The Hotel on the Roof of the World (13 page)

‘No heating,' he beamed back at them. ‘Yes, really, no heating, it is true,' he continued.

I was about to step in when I heard a low rumble in the distance and the splutter of a cold engine approaching the hotel car park. The pack of dogs that had been curled up asleep between the revolving doors started growling and the security guard at the hotel entrance woke from his slumber. A Beijing jeep with one headlight swung into the hotel forecourt.

‘Dasang-la,' Mark called out, ‘he is our ride to the mountain.'

I left the grumbling guests in the lobby to the cheerful explanations of the night receptionist, and climbed aboard the Beijing jeep. Dasang greeted us with the Tibetan smile which is forthcoming whatever the time of day and no matter how low the temperature may be. His face was the typical rugged face of the Tibetans, shaped by the severe conditions of scorching sun and freezing nights. The deep creases in his forehead folded even deeper as he questioned whether we really wanted to go to a mountain at five o'clock in the morning. He had found it hard to understand why these strange Westerners should want to do such a thing, but Mark assured him he would be paid well and that was reason enough for him to rise at this ungodly hour and bring out his work unit's Beijing jeep on his one day of rest.

I had thought Toyota Landcruisers were rough enough on the Lhasa roads but they were the height of luxury compared with the rattle of a Beijing jeep. Known by the NGOs as ‘boneshakers', Beijing jeeps have a remarkable lack of suspension which is all the more noticeable when they are driven at take-off velocity by Tibetan drivers. We sped through the town of Lhasa, grinding through the gears as we approached the Lhasa Bridge, swinging into a westward turn and off the tarmac onto the dirt track along the south side of the Kyi Chu. A quarter moon hung over the horizon revealing the outline of the distant mountains and we relied on this weak moonlight together with Dasang's one headlight to guide us along the dirt road.

Without warning, the track ended with a 6-foot drop into a hole scooped out by mud diggers. Dasang just managed to see the shadow of the excavated pit by the light of his headlight and skidded to an impressive halt on the brink of the crater. We didn't recognise the Tibetan words he used but the meaning was clear enough. By day, mud diggers plundered the river banks, carting away barrow loads of mud to shape and dry into adobe bricks for building walls and houses. The last set of overenthusiastic mud diggers had dug straight through the main road.

Dasang wound his way between a minefield of craters and axle-scraping stream beds, before he eventually found a track that led us back up the river bank and straight towards a military camp. Mark and I exchanged glances. The National Day alert had passed without incident, but foreigners were not exactly encouraged to go prying inside military camps. Security was still a top priority of the Chinese and two foreigners found in a secret military installation before dawn would have a lot of explaining to do. Dasang continued straight through the gate without stopping. Two armed guards, standing to attention on sentry posts, saluted as we passed. Our Beijing jeep was exactly the same make and model as those used by the military; however, a glance at the number plate would have shown that we were in a civilian car.

Dasang told us in sign language that he knew there was an exit through the far end of the camp. We drove on past bleary-eyed soldiers who stood around the entrance to their single-storey barrack huts. Some stood shivering with enamel wash bowls, while others bent over standpipes with foaming toothbrushes. Mark and I held our heads back in the dark shadows of the jeep as Dasang swung into the main courtyard and his one headlight panned across a long row of howitzers. A thought crossed our minds that the only fate worse than being caught in the middle of a Chinese military camp before dawn, would be to find ourselves in the middle of Chinese live ammunition howitzer manoeuvres on the mountainside just after dawn. We peered out of holes in the hood of the jeep: the mounted guns were well wrapped up for the cool weather and looked like they were going to stay that way for some time. As we neared the camp exit a group of young Chinese soldiers approached the jeep. Mark and I sat in silence. Dasang kept his speed up and as we passed through the gates the soldiers stood to attention and saluted.

