Susan Griffith-Jones

Kathmandu:

I looked into the sky… it was black over Islamabad as we were driving along the highway from Lahore. Large raindrops were starting to splash onto the window of the bus. We had been watching a Hindi movie in which the heroine had died and the hero went mad. “Great teaching,” we agreed as we thought of the tribulations of relationships.

Davor had not shown up in Amritsar so our meeting point had been switched to Taxila. Being without our male protection in Pakistan had provoked some discussion about how we should dress as two women traveling alone there. Later we were to laugh at how we had seriously considered wearing the full-length robe, the burkha, traditionally worn by Muslim women. We were to discover that relatively few women actually do wear this, preferring instead a Punjabi style dress with their heads loosely covered by a shawl. We too respectfully covered our heads.That night we stayed in a grotty motel on the outskirts of Islamabad from where we caught one of the frequent buses traveling along the main road to Peshawar the next morning. It dropped us by the side of the busy highway around an hour away. We were astonished at how beautifully the vehicles were painted; trucks, petrol tankers, cars and buses so colourfully donning pictures of animals, birds of prey, symbols and other drawings. I was reminded of the inherent artistic nature of these people.

A colourful motorised rickshaw dropped us at the site of the Taxila museum situated a few kilometres from the main road. Once a flourishing centre on the Ancient Silk route, Taxila’s history is now preserved in its museum. Taken back into a world of Ghandava tradition by the many items on display, we imagined the great military force of Alexander the Great arriving here. Blocked by the mighty Indus and content with the beautiful land and people they had found, they declared they would go no further. Roughly half the army returned to Macedonia, whilst the rest remained here to create a new race of people — half Asian, half European, the Ghandavas.

Sitting on top of the ancient Dhamarajika stupa in the vicinity of Taxila, one of the many ancient Vajrayana stupas for which the area is notorious, brought me home to the busy stupa of Boudhhanath in Kathmandu. I could imagine the previous bustle of the old town that lay below us in ruins. The guard of the place had hounded us for money upon entrance and as we had bought a ticket to the museum meant to include all the sites of the area, we had refused to pay. He took off his thick policeman’s belt and beckoned to us to follow him. We did so at a reasonable distance. He ironically led us to the ruins of the old prison cells of the place. He was a tall, well-built man, like many of the men of this region, who have inherited their tall, fair looks from their Greek ancestors. “Do you think he wants to whip us for not paying,” we wondered whilst passing through the ruins of the old law courts and marketplace. Eventually we reached the top of the stupa. He disappeared. We felt relieved but he returned to give us each a beautiful feather. We laughed hysterically at the play of events as we recognised our misinterpretation of his intention. Urgyen had informed us that his friend’s father was the stationmaster at the railway station of Taxila and that evening we duly went to look for him. We found the fellow, who replied he didn’t know the location of the house. “But he is your son,” we replied and laughing, he understood that we had mistaken his identity for the former stationmaster who had now retired. He pointed to a house across the way.

When we arrived the family was in evening prayer. The friend turned out to be a Sufi scholar and historian of the area. He passed us much information and strongly advised us to visit the lake of Khanpur, 15 km from Taxila. It is locally believed to be the lake of the birth of a famous Indian saint, commonly known as “Guru Rinpoche” or “Padmasambhava”, who brought Buddhism to Tibet.

The next morning, we went there inside a beautifully pai-nted local bus. As we glided out into the centre of the lake in a small fishing boat, I thought about his renowned birth from the heart of a lotus flower and looked at the mo-rning sunrays bouncing on a gently swelling surface of water. I had previously been under the impression that the lake was elsewhere in Swat valley, also known as Udiyana, located to the northwest of where we were right now. “Here or not, this place feels like paradise,” I thought to myself. Today was Chokor Duchen, the Tibetan Buddhist celebration that remembers the first teaching of the Buddha. Later that afternoon, we entered Swat valley. Like a bowl, you have to enter through mountain passes to come in and out of it. This was the area that we had been most warned about. Many say that it is home to the Taliban and gunfaring warlords with private armies. On route, we passed through seemingly innocent territory, hilly countryside housing farming communities and much produce in the green, fertile fields fed by the water of the Indus as it flows crystal blue-green through the valley. Greeted by the beautiful, humble, shining faces of the locals, one feels positively welcomed and we realised that we were not going to find any trouble here. The shops are full of nuts, fruit, meat, vegetables and different cloths. There are more than 2,400 ancient stupas in this valley, many of which are in the round, traditional Hinayana shape.

In Udegram, the ruins of an ancient Ghandavan town, I was to receive some coins from a kind man who showed us around. In Pakistan, the men wear a kind of white pyjama dress. It seems like they are in uniform but suits them well. He introduced us to his wife and elderly mother, who held my hand, her mala beads clacking in the other. I felt great warmth between us. No barriers of race or religion were present. A local bus took us through another great pass and out onto the Karakoram highway at Besham. Finally we had met with this great road that snakes its way to China through the rugged mountainous north of the country. Richard and Davor had left a message at the agreed place. They were in Islamabad, but Davor still had tooth problems. We should go ahead. “Okay, so we’re meant to do it alone; next meeting point is Kailash… maybe,” we joked. This was to be the end of sweet milk tea for us. The comfort and ease of traveling in Pakistan had instilled us with confidence, but now the journey was to take on a new tempo as we headed north into the high mountains of the gorgeous Hunza valley and on to China where green tea and salty butter tea were awaiting us.

(to be continued)

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.