Bird Island

by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 21 Apr, 2019 | Journeys

This is Chapter 24 from my Tibet memoir in which I walk into the wilderness, stay a night with nomads and find a surprising level of comfort in a cave…

The road into the mountains got steeper and the truck got slower. As we approached the high pass we were crawling along at walking pace. The sky was covered with clouds but at the pass we got a glimpse of the sun before the truck began a reckless plunge down the other side. We were being shaken around so much that I felt we were two dice in a cup. The driver stopped at a lonely truck stop on the other side, at the start of the endless Changtang plateau.

The Austrian stayed at the truck stop and I carried on walking northwards, enjoying the mesmerising monotony of the flatlands. Eventually I was picked up by a bus, a knackered old claptrap, and chugged along the few miles to the next village – where the track to the lake began. I was told it would take two days to walk to the lake from this point on the main road, and it involved crossing a high mountain pass to the west, before dropping down onto another flat plain. There was a lively truck stop in the village where I ate delicious Chinese noodles, chatted to a friendly American couple and found a bed for the night. The Americans told hair-raising stories about travellers who had been savaged by dogs and advised me to take a strong stick in case of attack.

The next morning I was full of energy and, after finding an old axe shaft as protection against the dogs, I set off early. It took half a day to get up the mountain pass, from where I could see the plateau stretching out in all directions, with distant mountain ranges forming a jagged horizon. The lake I was heading for was visible – it looked huge – but after a full day of fast walking it didn’t seem to be getting any closer. I passed some nomads who were skulking around a black woollen tent and noticed that they were dressed in rough fur coats, belted at the waist and reaching the ground. Their huge guard dogs were barking viciously but were held back by ropes tied to stakes in the ground. Tibet was full of barking dogs and Lhasa was full of strays but these dogs were vast and they looked deadly. I wondered what they were protecting the nomads against? Wolves?

By early evening I had covered a huge distance but the lake still didn’t seem any closer. I stopped to rest near a nomad’s tent, not getting too close in case the dogs got angry enough to burst their bonds. The wind grew colder. A young nomad, wearing a one-piece fur belted at his waist, walked by and invited me into the circular tent, which was made of thick black wool. I could see penetrating eyes and when he smiled brilliant white teeth. He took me inside the tent and introduced me grandly to his petite wife and an old woman I presumed to be his mother, and a couple of naked children who were half hidden behind big wooden boxes. Apart from the granny, whose hair was white, they all had long, wild, matted, pitch-black hair. The wife was slim and youthful but there was a strange lump on her lower back, some sort of deformation I assumed. Moments later the lump moved and suddenly a shock of black hair appeared, two eyes, a nose and a mouth: it was a baby, living in the top part of her leather coat, held in place by a tight belt. What a brilliant way of keeping the baby close all day, while allowing the mother complete freedom to move around.

I left my boots and socks outside the entrance flap and stepped onto a mosaic of rugs that covered the whole area inside the tent, except for a little circle in the middle where a small fire burned. There was a hole in the top of the tent where smoke lazily poured out, but much of the smoke lingered and started to penetrate my clothes and hair. Wooden boxes and sacks were stacked all round the outer rim of the tent, forming a barrier against the cold and creating a cosy, cave-life feel in the middle. I wondered why they had so much stuff, what was in those boxes and how did they move them? And surely they moved frequently? They were nomads after all, living in a tent. Did all this stuff go on the backs of yaks?

Around the fire was a circular, narrow rim that was the only clutter-free area. This was where the family moved nimbly around and where we sat. The old woman seemed to be the busiest; feeding lumps of dried yak dung into the fire and shouting at the children. A large loping hound nosed its way into the tent, sniffed at me suspiciously and went back out again. Now that night had fallen, the dogs had been unleashed and were allowed to wander freely, providing a roving security barrier against intruders. The man produced a long wooden tube like a thin barrel, about four inches wide and four feet long. He filled it with hot tea, threw in a lump of rancid yak’s butter and some salt and started to mix it up and down with a long plunger, a stick with a flat round bit at the bottom – making sure that the tea and butter and salt were all mixed up well together. I was licking my lips in anticipation: this was dinner.

