The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen

by Paul Sochaczewski

  His family, from the Saga region in southwestern Tibet, escaped in 1958, just before the Chinese invasion. Nomadic shepherds, they wandered with their flocks of yaks, sheep and goats in the brown and ochre high altitude deserts of Mustang.

  We hope to arrive for the beginning of the annual Tiji festival, a three-day exorcism to rid the world of devils.

  Tashi has never seen Tiji. He has never returned to his birthplace.

  The reason for Upper Mustang’s isolation is partly physical, and mostly geopolitical. Following the Dalai Lama’s flight from Tibet to India, a band of Tibetan guerrillas used Mustang as their centre of operations (Lo Manthang is just 15 miles from the border). The Chinese closed the Tibet-Mustang border in 1960 and pressured the Nepalese government to seal Mustang off from the rest of Nepal.

  While a handful of researchers were allowed into the area, Mustang remained virtually closed to foreigners until March 1992. The government of Nepal, experimenting with a newly-democratic outlook and eager to generate foreign exchange, decided that up to a thousand people a year could visit this almost mythical region.

  A great part of Mustang’s appeal to foreigners, of course, lies in the fact that it is hard to get to. There are no roads, no cars, no mountain bikes. A visitor walks, rides a pony, or charters a helicopter.

  The other element of the appeal is that Mustang is perhaps the best place in the world to get close to Tibetan culture. Mysterious Tibet. Something about Tibet appeals to Westerners longing for places that are dramatically different, especially when the colourful culture, traditions and history are complemented by a religion that preaches non-violence but actively believes in masked battles between the forces of good and evil.

  What is it that attracts people to things “forbidden”?

  Our natural curiosity? A self-testing? The desire to get away from our routine lives and see what kind of steel we have inside us?

  We exert a bit of physical effort to hike these trails.

  The walking is strenuous, made tougher by the afternoon dust storms that originate in the lowlands and roar through the narrow Himalayan passes.

  We have problems, but when we spend too much time complaining about our blisters, even the broken ribs of my friend Didier (who stoically continued, and who, frustratingly, continued to outpace me), we are pulled back to reality by remembering the epic crises recounted by Jon Krakauer in his book Into Thin Air. This account of the disastrous 1996 climbing season on Mt Everest includes the tale of Beck Weathers, a Texan climber who was several times given up for dead and left outside in blizzards on the top of the world. Virtually blind, with severe frostbite, he somehow stumbled into camp, a frigid, immobile, unseeing ghost of a man. His refusal to die made our aches not worth complaining about.

  I appreciate travel more when I have to push myself physically. Clears my mind. And, in a way, any strenuous journey (and I use the term to include spiritual and emotional travel) is a way of leaving home.

  Bruce Chatwin suggested that “‘travel’ is the same word as ‘travail’, bodily or mental labor, toil, especially of a painful or oppressive nature, exertion, hardship, suffering, a journey.”

  We travel to test ourselves. To cleanse, to rejuvenate. This could be termed “catharsis”, which is Greek for “purging” or “cleansing”. According to Chatwin, one controversial etymology of the word derives from the Greek katheiro, “to rid the land of monsters”.

  It made complete sense to arrive for Tiji and its casting out of demons.

  In addition to a major expenditure of “toil”, entering the “forbidden” kingdom costs a big chunk of cash.

  The flimsy green trekking permit to cross the border into Upper Mustang costs US$70 per day, with a ten day minimum. In addition our little group has had to pay a substantial sum for the trek itself, and then coughed up another US$400 to cover the costs of the mandatory liaison officer. Our liaison officer, Sharma, always immaculately dressed and coifed, always ready with a smile, is a mid-level official from the Nepal immigration department who came along mainly to make sure that we didn’t walk all the way into Tibet itself. Every trekker I met along the route felt furious by this unnecessary and cumbersome requirement. But if that’s the price to pay to get into this mini-promised land, so be it.

  The US$700 mandatory fee has led to considerable tension in Upper Mustang.

