The Hotel on the Roof of the World (28 page)

She was not at all worried by the delay. On the contrary, the small outhouse had been used by pilgrims as a hostel for the night and she had been made very welcome by the innkeeper and offered yak-butter tea and
tsampa
for breakfast. She had been greeted by every one of the thousands of pilgrims who were carrying on up the path next to the inn. I had to drag her away as she was enjoying it so much. I pointed out that she only had to move around the corner to find a perfect view of the
thangka
wall.

Another hour and a half passed before the rain stopped and the ceremony could begin. Prayers were said by the head Shengo of Drepung, who sat in splendid red robes at the base of the slope. Masked dancers spun around on a small flattened area in front of the Shengo and piles of incense were lit on the hillside. A line of monks came from the monastery carrying the rolled-up
thangka
. Ropes were thrown down by the monks at the top of the wall and attached to the uppermost edge of the
thangka
which was then hoisted to the top. A thin white covering was then drawn off from above and the multi-coloured silk pattern of Buddhas was unveiled. It was an awesome moment. From above the
thangka
, two Tibetan horns held high on a dragon yoke blasted eerie sounds across the valley. Cymbals clashed. The smell of burning juniper and incense hung in the air.
Khatas
, the white offering scarves, cascaded forwards down the hillside, thrown by the devout Tibetans. Wherever a
khata
dropped to the ground, it was picked up and thrown a few yards closer until it was finally thrown onto the
thangka
itself. The same process as toilet rolls being thrown onto the pitch at a football match but somewhat more meaningful.

For Miss Houghton, it had been an experience unrivalled in her eighty-one years. A trip to Tibet is not just a holiday, it is an ‘experience' – something which stays with you forever. Goldie Hawn had found just this experience when she watched the full moon-rise over the roof of the Jokhang temple and had wished aloud, ‘Oh, if only Kurt could be here.'

Not all the experiences are good ones. Harrison Ford experienced the food in the Himalayan restaurant and spent the following day running much faster than is advisable at high altitude.

For some the ‘experience' was greater than they had anticipated. A group of wealthy Americans dropped in to the hotel on a stopover from their world tour. There were nearly a hundred of them on the trip and each had paid a staggering $34,000 for the thirty-seven-day journey. It made the English car rally look like a cheap package holiday. They had been whisked around the wonders of the world in their own private jet – all except for Lhasa where they had to catch the rotten-cabbage-smelling CAAC up from Kathmandu. They were a big success with our staff who could not believe that people like this really existed. They minced painfully across the lobby, faces stretched taut after the third or fourth lift and fingers weighed down with gold bullion and large chunks of stone.

They were in such a state of shock that they were quite easy guests to look after. We put a new menu item on for them – iced tea – but had to take it off again when we found that the waitresses served it as a cup of steaming tea with an ice cube floating in the middle. Their only major complaint was the lack of ‘bathroom tissue' in the toilets opposite the Hard Yak Cafe. This was certainly a problem. No matter how often Charlie checked the toilets, the toilet paper was always missing. In peak season we were losing twenty-three rolls a day. Was it due to the Giant Yak Burgers served just across the corridor, the Himalayan Restaurant next door, or was someone walking off with them? We thought of placing a security guard on the door to frisk guests coming out but decided against it. There could have been another explanation. At the same time that Charlie reported the missing toilet rolls in the Morning Meeting, Harry passed around the VIP list. This was usually a very dull piece of paper – a few diplomats, occasionally a film star, important tour operators and the like. But on the morning of the highest toilet roll loss, the VIP list included the name of an official from the South Korean Embassy in Beijing – a Mr Li Kee Bum.

It was not only the toilet rolls that went missing. Although the finger of blame was never pointed at Mr Li Kee Bum, the teaspoons suffered a similar fate. They disappeared. So too did the salt and pepper pots. Not only did this add to the expense of running the hotel, but it was impossible to buy replacements in Tibet. But we were not too concerned about the comments on the lack of teaspoons, or that this news appeared in the
New York Times
and on the front page of the
International Herald Tribune
– it was the end of the season and we could relax once more.