With the mud diggers' craters and the military behind us, we could at last relax as much as the Beijing jeep's suspension allowed us to, for the drive on to the Tibetan village of Lu. Mark had calculated that we should start the trek from the village of Tsugar, which lay somewhere to the south of Lu, away from the river. All we needed to do was turn left when we arrived at the cluster of huts that formed the village of Lu. Dasang tried several left turns but all ended in cul de sacs, in a maze of low stone and mud walls. Heaps of dried yak dung stacked in herring bone patterns lined the tops of the walls and the roofs of the squat houses were piled high with winter fodder (gathered from the recent harvest).

Cockerels crowed in the pre-dawn, aware that night was drawing to a close. At the third dead end, surrounded by pigs and chickens, Dasang knocked on the door of a cowshed to ask for directions. Although the village cockerels were crowing, no one in the village seemed particularly anxious to wake up and it took Dasang some time to find a friendly villager who pointed the way to Tsugar where Mark and I would start our trek. Dasang squeezed his Beijing jeep between the whitewashed walls of two cowsheds and we drove uphill at a gravity-defying angle towards Tsugar until he admitted that the jeep would go no further. We arranged that he would return for us to the same spot in thirteen and a half hours' time, at 7 p.m.

The cockerels may have known that day was around the corner but there was no sign of it in the night sky. The quarter moon had dipped over the horizon and we were left with the light from the stars and two pocket torches to guide us on the first part of the ascent.

We stumbled across the pebbles of a stream bed and found a small track leading up the main gully. Mark had planned the route while driving along the Lu road on trips for SCF and had estimated that we needed to follow the gully to the south, turn up the third grassy knoll to the right, arrive at a hanging valley high between the peaks and that our goal – the big one – would be at the end of the hanging valley. Simple.

Despite our determined paces and strong step, we soon lost the track – a habit which was to be a hallmark of all our expeditions together – and instead followed the stream, which he estimated would lead us up towards the hanging valley. In the dark it was hard to make out exactly where we were going and when, at long last, we arrived at the foot of a grassy knoll, we were more than happy to start climbing up, away from the deafening noise of the stream. When first light came, at 7.45, we made a discovery. We had started our climb up a grassy knoll too early and were nowhere near the mountain where we had expected to be.

We should have been directly beneath the hanging valley but instead we faced a craggy mountainside of rock outcrops and boulders, half a mile to the east. Neither of us wanted to waste the hard-earned height which we had gained. We would just have to approach the hanging valley by traversing the boulder scree. Walking became increasingly difficult as we rose in altitude. Each step higher took its toll.

The start of a walk in the mountains always has the effect of opening up the mind. The triviality of all the petty problems of work is brought to light and mundane worries and concerns are left far behind. The mind is free to ponder matters of greater significance, and many a global problem has been solved by trekkers in the first hour of their day.

By 6:30 a.m. Mark and I had sorted out the problems of Tibet, the country had been peacefully un-liberated, the Dalai Lama was back in the Potala Palace, global warming had been stopped and there was never to be war anywhere again. But after several thousand steps higher into the rarefied atmosphere – with previously unknown muscles now strongly objecting to being brought into use – the mind focuses on something that becomes an even greater concern than the destruction of the world: the placement of one foot in front of the other. Approaching 16,000 feet, talking is limited to short bursts between heaving lungfuls of air and the mind slips away from conscious thought. A methodical rhythm sets in. Breathe. Step. Breathe. Step. Breathe. Step.

A party of Himalayan Griffon vultures, the largest raptor of the Himalayas, circled above us as we stopped for a rest. We were the intruders on their mountain and they eyed us with curiosity. We took off our rucksacks, and unpacked a thermos of coffee while they quartered the hillside around us, unafraid of our presence. These vultures are used to humans, as they gather every day at dawn for their human breakfast.

The Tibetans have a method of disposing of their dead which may seem slightly unconventional in Western culture but in reality is a highly practical method: bodies are taken out at dawn, laid out on a large rock, cut up by a specialist butcher into tiny pieces and fed to the vultures. This is known somewhat romantically as a ‘sky burial'. The vultures sit around the sky burial rock in a strict pecking order and it is said that they are so well behaved that they will take pieces of meat from the butcher when he calls them forward by name. The vultures in Tibet have as much incentive to go out and search for dead mice on the mountainsides as the pigeons of Trafalgar Square need to search for wild grain.