  Mr. Purna Kunwar, the Jomson-based director of ACAP-Annapurna Conservation Area Project, a powerful NGO that runs many of the development projects in the Annapurna region, explained the situation.“When the government opened up Mustang to tourists in 1992 they signed an agreement with ACAP promising that 60 percent of the fee would go for development in Upper Mustang.”

  That would have been a nice sum, based on potential income from the 800 visitors who enter Upper Mustang annually.

  In practice, Mr. Kunwar explained, the amount allocated is just 8 percent, totalling about US$4,500, which doesn’t go very far when shared by a dozen villages spread over 2,000 square kilometers.

  This year the local Tiji organising committee hit tourists with a hefty camera fee of US$50 per day for a still camera, and US$150 per day for a video (on top of a different US$500 video camera fee that was to be paid in Kagbeni). Their rationale was that they needed the cash to maintain the costumes, instruments and paintings used in the Tiji festival.

  This fee was announced in a paper handed out to visitors when they first dug their Nikons out of their backpacks. “Hearty welcome to Teeji Festival,” it read. “Owing to our lenience towards clicking the festival in the preceding years its deep rooted religious festival gets diluted which in turn decreases the number of its attendants as it had before.”

  Pema Tsering, 30, a shy, articulate teacher at the Great Sakyapa Monastic School and spokesman for the Tiji festival committee explained: “We’re embarrassed by this as well. But what can we do? Most of the little money that ACAP collects for Upper Mustang goes for community development. Almost nothing is allocated for cultural development. We use this income to maintain the Tiji costumes. We’ve asked the government for some money but they ignore our request. If we don’t take the initiative the government certainly won’t do it for us.”

  The committee raised about US$1,500 from camera fees paid by 15 tourists.

  Most tourist groups nominated a designated photographer and bought one pass. One American doctor from Milwaukee, Wisconsin had his video camera confiscated (it was returned to him when he left Lo Manthang) by Tiji camera spies who busted him when he ignored the fine print in the festival’s letter:

  “Severe action will be taken by the committee for those who are seen clicking without permits and who violate this rule in any unfair and tricky means.”

  During Tiji, monks clad in golden silk brocade robes, peaked leather hats, and yak-hair boots, don masks to enact the convoluted drama. It’s a bit like watching the Ring cycle – some spectacular moments mixed in with some tedious half hours. Some monks toot three-meter long copper trumpets and clang cymbals, against a background of a giant thanka (religious painting) half the size of a tennis court that hangs in the town square. The noise and dust gives a feeling of a Tibetan country fair with touches of commedia dell’arte.

  The objective of Tiji is peace and brotherhood. Evil spirits are told to get out of town, and if the dancing monks have done their jobs properly, the demons will have been effectively banned until next year’s festival.

  Lo Manthang is a third rate Shangri-La. It is a walled city, but because Raja Jigme Palbar Bista (the 25th king in a line of succession founded in 1380) has given permission for people to build outside the city limits, the town’s fortress-like character has been modified. The streets and drains are shared by people, dogs, donkeys and yaks. Although there are public standpipes bringing in clean water, little children drink from the open sewers. Dust permeates our clothes. The king’s palace is a ramshackle affair, in need of an overhaul. Lo Manthang has been without its hydro-generated electricity for several years.
No one is quite sure why, but basically something has broken and no one has bothered to fix it. There is talk of constructing an airstrip, but no one expects it to happen soon. Medical care is basic – people with serious illnesses have to walk to Jomson, 87 kilometers away, then fly to Pokhara or Kathmandu.

  The flat stucco roofs are perfect places to dry yak dung, firewood and thorny kindling, piles of which make fine nesting sites for finches. The three-story houses are are as mysterious as the town itself, with narrow passageways and tiny hidden stairwells. The houses often have a large central courtyard, with rooms facing inward, resembling the inns featured in Chinese sword-fighting movies. It would be a great place to shoot a James Bond-like action movie.