We had survived. The summer profits had made up for the losses of the winter and occupancy was down again to manageable levels. Barba just had one thing left to accomplish – the opening of his beloved swimming pool. He had nearly finished his studies and although he had not been fired he was happy that he had given Holiday Inn a good run for their money. The expats had worked together as never before –
Paris Match
even labelled the team as,
‘l'equipe de choc'.
They typed out their CVs, eagerly looking for their next assignments.

As the summer season came to an end, Harry announced the latest figures in the Morning Meeting: ‘Last night fifty-eight per cent. Today fifty-seven per cent. Tomorrow fifty-two per cent.' We were caught off guard by a lengthy speech by Mr Pong – there is only so long you can hold your breath when you live 2.5 miles above sea-level – and waited for the translation from Heather.

‘Mr Pong says the live seafood arrives today.'

‘Seafood?' Barba exclaimed. ‘The nearest sea is a thousand kilometres away over the Himalayas, what do we want seafood for?' Heather translated.

‘You ordered it,' was the reply from Mr Pong.

It appeared that ‘seafood' was the translation for ‘fish' which Mr Han had ordered on his purchasing trip in the spring. Now we understood why we had received a shipment of broken shards of glass from CAAC which was marked ‘aquarium'.

‘
Live
seafood?' Barba queried. ‘Where do you propose we put it?'

Heather translated the simple answer, ‘We can use the swimming pool.'

Barba held on to the table and started to shake. Jig Me quickly suggested the fountain in the forecourt would be a better solution and adjourned the meeting.

At 11 a.m. a truck pulled in to the courtyard and emptied the tanks of water, which it had brought up over the mountains from Chengdu, into the fountain. A security guard was posted to them and a constant stream of onlookers turned up to see these curious animals alive in Lhasa. There were crabs and crayfish, eels, catfish and five little terrapins. They seemed to be freshwater fish, not ‘seafood', but they were not very happy and started to die off rather soon. The only animals which were surviving well were the terrapins but these were quickly dispatched and put aside for a Chinese banquet.

Shortly after the delivery of the fish, a second lorry arrived with two unmarked barrels. They were unloaded at the back doors of the kitchen. Chef lifted the cover off one of the barrels and leapt half a metre off the ground.

‘Snakes!'
he shouted. ‘Vat are zese snakes doing in my kitchen?!' One hundred and fifty kilos of live snakes slithered around in the two barrels. They had been delivered as part of Mr Han's ‘seafood selection'.

‘I vant zem locked up,' Chef called out to his staff, ‘and I shall ask just vat the hell zey vant me to do viz zem!'

There were plenty of places to lock away the snakes. Unlike most hotel kitchens, which are architects' afterthoughts, the kitchens of the Holiday Inn Lhasa are the size of a grand ballroom. Row upon row of white-tiled work area stretches out past garde-mangers, side chambers, walk-in refrigerators, walk-in deepfreezes, dry stores, the butchery, the pastry section and the chefs' offices. Three of the eighty kitchen staff do nothing more than sweep the dirt from one end of the kitchen to the other and then sweep it back again, washing it out along the slop channel.

The chefs chose one of the white-tiled side chambers to lock away the two barrels. The snakes would never be able to get out and even if the impossible happened, the room was locked.

Chef Wang Xi Li stretched a long yawn as he gazed out of the pastry kitchen window at the night sky. The only clouds Wang Xi Li could see were the mists of the Milky Way. But the sound that had aroused him from his sleep was not from outside. Something was in the kitchen with him. It was not one of the managers, they would not be making rounds of the kitchen at 3.30 a.m. It certainly would not be one of the security guards, they would be sound asleep in the Galleria above the lobby where any night-prowling managers would not find them.

It must just have been one of the rats, he thought as he dozed back to sleep. Twenty minutes later he leapt from his position slouched over the croissant-rolling counter, as out of the corner of his eye he had caught sight of a one-and-a-half-metre-long serpent disappearing down the drainage system. It was the first of the seven discovered escapees from the barrels. Another was found in the pastry kitchen, three in the main kitchen area behind the woks and two coiled above the chamber door on the electricity line, along which they had made their escape. There were signs that others had escaped down the slop channel running under a grill down the centre of each chamber in the kitchen. Perhaps there are some, still out there, in the sewers or growing fat in the air-conditioning slithering after Himalayan Hamsters.