Darkness was approaching and I had to make a move: head out into the wilderness and find some shelter, or hope to get an invitation from this lot. I didn’t dare ask about staying the night but I gave my new friend an entrance ticket to the Potala, with a crude sketch of the palace on it, and his face lit up. He placed it on the family altar, alongside a small Buddha and a photo of the Dalai Lama. The old woman handed out bowls with disgusting looking black sausages but I refused mine, sticking to tsampa and tea. The man asked where I was going and when I acted out lake…birds…over there. He jumped up, pulled out a dagger and hacked the neck off a dead goat that was in one of the sacks. He presented me with this bloody, bony, grisly present with a huge smile – I could see it was an act of real generosity – and I wrapped it in a cloth and put it in my rucksack. They hadn’t invite me to stay as they had assumed all along that I would, and when the time came I lay down in my borrowed sleeping bag on a soft pile of dried yak dung and fell fast asleep. During the night I was awoken by a sound and I saw the man hopping nimbly over the clutter and out for a pee. He was stark naked and didn’t seem to notice that it was freezing outside.

The next morning I walked out towards the lake and reached it by the middle of the day. I then realised that Bird Island wasn’t an island at all, it was a peninsula; a huge lump of rock that stuck out of the plateau like a lone thumb. It was surrounded by water on three sides and was connected to the mainland by a narrow neck of land, an isthmus. The lake is called Namtso and it was as smooth as a mirror that day, deep blue and stretched out towards the horizon. An Austrian couple were camping by the lakeside and, hungry for conversation, I went over and sat by them. He was a middle-aged ecologist and I soon bored of his monotonous and rather depressing talk. His girlfriend was half his age, beautiful but not very chatty. This couple were seriously well-equipped and I admired their tent, boots, waterproofs, dehydrated food, rucksacks and cooking equipment, wondering if I would ever be able to afford gear like that. I told them that I didn’t have a tent and he suggested I walk to the other side of the rock where there was a small cave.

From where we were sitting it didn’t look far to the rock, but time and space had assumed a new meaning on this plateau and it wasn’t until evening that I found the cave, which had a rounded entrance hole about a metre off the ground. Even though the sun was going down it was warmer than it had been all day and the rock, which had been soaking up the rays all day, now shared its warmth. It had a soft carpeting of dried sheep dung, considerately arranged on a space that was just perfect to take my sleeping bag.

Some days before, in Yak Alley, the meat market in Lhasa, I had met a scruffy Englishman who had walked across Pakistan and Tibet and was en-route to Australia. His hair and beard were unkempt and he looked more grimy than the poorest Tibetan. His eyes were sparkling and he looked at peace with himself. His feet were black from the home-made sandals he had fashioned out of an old tyre – footwear that had lasted him thousands of miles. We got chatting and he told me that he never needed to spend money as people would give him food and shelter for free:

– Here in Tibet, he said, the people are the most generous I’ve come across anywhere. In the market they give me food – and money. He gave me some advice about cooking that I was now trying out in the cave:

– Take an old tin can and half-fill it with sand or dried earth. Pour in a small amount of petrol, light it and then cook your dinner. It worked perfectly; a small pot of water quickly boiled and before long my noodles were ready.

I was being watched. Outside the cave was a young, weather-beaten face staring at me. I finished my noodles, made some tea – and he was still there, still staring. I wondered if I was the first white man he’d seen? Was this his cave? I could see sheep grazing around him so presumably he was a shepherd. I started to get irritated as I realised that he wasn’t going to leave me in peace, he wasn’t going to be satisfied until I got into bed and it was too dark to see. I had to accept his presence. I realised that living in those tents, in such close proximity to one another, it’s understandable that nomads have no sense of privacy. What was strange about this character was that he made no attempt to communicate; he didn’t say a word, or make any gestures, and this was unlike most Tibetans I had come across. I wondered if this is typical of people who spend their whole lives with sheep and goats. Resigned to his presence, and realising he represented no threat, I made a show of taking out my sleeping bag, making sure he could see it properly, and settling down for the night. Before falling into a deep sleep I listened to the noises drifting across the plateau: animals moving far away and the wind playing strange games in the rocks.

