The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  “How many miles is it?”

  Pancho did not understand miles, yards or feet. He did not think in terms of rigid distance or fixed ideas.

  “If we go, we will get there,” he said.

  We packed up and moved out within the hour. There was a sense of urgency, a sense that Pancho was playing down the gravity of the situation. I gave the order to stow some of the food. It could be collected later and would free us to carry Francisco. Julio wove a gurney from saplings, spread a blanket over it, and eased the village busybody aboard. The men took it in turns to carry him. I was touched by the way they rallied round and took care of his needs.

  We struggled upriver for two hours, with Pancho leading the way. The dense fog hampered progress: if you lost sight of the man ahead, you were damned. One porter would whistle to the next, but their shrill signals struggled to pass through the mist. The litter on which Francisco lay was borne forward at waist height. Behind it were the film crew and most of the porters. I took up the rear, and was the last to know that Pancho had moved away from the river, up a narrow stream. Fifty paces ahead, on higher ground, we reached the cave. Its existence proved to me Pancho’s knowledge of the area’s geography, and warmed my spirits.

  The cave formed a natural canopy against the elements, a magnificent arc of stone, ribbed with algae where moisture ran down the walls. It made for a fine shelter, and smelt of prehistory. If it were not for the approaching storm we might never have known it was there, and would have been poorer for it. The men fetched dry sticks, got a fire going, and others hurried out to catch fish. I asked Pancho when the storm would break. He did not answer at once, but glanced out to the stream. “Vendrá pronto, it will come soon,” he said.

  Fifteen minutes later a spine-chilling breeze ripped in from the west, and dispersed the fog. Every leaf on every tree quivered individually, as if the wind was speaking a language they understood. Then the first droplets hit the earth. They were large but infrequent, and quite genteel: an inaccurate hint of what was to follow. A minute later, the storm arrived. The wind seared through the valley like a djinn released from an eternity of servitude. The trees were bent back by the force, the dust swept into a sandstorm that slashed a path downriver.

  Howling, whistling, tormenting, the current of air alarmed us: for we all knew it was merely the precursor of the gale. Ten minutes on, rain lashed down more heavily than I had ever thought possible. The force of the downpour was shocking. Anyone caught in it would surely have been killed outright, cloven to pieces by the giant natural scythe.

  The porters were fearful beyond words, as was I. Only Pancho grinned, but I believe it was his own expression of terror. I suggested that we sing songs to keep up morale, but the men were uninterested. Against the backdrop of sound — trees crashing down, diabolic wind and thunderous rain — they revealed their fears.

  “La serpiente está en el río, the serpent is in the river,” said Carlos.

  “Ella, es el río, she is the river,” Pepe corrected.

  “We have broken the Curse Lines,” Julio stammered, “and will now pay for it, like our friend has already done!”

  We all swivelled round to look at Francisco’s poor blind crag face. His eyes were open yet ineffective.

  “You will see again, I promise you,” I said pathetically.

  Of course it was an empty oath, and he knew it as well as I.

  When eventually we gave in to fatigue and slipped into our damp sleeping-bags, the men fell into a deep slumber. I lay awake for a few minutes, comforted by the apparition of the Victorian explorer Samuel White Baker. My other heroes always appeared to be looming downwards, scowling at my frailty, but Baker approached me and stretched out his hands. His thick-set face, scrubbed clean and pink, was smiling, as if urging me to keep faith. The Victorians were masters of endurance, of succeeding when all hope is gone — none more so than Samuel Baker. If anyone knew about keeping faith and carrying on, it was he.

  He never discovered a lost city, but he did find Lake Albert in East Africa, and assisted John Hanning Speke in establishing the source of the Nile. He was set apart from the other great Victorian explorers by his gentlemanliness and courtesy, and was the only explorer to be ennobled as a direct result of his travels.