Chef decided that it was time to dispatch the reptiles out of their miserable existence and put them in the freezer with the terrapins. No one would help him. His Tibetan chefs refused due to their Buddhist beliefs and the Chinese chefs all found reasons why they too could not help – either due to their religion or as a result of their Karaoke Night injuries.

He resorted to the traditional gentle methods of persuasion used by chefs. And after a short discussion involving many expletives, the mentioning of genitalia and simple sign language, he managed to persuade his Chinese Sous Chef to help him with the work. But after the Sous Chef's Tibetan wife found out, Chef was left on his own to finish the job.

The next day in the Morning Meeting Chef announced that he wanted no more live animals coming in to the hotel.

‘It is totally unacceptable. I run a kitchen, not an abattoir.' Heather translated.

‘Ah,' said Mr Pong, ‘so what are you going to do with the two hundred pigeons that arrive today?'

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

None of us went near the kitchen that day. The echoes of German swear words bounced around the white-tiled walls and flew out into the corridors shocking unsuspecting German tourists. Chef was not happy. Small clouds of grey feathers flew out into the courtyard and the death squeals of pigeons, or possibly sous chefs, filled the air.

I was approached by a delegation of German tourists in the lobby and prepared myself for a pigeon-plucking apology.

‘Ve hav come to complain about ze noise,' the pack leader barked at me.

‘Yes, sorry about that. You see Chef's been plucking pigeons all day. And you know how Chefs can be? Let's just say that he's not a pleasant plucker.'

The Germans had a serious sense of humour failure.

‘Vat do you mean ‘plucking'? I am talking about zat drill outside my bedroom vindow!'

This took me by surprise. ‘So you're not complaining about the Chef?'

‘No!'

Now that the guest mentioned it, I could hear a faint drilling noise. We walked down the corridor of North Wing and the noise grew stronger and stronger. The German showed me inside his room. Ten feet away through the closed window stood a crowd of Chengdu workmen balancing on top of four massive pneumatic drills. From the Morning Meeting I had learnt that work was to be stepped up on the swimming pool as we were running behind schedule but I had not anticipated that it would mean drilling while the guests were still in their rooms. The windows shook visibly with the vibrations and when all four drills were on together, we had to shout at each other to make ourselves heard.

‘I'LL GET THEM TO STOP,' I promised the German and ran off to find Derek.

‘No way. Barba's orders,' Derek replied when I eventually found him, talking through translators to oxyacetylene welding contractors.

‘We are only three weeks to the opening and I have five more weeks of work.' He mopped the beads of sweat from his forehead. I had never seen Derek seriously worried before. The pressure was on everyone for the pool opening and we were all beginning to feel the strain. Barba had persuaded a whole host of VIPs to attend the opening and nothing could be allowed to delay the event. He was planning a show of even greater proportions than the Miss Tibet extravaganza and had invited an Italian minister of parliament, an Italian fashion house for a photo-shoot, Italian restaurateurs, the government leaders of Tibet, several ambassadors to Nepal, and the highest VIP of all – Mrs Barba.

On my previous sales trip to Europe, there was only one sale that Barba had been interested in. Never mind the tour operators and media contacts, the most important meeting I had was with his wife.

‘Alec, you've got to persuade her to come out to Lhasa, I don't care what you do, I don't care about anything else. Just make this one sale,' had been Barba's instructions before I left.

Our appointment had been in the lobby of the Plaza Athéné Hotel in Paris for afternoon tea. The scene in the lobby was more than just 6,000 miles from our hotel. This lobby was in another galaxy, many light years away. Small Parisian ladies with purple-rinsed coifs minced up and down the hallway displaying tailored designer suits and jewel-encrusted gold bullion that spends the rest of its life in bank vaults. Each little lady was accompanied by an equally coifed ‘petit Frou-Frou' Shih Tzu, suitably adorned with diamond headgear for the girls, and sporty neckerchiefs for the boys. If this was the world of Madame Barba, what could possibly persuade her to part from this extraterrestrial existence and pay a visit to Lhasa?