The next morning I explored the area. What I thought had been one big rock at the side of the lake was actually two, looking like massive dinosaur eggs. Most of the part facing the plateau was a low cliff and as I walked towards the lake – about an hour away – I could see that there were more caves, and all sorts of intricate carvings made by the wind. Suddenly I came across two army trucks and a group of soldiers in green uniforms – all Tibetans – eating their breakfast. What on earth are they doing up here? I wondered. Giant crows were circling around overhead, making ominous cawing sounds. The soldiers were as surprised as I by the encounter and they beckoned me over. I didn’t hesitate, making a beeline for the trestle table that was laden with Chinese beer, cooked meats, cakes, fried biscuits and boiled sweets. It was an orgy! They had enough food to last a nomad family for months.

All afternoon I explored the lake side of the peninsula. There was a rocky beach and caves that were inhabited by serious, well-equipped foreigners. Two couples were lying in the intense sun, covered in white sun block cream. All they were wearing was sunglasses. None of them looked particularly friendly. That night I lay on my back on soft, golden dust and watched the stars. The sky was clear, we were at fourteen thousand feet and the stars were far brighter than I had ever seen them before. It was mesmerising.

Back at the cave I noticed that an intruder had been going through my things. My precious biscuits had been half-eaten and my stuff was scattered around. I’ve been burgled I thought, that thieving shepherd bastard! So that was his game! I frantically searched my rucksack and nothing was missing. Someone had told me that nomads are known for their honesty. Of course I realised, it was the sheep, they were the intruders – although they probably consider me to be the intruder as this is obviously their cave.

I spent almost a week up there, wandering around, acclimatizing to the altitude, trying to climb the rocks, relaxing. After a while the intense quality of the place became too much and I felt I lacked the experience needed to truly appreciate all this beauty. Part of me wanted to stay forever but I knew I had nothing to do and that boredom would soon come visiting. Whenever I saw couples who were travelling together there seemed to be a heavy atmosphere between them, as if they were still angry with each other since the last argument. When couples live together in an urban, western environment they both do their own things during the day. Out here they were stuck together all the time and it’s no surprise that they got thoroughly sick of each other.

#

This is an extract from 9 Months in Tibet — the eBook — which will be published soon. If you’d like to reserve a copy just email me at wolfemurray@gmail.com (or post a short comment under this article). To see feedback to the paperback edition, click here.

The travellers’ co-op in Lhasa

by Rupert Wolfe Murray | 20 Apr, 2019 | Journeys

This is Chapter 23 from my Tibet memoir which describes the most unusual Tourist Information Centre I’d ever come across…

Before the end of my first week Lhasa had me hooked and I knew I should stay, settle down for a while and find something to do. The finding of my hat impressed me deeply. I hadn’t expected to find it, since all my experience told me that when something is lost or stolen you don’t get it back. It made me re-think what is and isn’t possible. Could I apply this experience to something that seemed equally impossible, like getting a job? I needed to work, not only to make money but also to give a purpose for my presence in Lhasa.

But what could I possibly do in Tibet? I liked the idea of working on the restoration of a monastery and imagined myself filling in bullet holes that the rampaging Chinese had made in the murals during the Cultural Revolution, but the Chinese are a bureaucratic lot and I knew that I would fulfil none of the requirements even if a job was actually on offer. Also, it was obvious to see that the restoration work was being done by local tradesmen, who seemed to know exactly what they were doing, and the idea of them hiring a foreigner, even a volunteer, would have raised gales of laughter. The only relevant qualification that I possessed was a certificate in the teaching of English but the only experience I actually had was correcting the essays of a student in Vienna.

