The Complete Collection of Travel Literature

by Tahir Shah

  Francisco wrapped the resin in a damp cloth, and hid it under the floorboards. When I asked him whom he was going to tranquilize, he squirmed, stuck his hands down the front of his underpants, and giggled nervously. I cautioned him. If the Shuars or their animals were found in a comatose state, I said, he’d be the first suspect.

  The morning after he had cooked up the capybara, Cockroach climbed up onto the roof. His expression was taut, his eyes swollen with worry. One of the beetles had stopped eating flakes of rotten wood, he said. He feared for its life. A moment later, Alberto said we’d arrived at Ramón’s.

  The famous ayahuasquero lived nearby on another river. I wasn’t going to take any chances with the Titanus giganticuses, so I packed them in my rucksack, along with key equipment. The crew had no intention of venturing through the jungle to Ramón’s village. They volunteered to guard the boat and its remaining supplies.

  Richard bundled up a sack of assorted merchandize and threw it onto the river’s bank. The dogs, the sloth, Enrique and Alberto followed. We bid farewell to the others, and pushed into the undergrowth. I had no idea how long we would be gone.

  Alberto had advertised the journey through the forest as a ‘short walk”. He said that we would follow a path to the village, one which he knew well. The route was severely overgrown, forcing us to hack a way through with our knives. I suggested to Richard that no one could have visited Ramón for a very long time. He replied that in the jungle plants grow fast. Someone could well have hacked the route a week before, and we would never have known it.

  After five hours trekking beneath triple canopy, I was wondering how much further there was to go. Although by far the youngest in years, I handicapped the rest. My jungle technique was non-existent. Alberto led the way with the sloth in one hand and his machete in the other. He cleared a slim path. Behind him was Enrique. So skilled was he at moving through the undergrowth that he had little need for a machete. I’d unsheathed my Alaskan moose knife, proud at last to have a chance to use it. But its extraordinary weight made it a very clumsy tool.

  Richard had cut an awkward figure on the paved streets of Iquitos. Even on the boat he was restless. But as soon as his US army boots stepped into the fierce undergrowth, he was at ease. No moment went by without him pointing out the detail, the kind which was not naturally revealed to my anxious, amateur vision. He pointed to the smooth lichen-free trunk of the capiruna, explaining that the tree had evolved to shed its bark to keep parasites and lichens away. He showed me how to make a poultice for cuts with the leaves of tropical mistletoe, which we often saw high in the trees. Then he taught me how to tell termite and ant nests apart; and said that leaf-cutter ants, which follow a chemical trail, are blind.

  Most tourists who venture to the Peruvian Amazon love the idea of the jungle. They want it just like they saw it on TV – a place which can be muted or switched off by a remote control. Some expect nothing less than air-conditioning, a mini-bar, laundry service, and satellite television. Fortunately for them, there are a variety of “jungle” lodges with such amenities a stone’s throw from Iquitos. Few foreigners are willing to endure the kind of exacting expedition which Richard Fowler leads. The rough reality of his journeys wards away most civilians. He said that the US military sometimes ask him to train élite SEAL units in jungle survival. Infrequent adverts placed in Soldier of Fortune bring him a few more battle-hardened adventurers, tough enough to withstand what he calls the real jungle.

  The difference between Richard and the others, and me, was that they understood the rain-forest. They loved it. They were a part of it. As far as I was concerned that abyss of green was something to fear; something to despise. From the moment I took my first jungle steps, it sensed an intruder had violated its boundary. I was soon drenched with sweat, my mouth cold and rasping, parched beyond words. I followed in Richard’s size 11 footprints, focusing on them and nothing else.

  Let your eyes strain too closely at a branch or twig, and you start seeing the hideous detail. With fear, the jungle closes in, the insects get bigger, magnified by the mind. How could Richard have prowled through the forests of Vietnam, hunting and being hunted at the same time?

  When I asked him, he told me to concentrate on the five rules of jungle travel. One: chop stems downward and as low to the ground as possible; then they’ll fall away from the path. Two: go slow, as speed only snags you on fish-hook thorns. Three: rest frequently and drink liquid. Four: love the jungle, don’t hate it. Five: check your groin for parasites twice an hour.