Fortunately, when Mme Barba arrived, I could see that she did not fall into the Plaza Athéné afternoon-tea stereotype. A stylish bob of blond hair graced her gentle face and her contour-hugging leopard-print outfit could never have been worn by the resident purple-rinses. However, she did seem to know everyone, and smiled at the Frou-Fous and young gentlemen who accompanied the elderly ladies.

‘So how is Monsieur Barba?' she enquired politely as we sipped our Earl Grey.

‘Oh, very well,' I replied. ‘Yes very well indeed. But missing you tremendously.'

‘Does he still have his moods?'

‘Madame Barba, I'm not sure what you mean.'

‘And the ladies?'

I was saved from this rather awkward question by the yelping of a neckerchief-wearing Frou-Frou which had chased a female FrouFrou around a table leg and was not responding to the yanks on the lead by its owner. The female Frou-Frou bared her teeth and yelped back as hard as its little lungs could manage. Soon a whole cacophony of Frou-Frous on heat were yelping along the corridor and the sex-starved neckerchief-wearing instigator shot off down the passageway, pulling the lead out of his startled owner's hand and dragging the coffee table with it. The Plaza's elegant silver coffee pot crashed to the floor and sugar cubes bounced across the hall. Stepping over the debris, the purple rinse retrieved her Frou-Frou and marched out of the lobby with her head held high as if nothing had happened. Her compatriots glared sternly after her and the Frou-Frous were all picked up and cuddled. Waiters hovered around picking up sugar cubes, muttering apologies to everyone they could see and only thinly disguising outbursts of hysterical laughter. Mme Barba ignored the chaos in the hallway and waited for me to reply to her question.

‘Tibet is wonderful in summertime Madame Barba. The hills are green, the flowers are blooming, Tibetans are out enjoying the rounds of summer parties and the monasteries are quite sensational.' Fortunately the subject moved away from her husband and on to the attractions of Tibet and after several minutes of questioning on Tibetan ceremonies and the beauty of Lhasa, I could see there was the possibility of a sale. I moved in to close the deal.

‘So when shall we arrange the permit for? The swimming pool opens in September and it will be a great party.'

‘Go ahead,' was the reply.

Barba had been delighted with the results of the sales trip but in retrospect it had been a bad move to tie in Mme Barba's visit with the opening of the pool. September had seemed so long away back in March when I had met with Mme Barba in Paris but with only a few weeks to go, the pool was still just a large muddy hole in the ground. Barba was over-heating and in an attempt to cool him down Jig Me suggested that we accept the generous offer of the Tibet Tourism Board to follow them into the closed areas of Eastern Tibet for a few days. A Mr Tsang of the TTB was examining how the area could be opened up for tourism and Barba, Jig Me and I had been officially invited to join the expedition.

It was a welcome break from the mayhem at the hotel. Although occupancy had started to drop, the problems caused by the pool excavation made life unbearable for all of us. The angry Germans had been easy to placate by moving them to the far side of the hotel but work was now going on around the clock to meet the opening deadline and inevitably the complaints were mounting. The strain of angry guests on one hand and Barba's deepening mood swings on the other were taking their toll on both Party A and Party B.

I climbed into the hotel Landcruiser, with Dorje at the wheel, ready for our trip into the unknown. Although I would be in the same car as Barba, at least he would be taken away from the swimming pool and the increasing pressure of the forthcoming VIP visits for the official opening. There was no such thing as a mobile phone, so we would be out of contact with progress reports and the daily screaming at Derek and anyone concerned with the pool for four whole days.

