Sihpromatum - Backpacks and Bra Straps

by Savannah Grace

“Good. Bree should be quite comfy then,” Ammon said. She just looked up at him mournfully. Lacking the energy to make even a feeble comeback, she simply collapsed onto the giant communal bed.

  The sounds of loud air brakes and engines woke us early. This settlement was like a truckers’ purgatory with nothing around but dust and huge trucks carrying scrap metal across the border. There was certainly no place we could buy food or water, so it was bound to be another long, exhausting day.

  The three Spanish travellers left on their bikes as we set off on foot, fully loaded as usual. Luckily, we were very close to the border. Once we were stamped out of Kyrgyzstan, the armed border guards assigned the few pedestrians to ride along in the cabs of a randomly chosen semi. With no other way for us to cross the seven kilometres of no-man’s-land separating the Kyrgyzstan border station from China, the truck drivers had to take us for free. The close mountain backdrops were gorgeous, but none of us dared take out our cameras with so many stern officials around.

  Before we reached Chinese Customs, we had to go through a number of police checkpoints. Each time we did, they had us fill out forms with the same information – Name. Birth date. Nationality. Passport number. Expiration date. They were all within a couple hundred feet of each other, and sometimes we’d walk only a few feet before they’d stop us and make us fill out still more forms. I hardly had the energy to lift my pen anymore, and standing while I wrote was exhausting.

  “This border is by far the most messed up one I’ve ever crossed. I don’t know what system they think they’re using, but we must’ve gone through a dozen passport checks in that seven-kilometre stretch (4–5 mi),” Ammon said without exaggeration.

  “Well, I, for one, have had it. I’m going to use my initials instead of my signature from now on.” Bree’s hand was cramping from writing out her full, twenty-two-letter name every time, along with all the rest of the same information each checkpoint required.

  The border was only open a few hours a day, so it tended to get really backed up. Once we hit the massive truck line-up waiting to go through Chinese Customs and Immigration, we grabbed our packs, thanked the trucker who’d taken us this far, and walked to the customs station, where we filled out yet more forms.

  The questions about our health were the ones we most dreaded, and the ones we didn’t feel obligated to answer honestly for fear of being turned away. Too exhausted to stand, Mom pretended to be bored and tired when she sat on her backpack in line. She would smile up at the guards, hoping they didn’t see through her facade.

  When we were asked to step up and stand in front of a seven-foot-high thermometer while it took our temperatures, my heart started pounding. The guy directly ahead of us had been dragged off to a back room when his temperature registered too high, and we never saw him again. Bree and Mom passed easily enough, and I hoped my racing heart wouldn’t set off any alarms. I let out a massive sigh of relief when it dinged and let me move forward.

  The process of entering China took three hours, and then it took another three hours to get to Kashgar. I was happily anticipating this return to China. Living a nomadic lifestyle all these months had me longing to return to a familiar place. I was comforted by the fact that I knew what to expect in China and had adapted easily to its culture, food, and people. Though we’d only travelled northward from Beijing before heading for Mongolia the last time we’d been in the country, I assumed that western China would be much the same. But looking out the window, it appeared nothing was changing any time soon. The dry, hot desert only intensified rather than magically transforming into the lush green vegetation I’d hoped to see.

  Night Runs

  18

  I crept as softly as I could, hoping to prevent the floor boards from creaking, but my insides were screaming, “Run! Run Faster!” We were staying in a Chinese hostel in one of two adjoining rooms that shared a bathroom. To reach the toilet, I had to sneak through the other backpackers’ room, quietly passing those who were sleeping. I felt unbelievably fortunate to have a relatively clean, western-style toilet that close by, though. There was readily available toilet paper, running water, a solid door with a lock, and electricity. I’d grown to really appreciate squatties, but given how sick I felt, I was relieved that I was able to sit. I was quite literally drained. Closing the bathroom door behind me, I gratefully leapt onto the toilet and let it rip. This was my first experience with diarrhea, and I hadn’t realized what terrible pain and exhaustion the constant contractions created.