  While on a bear-hunting expedition to Transylvania with the impetuous Maharajah Duleep Singh, Baker attended a Bulgarian slave auction. It was there that he first set eyes on Florence, the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He bought her, and in time they were married. Florence accompanied Baker on all his major expeditions, to the horror of genteel Victorian society. On one occasion she went down with a terrible fever, became unconscious and her eyes rolled back. A grave was dug outside the camp by one of the servants, but Baker himself kept faith. Within days Florence had made a full recovery.

  The storm raged for a day and a night. By the end of it, it seemed as if a lifetime had passed. I had felt gentle sadness, total despair, and every mood between them. I was drained by emotion, cold and numb. I missed my little daughter, the face of my wife, and tried to calculate how long it would take to get to them. Christ! I thought, they are a world away. I contemplated giving in, ordering the retreat. I was separated from it by three words: “Let’s go back.” I sucked air into my chest to make the sounds. But they didn’t come out right. Instead, I said: “Let’s go on.”

  The porters choked. They were macho but I could feel their eagerness to weep. I strode out to test the depth of the river. The water was running fast, hurtling down from the ridges with pleasing efficiency. The mist had not returned; I climbed to a vantage point to gain a better view of the path ahead. The ground was sodden, heavy like lead, the air cool yet clement. From the mirador I could see for about half a mile. There were small rapids, but the river was high and it was moving fast, unhindered except where a group of fallen trees had plunged across.

  I called to Oscar and asked him to build a raft as quickly as he could. If we wanted to take advantage of the high water, we would have to act fast. He rushed away to find balsa trees. As I was making my way back to the camp, I heard Julio shouting from the cave at the top of his voice. “He can see me!” he was shouting. “He can see me!”

  Everyone rushed to where Francisco was lying. He was sitting up a little, squinting through half-open eyes.

  “What can you see?” I asked cautiously.

  “Todo, everything,” said the busybody. “I can see you all.”

  The relief was enormous. I felt as if a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. The return of Francisco’s sight elevated our communal spirits. Giovanni cooked a special meal in his honor. He went into the forest and gathered herbs and the bark of a raspy russet-colored vine. He boiled them with five or six extra bony fish and a rank-smelling bird, which had been killed and plucked several days before. Everyone ate mountains of the stew, except me. I kept well away.

  The first hint that the dish had been poisonous came at sunrise. Julio and Carlos leaped up and ran into jungle, whimpering. Oscar, Marco, David, Boris and the others followed soon after with similar noises of discomfort. Giovanni was the last to succumb to his own lethal cuisine. When his diarrhoea had abated, the disgraced cook raided what was left of the medical supplies. He handed out a variety of random-colored pills and the men swigged them down with the green-gray river water.

  At least Francisco seemed much better. But I couldn’t risk allowing the condition to return, and gave serious thought to the problem. Richard had once told me that in Vietnam a platoon would insert and deploy men as it moved forward. Each unit would keep in contact with the next and, if necessary, supplies and munitions could be easily ferried up the chain. I decided to adopt a similar tactic. Francisco and one man would stay at the cave, along with surplus equipment. Then, as we advanced, other teams would be positioned, with runners passing back and forth.

  Héctor had again begun to disturb the men. I had no doubt that he was the man to leave with Francisco, for his conversation was now endan
gering the expedition. I led him aside and asked if he could stay at the cave and nurse the busybody. He agreed without a breath of resentment.

  By noon a single balsa raft was ready and waiting. We lashed a load to it, and set off. It was good to be moving again, even though we were now wading in deep water. The storm had caused havoc. Dozens of trees had fallen into the water and many blocked the route. The simplest way to pass was to unload the raft and lift it over the fallen trees, then load it again.

  It was strange not to have Héctor with us. I felt remarkably free, like an adolescent who had broken away from parental control. The porters trudged on, but I realized they were now suffering from exhaustion. I could see it in their eyes, their hanging, dark-encircled eyes. They hated me. Of course they would not have admitted it, not then, but the sentiment was in them all.