One of the advantages of being a foreigner in a place like Tibet is that people will let you in where you shouldn’t really be. I would walk into the various hotels and hostels and everyone working there would assume I was just another guest. In one such hotel I found myself in a corridor that was lit by a single light-bulb. Light was coming out of an open door and I looked in to see a large, thin, middle-aged man writing on little pieces of paper. I stood there watching him, noticing the white streaks in his long blond, thinning hair. He stuck one of the little bits of paper onto a small basket with a lid on it. The word STOMACH had been written on the bit of paper with a red marker pen.

I stepped into the room and tried to attract his attention, but he was deeply concentrating on the next label:

– What are you doing? I asked. He glanced up with a look of annoyance; I had interrupted him.

– I help foreigners who get sick or need help, he snapped in an upper class English accent. Was he some kind of doctor?

The next day I returned to the same room and the scene had changed: there was no sign of the man with the long thinning hair but there was a lady talking fast in an English accent to a room packed full of foreign travellers. I also noticed that the room was lined with shelves, each one full of books. What was this place? The foreigners were bombarding the lady with questions about travelling in Tibet and nobody noticed as I squeezed through and found somewhere to sit on a disused bed. She was middle-aged, and kindly looking, with long blonde hair, spectacles and faded flower-power clothes. She was talking loudly to the assembled mob about monasteries, opening times, prices, bus tickets, routes and what to do about diarrhoea.

I wasn’t interested in any of this information but I found the whole scene bizarre and fascinating and realised that she was running some sort of information centre. I listened carefully to the endless flow of information and joined in one of the conversations, involving five people, and managed to steer it in the direction of finding work locally. She explained in an aside that she was an underpaid, overworked English teacher in Lhasa and I popped the question:

– Any English teaching jobs?

– No, and there are unlikely to be any in the future but if you leave your name on a bit of paper we’ll get in touch if anything comes up.

Back at the Pemba truck stop things were getting chaotic. Now that the hot summer weather was over the real pilgrim season had begun, and crowds of tribesmen were turning up on overloaded lorries, many of whom would appear at the Pemba demanding a bed for the night. The din at midnight was incredible and I remembered how noisy my brothers and I had been after moving into Edinburgh from the Scottish countryside; people with no neighbours have no concept of keeping the noise down. Somehow I managed to sleep. The Hong Kong group were bristling with irritation and I could tell that they didn’t find these newcomers as interesting as I did; they obviously saw them as a noisy rabble. When they started complaining to the manager about the noise and the filth I started to distance myself from my former allies.

My dreams became powerful and vivid. I dreamt that my skin had been destroyed by fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear accident, an event that had shocked the world a few months earlier. A vile apparition – a skinned camel – appeared in my dreams as an argument raged nearby and doors were slammed. I admired the audacity and freedom of these Tibetans but realised that, as a foreigner, I was at a great distance from them. In my dreams I rode with them across the prairie and shared their wild women.

I would recover from the chaos of Pemba by spending a bit of time every day in the middle-class calm of the travellers information centre – a place that was known as The Travellers’ Co-op. I persisted in hassling the talkative blonde, whose name was Isabella, about a teaching job and she introduced me to an old American professor called Robert Morse – a Tibetan scholar, polyglot, veteran world traveller and English teacher at Tibet University. He explained that Tibet University was a very new creation; it was small, underfunded, badly managed, had very few students and the two English teachers were recruited in Beijing. At last I felt like I was making some progress, finding out some information, sowing seeds. If I was patient and persistent things would work out.

The ongoing drama at the Pemba took a new turn when the irate manager and his harem of rent-collecting women appeared in the dormitory early one morning and ordered the Hong Kong group to leave immediately. The beefy women moved in on their rucksacks, with every intention of throwing them into the street, and the Hong Kongers leaped up, screamed hysterically and started struggling with the women for the possession of the baggage. I was watching all this from under a dirty sheet, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, hoping I wouldn’t get the heave too – and with absolutely no intention of helping. Pandemonium reigned but the Tibetan women were winning and the Hong Kong group were gradually forced out of the room, with sleeping bags trailing after them. Suddenly my sheet was roughly ripped off and I was exposed; fingers were pointed and a volley of abuse hurled my way but I stayed put and for some reason they didn’t grab my rucksack, hurl it down the stairs and order me out. The woman standing over me was called over to the main struggle which was now taking place on the staircase. They never came back for me.