Dorje smiled at the driver of the TTB Landcruiser as they revved their engines in the Holiday Inn car park. Dorje's secret training with the Chengdu taxi-drivers' death squad had paid off as he edged the car into poll position, with his head turned 90 degrees to the direction we were moving in, grinning all the while at the TTB driver. At the signal given by Mr Tsang, he sped out into the newly built six-lane tank-way in front of the hotel, skidded into a right-hand turn and tore down the jet black tarmac road leading to the monument to the Unknown Road Builder at the river bank. The TTB driver followed inches behind, and both vehicles turned the Road Builder bend in unison, continuing due east along onto the tarmac racing track by the bank of the Lhasa river.

For as long as I had been in Lhasa I had dreamt of visiting the east of Tibet. In wintertime, villagers from Kongpo, in the east, came over the pass on pilgrimage to Lhasa. They were dressed so differently to the Lhasa folk, with their black rectangular capes and squat round hats. I had not been able to believe the stories I had heard that conditions over the pass could really be so different to the harsh plateau environment with which I was familiar. I was intrigued by these tales of lush valleys and dense forests. We sped past the turn off to Ganden monastery and I was on new ground, travelling fast (there was no other way with Dorje at the wheel) towards the land of Kongpo, Kham and the Glak-lo Nagpo – the intriguing ‘black savages' mentioned by Wadell in 1904 as the friendly locals who ate their mothers-in-law at weddings.

We climbed up the road to the high pass taking us out of the Lhasa valley, leaving the tarmac behind us. To the side of the track stood a large nomad encampment of black yak-hair tents, with a row of bicycles parked outside. I was contemplating Tibetan nomads travelling thousands of miles across the harsh Tibetan plateau carrying their yak-hair tents neatly folded on the back of their bicycles, when Dorje interrupted my reveries, suddenly yelling out:
‘La! So so so so!'
We had reached the top of the Kongpo Ba La, the pass that divides the Lhasa valley from the east.

After the pass the landscape did start to change. The stories had been right. The barren hills of the plateau were soon replaced by steep-sided valleys coated in trees. The north-facing slopes were covered in a kind of silver birch and the south-facing slopes teemed with the rounded shapes of Tibetan holly trees. The houses changed shape too. Gone were the squat, flat-roofed buildings of the plateau and instead there were tall buildings with shallow pitched roofs and wood – so scarce in Lhasa – was used in abundance.

After a day of being bounced around in the back of Dorje's Landcruiser we were thankful when he skidded to a halt in the courtyard of Lunggro monastery, just ahead of the TTB driver. My knuckles were stiff from hanging on to the handle in the back of the car as our Landcruiser's suspension had long gone and Dorje had insisted in driving it with his foot pressed firmly to the floor.

Jig Me took us to see a somewhat startled monk and acted as translator for us: ‘He says that this monastery was completely destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. It was rebuilt in 1985 with only 50,000 yuan coming from the government. The rest of the 500,000 yuan for the rebuilding was given by the local people. There are now twenty monks here.'

It was impossible to second-guess Jig Me. He spoke without emotion about a subject which must have touched him deeply. The monk smiled at us continually, and pointed reverently to a chair draped in white silk
khatas
.

‘Here is the seat where the Dalai Lama would sit when he came through on his way to China,' Jig Me translated. Barba and I looked at it in silence. It had not been sat in for nearly forty years.

The silence was broken by the alarming squawks of a Lord Derby's Parakeet which had woken up from its afternoon nap to find this group of strangers standing next to its cage and the empty chair. It was time to go. We were taken a kilometre up the road to a Chinese compound where we would spend the night. As we settled in, we were introduced to Mr Tsang's translator, a spindly Chinese youth with large bifocals, who suddenly sprang to life.

‘My boss, Mr Tsang. You know Mr Tsang? He built many bridges here!' he proclaimed.

‘Bridges?' Barba enquired.

‘Yes. Built by him. My boss. No, no not by his hand. He had many many people build bridges for him. You did not know?

‘Know what?' Barba asked, now puzzled as to what was going on.

‘Mr Tsang is famous PLA bridge builder! Yes, my boss is not only big potato in TTB – the Tibetan Tourism Bureau – he is also a big potato in the People's Liberation Army! He came here many years ago to help our poor Tibetan comrades who did not have bridges. Now they have bridges. Thanks to him. My boss!' We failed to see the relevance of any of this but we would find out soon enough.