There are other burial options in Tibet but they are not so popular. ‘Water burials', following the basic technique of dropping bodies into the river, tend to be only for the poorest and for very young children, and fortunately for those living down stream, water burials are not very common. At the top end of the range are cremations but these, due to the scarcity of wood and good burning yak dung, are only reserved for the highest dignitaries and lamas.

On the face of it, the sky burial may seem a bit gruesome, but in fact it is a highly ecologically sound method of disposing of the dead. What better way for the body to be returned to the earth than directly as vulture droppings? In these days when we should be looking after the planet, the Tibetan system of interaction between man and nature certainly wins over our selfish Western method of wasting good land to house the dead in wooden boxes.

More birds are becoming urbanised in the West; kestrels nest in tower blocks, gulls on rooftops, but I doubt we will see a new breed of Urban Griffons circling over the undertakers of our cities.

The Himalayan Griffons lost interest in us when they saw that we were still moving. ‘You'll have to wait!' we called after them as they soared higher, catching a ride on a thermal to the rugged cliff tops above us. We made the coffee last as long as possible to delay the next part of our route. We had arrived at the point where we could walk no further but had to scramble across the boulders that would lead us to the hanging valley. Giant slabs of rock, cemented together by earth that had settled between them over thousands of years, stood in our path. Recharged from the coffee, we shouldered our packs and climbed onto the first slab of granite.

After only five paces we were exhausted again. The altitude meter read 17,000 feet (5,150 m) and our breathing told us that our lungs were requiring far more oxygen than when we had started the walk. We had been following the pattern of resting for ten minutes in every hour but the gaps between the rests grew shorter and the rests grew longer. The boulders, which we had estimated would take 30 minutes, took us two hours to cover. Mountain hares were our only companions, darting beneath boulders when they saw us approaching. The Himalayan Griffons had settled higher up against the rugged cliffs, where they would remain for their afternoon siesta to digest breakfast.

At one o'clock we jumped from the last slab onto the top of the grassy knoll directly beneath the mouth of the hanging valley. A few paces higher, over frozen turf which cracked underfoot and we stood at the valley entrance. The sight was breathtaking: a giant with a butter knife had scooped out a perfectly rounded hollow from the top of the mountain range and dragged his knife along to the top of the grassy knoll. OK, so it could also have been a glacier that made the shape, but in Tibet you are allowed to explain natural phenomena in any manner of supernatural ways.

The sunburnt pasture of the hanging valley, neatly cut in two by the line of a frozen stream, gave out into boulder moraine and then to the jagged rocks of our goal. What we had gazed at longingly from the National Day banquet, as a speck on the horizon over the shoulder of the Vice Governor of Tibet, now stood before us, larger than life, with ice between the boulders glistening in the strong sunshine.

We stopped for a long rest, sitting amongst the dead flower heads of gentians and primulas that must carpet the pasture in vibrant colours in the summer. The city of Lhasa was way below, spread out before us in a living map. Flickering gold in the sunlight revealed the site of the Jokhang temple roofs. Beyond the gold, tiny dots of army trucks moved along the straight line of the road to the military hospital. Just to the right, the freshly whitewashed triangle of the cluster of buildings forming Sera monastery stood out against the parched foothills.

The summer rains had long since departed and the Kyi Chu River was drying up to its winter trickle. Swirls of sandbanks and pebble beaches stretched away to the west, past the monument to the unknown road builder and between military camps to the river junction where the Kyi Chu flows into Brahmaputra. The gold and ochre of the Potala palace could be seen rising from the valley floor next to Chagpori, the iron hill, where the Tibetan medical college once stood. The college had been a centre of heavy fighting in the 1959 ‘uprising of the reactionary upper strata' and has since been replaced by an attractive television mast, bringing the benefits of Chinese television to Tibetan nomads and yaks. Another great leap forward.

We looked out at the mountains across the Lhasa valley and saw that we were now at the same height as the summits of the neighbouring ranges. A sense of achievement came over us. Were we the first people to have climbed to this remote hanging valley? Had any human footsteps trod amongst the gentle grasses which lined this high-altitude meadow?