  My reaction to their fatigue was to drive them harder than ever before. I was powerless to help myself. Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones. My renewed belief in the ruins of Paititi gave me strength. I found myself charging ahead, even though I carried as much weight as any of the men. Unlike them, I was fueled by an unspeakable anger.

  At dusk we camped, ate a little rice in a sour broth, and rinsed our bruised bodies in the current. Pancho managed to catch a giant oval fish even though the water was opaque. It was served up as dessert.

  The next day Pepe spotted a faint wisp of smoke curling up from the high ground, far away on the western ridge. The men grew anxious at the sight of it, although I was eager to make contact. Pancho said he knew who had made the fire.

  “He is a Machiguenga,” he said. “He lives up there with his sons. Sometimes they go downriver and carry away women.”

  “From your village?”

  As usual, the warrior paused before answering. “A veces, sometimes,” he said.

  Later on in the day, I found Pancho entertaining the men with the story of a fabulous land. “The trees are laden with ripe fruit,” he said, “and the water is so clear that you can see all the fish at once, and there are delicious animals all around, and flowers that make a musical sound when you smell them.”

  It sounded like Paradise. The men asked if we could make a detour on the way to the lost city. I asked Pancho if he had ever been to the place. He smiled broadly and coughed into his hand. “Sí,” he said.

  “Is it near to Paititi?”

  Pancho flicked his head in a nod. “Puede ser, perhaps.”

  Two days on, I left Carlos and his brother, Ramón, at the second position. The following night the fog descended once again. I detested it because it sucked the little remaining energy from the men. We thrashed about like flies caught in an immense web, making pitiful progress. The terrible conditions forced us to leave the raft and continue lugging the gear on foot. A more sensible leader would have turned back right then, but I had lost my level-headedness long before.

  I clung to the faintest glimmer of hope, and pleaded with God to deliver us to Paititi. My request remained unfulfilled, and the misery continued. Our fortunes turned from bad to worse. Four of the men were struck down by fever, and another two developed dreadful black lumps on their thighs. They lay together sullenly like foundlings in the rain. I dismissed the injuries as a passing rash, but privately I was alarmed.

  The film crew’s health also declined. The Swedes had been plagued by recurrent bouts of fever for weeks, and the septic insect bites on Leon’s back were as bad as any I had seen. Marco’s hands had swollen, and were round and hard like Seville oranges. He could hardly use them, and had taken to eating his food direct from the bowl.

  In the evening we built a tremendous fire. It lit up the fog, causing it to glow like a Japanese lantern. We sat around it, marvelling at the light, eating Pot Noodles and telling tales. The hostility that had developed between the porters and myself had given way to a curious camaraderie. I asked the men about their dreams.

  “I’m going to Lima,” said Rafael, “and I will marry a beautiful chica with long brown hair. She will be rich, with teeth like pearls and eyes the color of opals.”

  The others chuckled at the fantasy.

  “I will go to the United States of America,” said Juan. “I will work hard and buy a big car, and then, maybe, one day, I will be President of Peru.”

  “What about you, Pancho?” I said.

  The tribesman stared into the flames, and peered into the limits of his imagination. We are going to the city,” he said. “Don’t you remember?”

  “You mean, when you have taken me to Paititi?”

  “Sí, sí, when we have been to the ruins,” he said.

  “Are we near to them, Pancho?”

  Pancho looked at me and held my gaze as we peered into each other’s minds. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke.

  “Sí,” he said, very softly, “estamos cerca, we are near.”

  EIGHTEEN

  SEIZING FOOD

  On arriving at an encampment, the natives commonly run away in fright. If you are hungry, or in serious need of anything that they have, go boldly into their huts, take just what you want, and leave fully adequate payment. It is absurd to be over-scrupulous in these cases.

  The Art of Travel

  Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you begin to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead. I believed that the ruins were in there, somewhere; I had arrived at a mind-set in which there was no doubt. It was just a matter of time before Pancho lifted the veil on the greatest lost city on earth.

