending 2,000 feet in less than three hours. For the first time I hear Iswor pant, whereas Ram, who comes from a region near Everest, blithely overtakes us and disappears into the mist. I shorten my steps, inhale deeper. I fear the first throbbing of altitude sickness, but feel nothing. We are approaching the 15,000-foot summit, but my breathless gasping, with its pang of memory, does not return.
An old Bhotia merchant descends towards us with two mules. As he draws near, he lets out a plaintive cry. He needs medicine. Pointing back to the pass where he has come, he touches his chest, coughs and chokes. It is the noise of an old engine trying to start up. Guiltily I hand him aspirin, which cannot palliate him. Iswor says: ‘I think no good.’ The trouble sounds deep inside the old man’s lungs or heart. He stoops his thanks and smiles sadly, hardily. I want to take him in my arms. He drives his mules on, without turning.