  The people of Upper Mustang are isolated, but they are not naïve. In the summer they farm and herd livestock, but in the winter they too wander far and seek new sights. Many people travel to India, where they successfully trade in woolen goods and cheap acrylic sweaters. Some shepherds head north into Tibet to trade sheep for Chinese goods. The donkey and yak caravans of the old salt route now carry a modest selection of manufactured goods, and at the Tiji festival the children showed off their ability to blow big pink bubbles with their Dubble Bubble chewing gum. Most young men of Lo Manthang sported made-in-Thailand counterfeit baseball caps of American sports teams – the Chicago Bulls, the New York Yankees, the Miami Heat, the San Francisco Giants.

  Tashi grew up in various Tibetan refugee camps in Nepal before moving to Kathmandu. Never got past 9th grade. In the capital he learned English while working as a waiter on Freak Street, got his trekking guide license, and set up the Himalayan Children’s Foundation which seeks sponsorship for the education of poor rural Nepalese and Tibetan refugee children.

  Tashi is a devout Tibetan Buddhist. For him, life is a nearly endless loop, where your past ungraceful actions generally come back to haunt you. Tashi has a son with cerebral palsy, and he’s convinced that the boy’s suffering is due to bad karma on the part of Tashi, his wife, and the son.

  Tashi hasn’t become bitter. In fact, he’s become a bit of a saint, devoting much of his time to helping others. He seeks to reverse what he sees as his own difficult karma by helping others. “You plant rice, you get rice,” he says philosophically.

  Before we had entered Lo Manthang we stood on a hill, looking at the centuries-old town that had required so much effort to reach. The late afternoon windstorm was blowing sand into our faces and we had to protect ourselves with white prayer shawls. Lo Manthang appeared to be a mirage that might disappear if we proceeded.

  “I can see now the kind of life my parents had,” Tashi explained. “They had hard karma. Many obstacles to overcome.”

  On the afternoon of the third and final day of Tiji, the dancers leave Lo Manthang through the town’s sole entrance gate, followed by several hundred people from Lo Manthang and surrounding villages and a sprinkling of tourists. At dusk, courtiers fire ancient muskets as a high lama shoots arrows at a puppet representing a demon. This is an important moment for the star Tiji dancer Lama Nag Kunga, who meditated in isolation for three months prior to Tiji in order to purify his soul and obtain the inner strength needed to cast the demons out of this place. He’s doing his best to ensure a better future for mankind.

  The moment is oddly profane and sacred at the same time. I glance at Tashi, 30 meters away, who watches intently. I don’t disturb him.

  Chapter 7

  IMMORTALITY: THE KID COULD BE THE KEY

  Designer sperm banks; nature vs nurture

  DALAT, Vietnam

  The creation of Dolly the Cloned Sheep a few years ago stirred our imagination – we were suddenly closer to cloning people than anyone had imagined.

  Since Dolly, cloning technology has advanced with such staggering speed that she seems almost anachronistic.

  The latest news in the cloning sweepstakes is that three South Korean scientists say that they’ve cloned a human cell from an infertile woman. Theoretically this embryo could have grown into a physical replica of the woman. The scientists said they destroyed the living cells because of the legal and ethical implications of their work.

  I thought about this as I called up my son to wish him happy holidays.

  He’s my only child, and I’m proud of him.

  This is hardly a staggering claim.

  But unless I clone myself, which seems unlikely, my son David is likely to offer me my best shot at immortality.

  There are precious few chances for normal folks like us to become immortal.

  If you were Verdi you could write an opera. If you were Faust you could sell your soul.

  One sure path to eternal glory is to get a new creature named after you.

  Olaf Rudbeck gave the great Swedish botanist Linnaeus his first job. In thanks, Linnaeus saw to it that Rudbeck became a flower, Rudbeckia hirta, the American black-eyed susan. Linnaeus wrote to his professor: “So long as the earth shall survive, and as each spring shall see it covered with flowers, the Rudbeckia will preserve your glorious name.”

  (There is an historical precedent to name unattractive plants after enemies. Johann Siegensbeck denounced Linnaeus as “lewd” and “loathsome” so Linnaeus retaliated by dubbing an “unpleasant small flowered weed” Siegesbeckia.)