  Our Shuar companions must have thought t was mad. Whenever we stopped, I’d pull down my pants and forage about in my boxer shorts. The area was inflamed by chafing and sweat. But there were no bugs. To tell the truth, I didn’t really know what parasites to expect. I’d seen some cocoons which Richard had eaten, and plenty of “roaches and wolfies, but surely they were too big to nestle comfortably in my crotch. Richard said any self-respecting grub would want to burrow into my private parts – it’s what they are programd to do. I told him of the inflammation and the chafing.

  “The rawer and bloodier it is down there,” he said, “the snugger the larvae will be.”

  We marched on, but the chafing only got worse. I tried lubricating the area with Vaseline. Then I sprinkled it with mentholated foot powder. But a dark purple rash developed. Alberto asked to see the inflammation. While Enrique held the sloth, the shaman scraped a fingernail over the rash. He made a clicking sound, tramped off into the jungle, and returned with a mass of foliage. Then he rubbed the thin milky sap from the leaves onto the inflammation. The itching was soothed immediately. A couple of hours later, the rash was gone.

  “Huayra caspi,” said Richard. “It’s a tree with red bark; the milk eases irritations. It’s especially good for venereal disease.”

  We moved forward for another hour or so, until about four o’clock. Then Alberto said we should camp for the first night.

  “First night? How far is Ramón’s village?”

  The shaman fed the sloth a clump of cecropia leaves.

  “Two or three nights more,” he said.

  I sat on a sheet of plastic while Richard built a basic shelter from branches of yarena palm. I dared not move. The Shuars had never been to a city, but they knew I was a city type. My hands weren’t scarred like theirs, and I jumped at any sound. They enjoyed my reaction to giant spiders most. I whimpered when I saw them. All around in the darkness spiders’ eyes reflected my lamp’s light, thousands of them, glinting like pearls. Pink-toed tarantulas were everywhere. They were out hunting. Richard caught one and tried to make me watch as it scurried over his face and his back. He drew my reluctant attention to the tips of their legs, which looked as though they had been coated neatly with pretty pink nail varnish.

  I wondered how I would go on. Nature had become my tormentor. I had begun to regard it with absolute loathing. But then I spotted something wonderful squatting on a low branch. It was a frog, like none I’d seen before. Its skin, which glistened as if coated with lacquer, was indigo-blue, marbled with splotches of black. Most of the other animals I had come across were timid, expecting imminent death. The indigo frog was far more self-assured. He sat on his branch, looking out at the green world.

  So impressed was I with the little creature’s confidence, I told Richard to come and have a look. He wiped his machete on his fatigues and peered down at the frog.

  “Dendrobates azureus,” he mumbled, “they’re fuckin’ wild suckers.”

  “What’s wild about “em?”

  “Poison arrow frogs,” he said. “When they get stressed they secrete nerve toxins onto their skin. Any predator not warded off by the bright colors gets floored.”

  As far as Richard was concerned, the indigo frog was dangerous but not unfriendly. The reptile’s yellow cousin, living over in the jungles of Surinam, was another story altogether.

  “They call it Phyllobates terriblis,” he mumbled, “the terrible one.”

  “Terrible!
”

  “They’ve got enough toxins to kill 20,000 mice. They look like glazed lemons. They’re kings of the jungle.”

  While we were admiring the indigo frog, Enrique strode over. Before I could stop him, he jabbed a sliver of sharpened stick through the reptile’s neck, until it came out its back. The creature didn’t die, but exuded a thick foam onto its back. Mindful not to touch the frog, the Shuar chief dipped three or four darts into the foam. Then he headed away into the jungle with the dogs.

  By the time the shelter was completed, it was getting dark. The fluorescent green of glow-worms glimmered in the undergrowth, hinting at secret life. Alberto helped me find some rotting wood to feed the beetles. The smaller one looked very forlorn. Its powerful mandibles uninterested in crushing any food. I considered tossing the Titanus giganticuses back into the jungle then and there. But, unfortunately for them, they’d become pawns in a despicable human game. Too much money was at stake, and I still hoped to recoup my funds. I whispered to them that in Tokyo or in New York a big bug lover was waiting to pamper them.