  I’d had just about enough of the whole thing already, and was jealous of Bree the next morning when she declared in an upbeat tone, “I think I’m getting better. I’m crapping pudding now instead of water.” The bug had caught me a day behind Bree and Mom, so it gave me hope that I, too, might soon reach the end of this dreadful spell. As Bree continued to celebrate her near-recovery in even more graphic terms, a pretty, ebullient gal knocked on our door just before she invited herself in.

  “Hey, I heard you guys have the shits,” she said, in a thick French Canadian accent. “How’s it going? I had them really bad about a week ago, after coming in from Pakistan. I was…” Well, I thought wearily, isn’t that just a lovely way to introduce yourself?

  Noticing my stunned expression, she rushed on to add, “Oh, I’m Marie, by the way. I’m sharing a room with your brother.” When we’d arrived at the hostel, there weren’t enough beds for all four of us in one dorm, so Ammon took advantage of the opportunity to escape our company for a while. Marie was one of the more interesting travellers he was bunking with. She was a free-spirited, solo traveller who, prompted by the demands of her publisher and her many appreciative readers, was already writing a second memoir about her travels. What began as a kind, state-of-the-bowels checkup turned into a splendid story-telling session about Marie’s recent adventures in Pakistan and Iran, but not before Ammon had joined us to gloat about our digestive misfortunes.

  “I guess Kyrgyzstan didn’t agree with your stomachs. I feel perfectly fine,” Ammon said. This imperviousness to travel bugs was apparently very sexy to backpackers, because Marie looked more than just a little impressed when she heard this tidbit. I, on the other hand, wondered what he had been feeding the rest of us, given that he alone didn’t fall ill. I needed to point the finger at someone, and it seemed only fair that our fearless leader should take some responsibility for our illness.

  Trying to get to the bottom of it Mom said, “At least tell us what you think we did that you didn’t?”

  “You mean, what didn’t you do?” he said.

  “Oh? Do please tell us what that might be?” Bree said facetiously.

  “Well, what you should’ve done was listen to me. It’s probably the ice cream you guys kept eating. And what did I tell you? People always say not to eat ice cream in developing countries because they freeze and refreeze it so many times to save power during the night. Not a good idea with milk products.”

  “But they were so good. And it was so hot. How could we have resisted?” Bree said, feeling no remorse. Ammon hadn’t been tempted by ice cream since he’d gotten sick from it when he was a boy. He was also unwilling, of course, to spend money on an unnecessary luxury.

  “That’s about the only thing I can think of that you guys did differently,” he continued.

  “Oh, you just like to be able to point out how, in your twisted mind, we’re being punished for spending money,” I said. Marie’s sudden outburst of laughter at our ridiculous banter was contagious.

  “Whatever it was, we need to get better. We’ve got mountains to climb,” Mom said, once we all stopped giggling.

  “With the current freeze on tourists being allowed into Tibet, we should just continue resting here for another few days,” Ammon said. “Then we can continue on to Turpan, another Silk Road town further north. The earliest available bus tickets out of Kashgar aren’t until next week anyway, ‘cause all the Chinese students head back to university at the end of summer. This was actually a good time
for you guys to get sick, since we couldn’t have left any sooner anyway. I’m surprised you got a ticket, Marie, but I guess it’s easier if you’re travelling alone. They can fit just one person in almost anywhere.”

  Mom frowned. “We’re just going to have to sit here until we feel better.”

  “All I can say is, that better happen before the Sunday Market. You’ve got three days. I’m not going to miss it, and I don’t want to be stuck here a whole extra week to catch the next one,” Ammon warned.