That same night a violent storm hit Lhasa and, with four windows overlooking the town, I was ideally placed to observe it. Bolts of lightning lit up the landscape and the roar of thunder, echoed by the surrounding mountains, was louder than anything I had ever experienced. It rocked the building and shocked all the noisy pilgrims in the room into a timid, cowering silence. Torrential rain was hurled against the windows with a demonic fury that seemed intent on destroying us. The wind tore at the roof and battered the windows until one of them exploded in fragments of glass. Energised by the storm, I moved from window to window to get the best view. The street outside had become a river and water was pouring off our roof in furious, spitting arcs, from gutters that were extended about a metre from the edges of the roof. Water was spraying through the broken window and nobody else was making a move to stop it so I found a blue cotton sheet and held it to the window to try and stop the rain pouring in. I got soaked immediately, as did the sheet, and the wind seemed to grab and shake me as if I were a rag doll. Floods had formed all over the floor and other windows were being burst open. We were helpless.

As the storm reached the height of its fury a huge lightning bolt, far thicker than anything I had seen yet, shot down. Unlike the other lightning bolts, this one didn’t go into the ground; it shot back up towards the clouds and formed a massive u-shape in the sky. The whole landscape was brilliantly illuminated for about half a second. The image that was forever burned into my retina was the building directly under the u-shaped bolt of lightning: the Potala Palace, revealed for a moment in a mosaic of gold and red and white colours, a massive fort-like structure that was sitting on its own little hill.

The following day I was surprised to see that the city was still intact and not much damage had been done. I felt we had survived an aerial bombardment, but the Tibetans were going about their business as if nothing had happened at all. Presumably they were used to this kind of weather and I wondered what a big storm meant for them spiritually; their temples were full of demons and dragons and I imagined we had met one of them the previous night.

Lhasa was becoming surprisingly hectic and I needed some silence. I became more aware of time: my visa was running out and if I didn’t make a move soon there wouldn’t be enough time to reach Shanghai, or see anything more of Tibet. I had done my best to find a job but was under no illusions that I could actually get one. Where could I go and visit? I should try and see some of Tibet before leaving. I started asking the travellers, all of whom were keen to share their knowledge. There seemed to be two main options: the Everest Base Camp, back down the road I had already travelled, and a big lake up north. The Everest option seemed too touristy so I opted for the lake which was on a huge plateau populated by nomads. I borrowed some camping equipment and walked out of town.

Unlike the road I had travelled along from Kathmandu, the road north into China was paved with tarmac. It was also full of military convoys: lines of trucks, each one packed with soldiers or covered in green tarpaulin; none of whom ever stopped for me. Lhasa is located on a narrow strip of flat land but it is surrounded by mountains and once you cross these you reach a high plateau that stretches out into the horizon. They call this plain the Changtang, the Northern Plateau.

Other foreigners were heading out of town that day and I was determined to get ahead of them so I marched as fast as I could, across the short plain and into the hills. Eventually a flat-bed truck stopped and I climbed up, noticing that a middle-aged foreigner had already installed himself. I stood on the tailgate for a while, holding the metal bar, feeling the wind on my face and enjoying the fact that I was on the move again. Then I went to talk to the foreigner, an elderly Austrian:

– Nettles, he said, are the only survivors in this area of overgrazing. There are no wild flowers up here anymore and the grass is disappearing. The Chinese have doubled the population of yaks and this fragile ecosystem can’t take it. Soon there will only be dust.

#

This is an extract from 9 Months in Tibet — the eBook — which will be published soon. If you’d like to reserve a copy just email me at wolfemurray@gmail.com (or post a short comment under this article). Click here to see feedback to the paperback edition.