  To Hollywood, the idea of ruins obscured in an abyss of trees and overgrown with vines is a glamorous prospect. The man who goes in search of such a place is portrayed as a hero, bold and gallant beyond words. The reality is the other extreme. There is no glamor, no beauty, in such a quest. Even now, as I look back at our deteriorated condition, I marvel at the sordidness of it all. We were riddled with worms and shaking with fever, and all of us, even me, were suffering from terrible diarrhoea, but our physical state was irrelevant. It was a mere discomfort. Far more grave was the hostility between one man and another.

  Over several days a sense of utter hatred infected us all. At first we fought against it, struggling to apologize to those we had wronged. But the hatred, and that is what it was, took root and overwhelmed each of us. I knew then that if we could not redeem the situation the expedition would flounder in the most spectacular way.

  I did not understand how the team had lost hope, and why they blamed their misery on me. I might have felt pity for them, but I did not. Instead, their gloom fueled my heartlessness. Even now, with the facility of hindsight, compassion does not come easily. We were in the cloud forest for a reason and, the way I saw it, anything or anyone who was not working flat out to reach that goal was my opponent.

  A day passed, perhaps two. We rounded a sharp bend and caught sight of a colossal pongo, breakers cascading over rocks. Some of the men crossed themselves, and kissed their knuckles. Oscar broke down and wept. I did not allow anyone to stop, to ponder the danger or the size of the obstacle. Instead I commanded them to charge up through the rapids. The forlorn procession moved on, like a column of spent soldiers on a suicide run. I knew that if they paused for a single moment there would be no hope in making an advance.

  So we struggled up through the wall of water, the chaos of stones and waves, the slime and dissipating fog. In the middle of it, sucked down by the current, I was overcome with a sense of futility. It lasted for a full minute and almost caused my death. My eyes poured with tears, which were washed from my face and swept downstream by the unrelenting rage of water. The forest did not tolerate frailty of body or mind. Show your weakness, and it would consume you without hesitation.

  Beyond the great rapids I permitted the men to rest. They huffed at the command and would certainly have mutinied right there if my order had been any different. They sprawled on a patch of gravel, panting. A flock of small black birds f
lew over, beating the air with miniature wings. Pancho pointed to them. “They are going to the lake,” he said.

  “What lake?”

  The tribesman motioned upriver, where the eastern ridge swept down to the forest floor. “It is there, up there,” he said.

  “Is it the lake at the ruins?”

  Pancho grinned. I didn’t wait for a reply, but clapped my hands. “¡Vamos! Let’s go!”

  The porters did not respond to the order. They were too fatigued. I feared they would revolt if pressed, but without coaxing they would have given up. The ever-enthusiastic Swedes pointed out that I was losing the support of the men. “They might kill us,” they warned earnestly.

  After consideration, I agreed that the best solution was to camp there overnight. It would give the film crew a chance to mediate a truce. The extent of the gulf dividing the porters and myself became apparent after the evening meal. Leon went to speak to the men, who were huddled round a fire, the glow of the embers illuminating their faces. Twenty minutes of talking passed and then Leon came over to me. “The situation is bad,” he said. “They are threatening to go back. They want double wages.”

  “But they are already on double wages!”

  “They want them doubled again,” he said.

  I would rather have let them run off. I was sick of them all, and felt I could do much better on my own. But Leon made me see reason. “If we don’t pay up,” he said, “the expedition is over. We will never find Paititi.”

  He was right, of course, but I resented what I regarded as outright blackmail.

  Next morning hostilities with the porters reached new heights. They had decided to take the day off, and wanted to be paid for resting. I am sure they dreamed up the plan to pique my anger; if they did, it worked. I lined them up and berated them for making a mockery of the quest.

  To my surprise, they backed down, gathered up their loads and followed me into the river. We walked up through a smaller set of rapids, and covered a considerable distance. No one spoke. The only sound was that of the water surging round our waists as we pressed forward. I asked Pancho time and time again if we were closing in on the lake, but he would merely point ahead and say, “Arriba.”