  Alberto told me to skewer the beetles on a spike and roast them. He said they tasted nutty, like Brazil nuts. At that moment Enrique stepped from the undergrowth, his blowpipe in one hand, a young paca in the other.

  We lit a fire and roasted the paca on a spit. The flames lit up the night, shooting sparks into the trees. The smoke, and the smell of charred meat, kept the insects away. I was in no mood for another rodent meal, so I sprinkled a few grains of Ajinomoto powder onto my tongue and thought of roast beef. As I had expected Ramón to live close to the river, I hadn’t brought much equipment. With no insect repellent or sleeping-bag, and little drinking water, I prepared myself for a tortuous night.

  I hunkered down beneath the shelter, praying for the giant insects, the snakes and the poison-arrow frogs to keep away. Richard slept soundly, snoring beside me. Alberto and Enrique bedded down on a natural platform in a lapuna tree, making mattresses of its dark green foliage. As I tried to sleep, I cautioned myself never to return to the jungle. This, the real experience, was the preserve of the professionals. People like me should stay at home and watch it on TV.

  The morning was slow in coming. Only when the last shadows had been wrung from the night did the first stream of sunlight break through the canopy. I started the day by checking for genital intruders. The tips of my fingers had mastered the art of probing for maggots and chrysalids. I poked about, still half-asleep. Something was lodged there. As I tried to extract it, it turned into mush.

  “Hope it wasn’t burrowing,” said Richard. “If there’s still some in there, you’re up shit creek.”

  Reluctantly, I allowed the Vietnam vet” to inspect the area. The last thing I wanted was a grubby GI rooting about in my boxer shorts.

  Richard identified the problem. He said something had indeed been burrowing into my upper thigh. He suspected it was the larva of a chigger mite (the organism that Nicole Maxwell had dabbed with scarlet nail varnish to destroy). Alas, we had no nail varnish. I asked Richard for more information.

  He gave me an uneasy glance and looked away.

  “Of course, there’s always the possibility,” he said delicately, “that it’s not going in, but coming out.”

  I grimaced.

  “It might be a guinea worm boring to the surface,” he said. “But let’s hope it’s not that.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with guinea worms?”

  “By the time they’re boring to the surface,” said Richard, “they’ve reproduced, filling you with millions of larvae.”

  We dabbed the area with clinical alcohol and foot powder, and hoped for the best. Then it was time to move on.

  *

  For two more days we hacked our way through the jungle. Our odd procession made slow progress. My moose knife was blunt, but I wasn’t much of a trailblazer anyway. I swung the great blade from left to right in an arc, pretending to cut. The sloth was kept satiated with a ready supply of kapok leaves. Fortunately, no more of the hole-boring parasite reared out from my thigh. My worries returned to the smaller of the beetles which was tucked away in my pack. It was still refusing food, making me fear for its life.

  In the jungle, life was cheap. Our own world hides from death, and considers it as an unnatural condition. In the Upper Amazon nothing could be more natural. On the third night, as we gnawed at the bones of another oversized rodent, Enrique told of life fifty years before, in his youth.

  “There was much killing,” he said, his cinnamon eyes reflecting the firelight, “my father was a great kakaram, a warrior. He had taken so many heads. I remember when they came back to the village with the heads. They held them high, and would sing. Then we would have the tsantsa feasts.”

  “Did the villagers make the heads into tsantsas?”

  “The warriors started making them on the way back through the jungle,” Enrique said. “The skin was peeled from the skulls and boiled in water. Then it was filled with hot pebbles, and after that with sand. But there was danger...”

  “What danger?”

  Enrique threw the rodent’s leg bone to one of the dogs.

  “Warriors from the village which had been attacked,” he said, “would be chasing my father and the others through the jungle. The tsantsas had to be started. They couldn’t wait till they were back at the village.”

  “Why not?”