  Hugh Hefner, of Playboy fame, is reputed to have unsuccessfully offered a very large sum to name a newly discovered rabbit hefneri.

  Some people have themselves frozen, awaiting the day when the illness they died from can be treated, and the troublesome effect of the freezing process itself can be reversed. This has the benefit that you will be around to live in person, although you’ll probably be hopelessly out of date with the soaps.

  But the surest path to immortality is via genetic success. Not to mention financial bonanza.

  I was researching a golf story in Dalat, in central Vietnam, and staying at the Dalat Palace Hotel. A friend and I were drinking in Larry’s Bar and I asked who the “Larry” was who gave the pub its name.

  Turns out that a man named Larry Hillblom spent US$40 milion to restore the Dalat Palace Hotel and the Dalat Palace Golf Course – he could be considered the financial godfather of golf in Vietnam.

  Mr. Hillblom was a millionaire many times over - he founded, and was the “H” in the courier and airfreight company DHL. Besides golf he had another passion – he enjoyed deflowering young women, paying big money to madams in Vietnam, the Philippines and Micronesia for certified virgins.

  When Hillblom died numerous women who bore children by Hillblom consulted their lawyers and made a claim for his estate.

  These women and children faced two obstacles – Mr. Hillblom did not acknowledge the illegitimate children in his will, and he disappeared in a plane crash leaving behind no DNA – rather surreally his home and office had been wiped clean of anything – a piece of hair, sweat on a sheet, a dirty Q-tip – that could have been used to prove paternity.

  Considerable money was at stake. Eventually a bit of DNA was found and after a lengthy court battle four Asian children were awarded US$50 million apiece.

  While an argument could be made that the Asian virgins were victims of a rich perverse American and the madams who supplied him, it is nevertheless a truism that most women, at least among the better educated classes, have always had significant control over their genetic partners. Now wannabe western mothers with a line of credit can catalogue shop for those perfect genes in a “boutique sperm bank”.

  I found three such establishments on the web, including an anonymous donor who is willing to give away his sperm. “Donor sperm available free”, is the title of his site, which is a variation, I guess, of what we used to euphemistically refer to as dating. This genetic philanthropist describes himself as “Caucasian, 6 ft tall, with black hair, fair skin.” In 4th grade he won 3rd place in a school science fair with a project entitled “Using Red Cabbage Juice to Determine Acidity.” As an adult he has been “awarded more than 10 patents for various inventions.” Hi
s web-site shows cute photos of babies he has fathered, and perhaps some of them might reach similar heights as dad, whose 9th grade science project was “A Computer Program for Simplifying Boolean Expressions.”

  The original outlet for super-sperm-shopping is The Repository for Germinal Choice, which bills itself as “an activity of the Foundation for Advancement of Man”. The California-based Repository is widely referred to as the Nobel Sperm Bank since it includes Nobel laureates and other “superlative donors”. Although donors are anonymous (and unpaid), one donor went public: inventor of the transistor, William B. Shockley, controversial for his theory that blacks are genetically inferior to whites.

  I wrote to the Repository’s founder, Robert K. Graham. I was fishing for information (and maybe an invitation to donate); he was fishing for a prince, writing: “I have long admired the thinking of the Duke of Edinburgh [at that time I worked for WWF-World Wide Fund for Nature, and Prince Philip was WWF’s international president], as well as his splendid physical presence, and should be glad to consider him as a donor if he were willing.” I sent the letter to Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace. Don’t know if he forwarded a condom filled with royal sperm.

  Even without the Duke of Edinburgh, women in need of high quality sperm had a dizzying array of options offered by the Repository. Donor No. 28, for example was “voted the best-looking man in his department.” He sails and hikes. He twice scored 800, the highest possible, on the mathematics section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. Minor drawback: “Slight hemorrhoids.” Or, if myopia and dental malocclusion are no problem, Donor No. 27 offers “Remarkable intellectual ability (professor of mathematics), excellent character and health, and high fertility.” He is tall (6’ 1”), with dark brown curly hair (no balding!), enjoys a good sense of humor, likes playing with children, and possesses an IQ of 206 measured at age 8.