Susan Griffith-Jones

Kathmandu:

I looked into the sky… it was already midday yet the half moon was lingering above the Kunjerab pass that marks the official border with China. We were still only halfway between the two customs posts that are around 400 km apart. We had encountered a heavy drugs control squad at the Pakistan customs/border and one police officer had accompanied our minivan as it drove through the deep gorgeous gorges of the Hunza valley. High towers of ochre coloured rock supported waterfalls that gushed down into a fast flowing river below, lush with minerals.

It seemed that no one spoke English in Xinjiang and the Mandarin Chinese phrasebook we had with us became our lifeline. “The bus may leave tomorrow morning if there are enough passengers or you can share a taxi to Kashgar,” they told us at the border.

Whizzing along the excellent highway that leads to Kashgar, the taxi driver flipped down the sunshade on the passenger seat to reveal a miniscreen. Inserting a CD into the machine at his side, “The Adventures of Mr Bean” came into full display on the screen. There in the film was the English countryside that I had grown up in. What contrasting landscape of deserted mountain plains populated by occasional groups of brightly coloured tribespeople we could see from the taxi window. “Just a larger movie screen,” we commented. The taxi driver stopped a moment and we got out to stand at a spot on one stretch of the road. A taxi carrying two foreign passengers coming from Kashgar to the border yesterday had plunged into the river below. They had all died. We made prayers for them and remembered our own fragility. Kashgar had the resemblance of a Soviet city, white washed, block like architecture combined with a heavy atmosphere of material predominance lingered. We felt less safe here. Limited as we were to communicating via the phrasebook, we came to discover that the Uigur people (pronounced ‘Wee-gur’) are the locals living here. They have their own language written in an Arabic script and their dress is a peculiar mix. In a way, one expects this at a place that has been a crossroad of civilisations for centuries.

The women were dressed differently to how we had been used to in Pakistan, India and Nepal. Suddenly legs had appeared from the knee length dresses that looked like the leftover eveningwear of the 1970’s sent to the outposts of the country. We saw them seated on the back of the many donkey-and-carts that are the predominant method of transportation here, wearing what looked for us like long sparkly nightdresses cum evening dresses, dangling their legs over the edge, elegantly sporting pairs of high heels. They covered their heads with brightly coloured sparkly scarves. It was a joyful scene and we felt more at ease out in the countryside.

We had come to the end of our passage on the Silk Road. Now we were to turn off south for Tibet. We had hoped to catch a bus, but the next one was leaving only after five days. We waved down each vehicle at it passed, but not one would stop for us. Then, one man driving a motorised trailer cart full of lettuces and tomatoes let us onto the back. For around 40 kilometres we traveled slowly through the valley, eating those delicious tomatoes with four round breads. Open to the air, we felt fully part of the scene.

We had changed trailer after the lettuce van had reached its destination, but the new one was not as fit. The engine was starting to smoke and the road was climbing higher and higher. We had to get off and walk. The driver was also becoming hot under the collar and when the Chinese petrol tanker stopped in the middle of that rugged mountain road to pick us up, any of the possible risks of hitching with them did not seem relevant.

The trailer driver demanded double payment from us as to what we had previously agreed. We felt cheated, but after a bit of discussion, we gave him the fee he wanted and jumped into the truck. We negotiated the fare of the lift to Ali, our next destination with the drivers of the truck and for whatever use it may have been, we got them to sign a written paper with the name of the place and the amount we should pay next to it. They had witnessed the incident with the driver of the trailer and enjoyed the humour of it.

We had still to pass though much mountainous terrain before reaching the next sign of habitation that evening and we realized that it could have been a very uncomfortable night ahead had we stayed on the trailer. We were now to happily live the life of Chinese truck drivers for the next seven days on the road to Kailash. Finally we felt that we were almost there.

The next day we were to find ourselves part of a three-truck rescue team for another petrol tanker that had fallen on its side from the road. It took around four hours to get it out before we were on our way. A truck of Chinese soldiers stopped as we were waiting at the site of the accident. “Ali?” they asked. It seems to be a full gone conclusion that the few foreigners traveling on this road are on their way to Ali, the first city within the Autonomous Region of Tibet. The soldiers are young lads, many are from cities far away and this is their first taste of adventure. Higher up on the road a few days later, we were to see them throwing snowballs at each other on the flat plateau near their camp.

We were losing all track of time and direction as were traveling that road. It seemed that we were passing through different colour blends of one rocky pass to another, prayer flags drumming out their wind beat at each. We skirted lakes and drove through the beds of rivers where there was no official road. The first night, Nuria and I slept in the front of the truck, but we then discovered that truck drivers generally sleep on long benches inside the small wooden buildings of the little towns, rows of them wrapped in blankets. We too discovered little guest rooms inside these shed like houses at each stopping point. Eating was becoming harder as the variety of food available was becoming less and the diet was predominantly meat based and we, vegetarians.

We had been coining the phrase “When we get to Ali” for a long time now and it was there that we had intended to make phone calls, send e-mails and make our last preparations for Kailash, the next stop on from there. Just before arriving in the city the drivers told us that they too were going to pass the holy mountain the next day and that we could continue with them. Once again we saw that our planning had come to failure as we spun through the streets of the modern Chinese city arising like an oasis in this otherwise desolate landscape.

(to be concluded)

Susan has been living in The Valley for more than three years. Apart from being an intrepid traveller, she is a research scholar with CNAS, Tribhuvan University, a student of Buddhism, freelance filmmaker and a mother of two beautiful children.