  “The musiak,” said Enrique, “the avenging soul. It seeps out from the dead warrior’s mouth and will avenge his death. First it kills the warrior who killed it, and then the others. The only way to destroy the musiak is to make the head into a tsantsa: the soul goes inside the tsantsa and is trapped there.

  “As the head-taking party runs through the forest, the avenging soul goes with them. The warriors would rub charcoal on the head’s face, to blind the avenging soul.”

  The old hunter fell silent, as the demoniac screeches of a monkey echoed from the tallest branches of a nearby tree.

  I asked Enrique about the avenging soul.

  “A warrior could only get an avenging soul, when he had an arutam soul,” he said. “The arutam was important for a Shuar warrior. It kept him alive. Without it, he could have perished easily. When I was just a boy my father took me to the waterfall and he waited for me to see the arutam.”

  “Where do you see it?”

  “In the mist,” said Enrique, “in the spray which comes from the waterfall. It’s there. The soul entered me as I slept. It came as a jaguar. It stared into my eyes, challenging me to kill it. I was not frightened, for I wanted to be a warrior like my father. So I stared back and, drawing near, I stabbed it with my knife.”

  Enrique puffed his chest full of air.

  “That was many years ago,” he said. “But I will not forget that night, the night I became a warrior.”

  The old Shuar’s tales were from another time, a time before missionary Bibles and makeshift churches flooded the Pastaza.

  “There was so much killing,” said Enrique, repeating himself. “And when one of our clan was killed, we would have to avenge the death. It led to a cycle of death. There were assassins everywhere. They waited until night, then attacked the village. Children were snatched for slaves, and young women as brides. They set fire to the malocas, driving everyone into their trap.”

  Again, the hunter paused, as he recalled the gruesome scenes of butchery.

  “When the raiding party came to attack our village,” he said, “I was protected by my arutam soul. When they struck, everyone was asleep. I remember the hunting dogs howling at the dark. Then the first screams, as the assassins ran into houses and started to kill. They were wild, desperate to take heads. They were hacking people who weren’t even dead.

  “My father was one of the victims that night. We buried his headless body under the floor of our house,” said Enrique. “Of course our village raided theirs and took more heads. Soon after that the missionaries came. They taught us that evangelism was right, and that cutting hea
ds of our enemy was wrong. They baptized me, Enrique, and made me a Christian.”

  The hunter touched a callused hand to his brow.

  “We no longer need to fear an enemy,” he said softly, “for we have something very good – even better than an arutam soul.”

  Enrique looked at me through the flames of the campfire. His cheeks were flushed.

  “We have Jesus,” he said.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The Avenging Soul

  Richard said the jungle was the womb from which all men had come. Emerging from it was like being reborn. Few sights could have been so welcome as the thatched roof of a maloca peeking out from between the rosewood trees. As we walked into the clearing in single file, I thanked God for delivering me from the green hell. The thought of traversing it again was almost too much to take. Perhaps, I mused, I would live out my days with Ramón, and become an honorary Birdman.

  The village was well-proportioned, and set in a sprawling grassland. Along one edge, it was bordered by a small river, its water dark brown, like tea. A huddle of women were washing clothes on the bank. A rag-tag band of children and hunting dogs were darting about, enjoying the late afternoon sun.

  Alberto, still holding the sloth under its arms, led us to a proud, towering long-house at the far end of the village. It was the tallest one I’d seen, lying east-west, and roofed with kampanaka palm thatch. A space of more than four feet stood between the raised bamboo floor and the ground. Unlike those at San Kose, and elsewhere, the malocas at Ramon’s village were oval in shape.

  In the days of head-taking raids, no one would have dared enter a Shuar house until welcomed by the host. Unexpected guests were sometimes mistaken as assailants and killed. Indeed, in the Shuar world any action out of the ordinary could be regarded as hostile gesturing. My own Afghan ancestors, from the wilds of the Hindu Kush, are famed for their love of bloodshed. They were once known for dressing their women in red, so that they weren’t killed during “friendly” bouts of warfare. But the Shuar made my own progenitors seem tame in comparison.