  We spent a few days relaxing in bed and staying close to the toilet. Kashgar’s guest house was by no means overpopulated, but it was the biggest backpackers’ hub we’d seen in over a month. It felt good to be part of a community that had similar goals and interests, not to mention the same ridiculous tan lines from wearing sandals all day, every day. Travellers from Japan, North America, Germany, Korea, and France came in and out of our six-bed dorm freely, sharing stories until the sun came up. Not only did we discuss routes and what to expect in the way of hostels, food, and cultural differences, we also swapped clothes, books, and just about anything anyone didn’t need any more.

  “Dontcha just love backpackers, though?” Bree said as she leaned against the bed on the floor listening to the latest conversations with our temporary roommates. “They’re instant friends, like long-lost family members. It’s as if we all share this unwritten special bond.”

  We all recognized a particularly strong connection when we met Wouter, a solo traveller from the Netherlands, in the Internet café downstairs. We all piled on our dorm beds and before long we knew his whole life story. He was taking the same route into Nepal as we were, but what amazed us was that he was doing it on a bicycle.

  “I know you Dutchies like biking, but isn’t it totally flat where you’re from?” Ammon stated more than asked. “How can you even try to prepare for something like this?” The territory Wouter’d already covered through the ‘Stans was almost nothing but towering overpasses and rough terrain. The route ahead was either Chinese deserts with their extreme temperature changes or super-intense mountain passes as one got closer to Tibet and Nepal. Wouter’s expedition was comparable to the Jamaican bobsled team making it to the Olympics.

  Briskly combing his fingers through his dirty blond hair, he could hardly sit still as he reiterated his latest experiences. His elaborate stories were sprinkled liberally with curses – just about every other word, in fact – but he seemed to be unaware of the impact of the English cuss words he was using. His foul mouth made us cringe and laugh at the same time. He’d told us about how he’d been camping alone in the Siberian forest when two Russian officials found him and started demanding bribes. Hesitant to bring out his money and passport when they insisted on seeing both, he peeked out the screen door of his tent and nervously handed them pieces of candy instead. While he held his breath, they eventually accepted his offering and left him in peace in the woods. He concluded his nerve-racking yet side-splittingly funny story by leaning back with a serious understatement, “You wouldn’t have believed how intense that was.”

  He was thrilled by the idea of a family travelling around the world together the way we were, not to mention amazed that Ammon had the guts to travel full-time with three females.”Just look at you guys! I’ve never met a world-travelling family before. For what it’s worth, I definitely think you can pull off a year. Why not? You guys are nuts anyway. I wouldn’t be able to stand my mom or sister in the same room for an hour, let alone a whole year. Kudos to you. And you haven’t killed each other yet? I could imagine bumping into a world-travelling family in Italy or Disneyland or something, but here? You guys didn’t just accidentally take a wrong turn? You purposely went through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan? That’s just awesome!”

  We wanted to ask if Wouter had purposely chosen his route or whether he just hadn’t realized the dangers of the mountain ranges beforehand, but we figured he knew what he was doing. He’d gotten this far without input from us. Just for a moment, I imagined myself on a bike, crossing over those high passes and presenting myself as an easy target for buses to nudge off the edge. No thank you very much! I’ll just stay here with this freak show. Any way I looked at it, I was pretty well surrounded by crazies, but usually in the nicest sense of the word.

  It made me feel good to be admired for what we were doing, instead of ridiculed by other travellers as we had sometimes been in our early travel days. Wouter could relate to how difficult it was to travel through this part of the world, and he knew we had to be serious travellers to make it this far.

  “Have you ever thought about writing a book?” he asked Ammon later.

  “We have, actually. Everyone keeps asking us that. I think she would have to write it, though.” Ammon pointed to where I was consumed in writing in my journal. Since talking with the missionaries, I’d actually started jotting down an outline for a book, noting the highlights of what I’d experienced and learned on the trip so far.

  Not long after we met Wouter, Marie came knocking on our dorm room door early one morning, when it was still dark out.

  “Ammon said you guys might want these,” she said, holding up a plastic bag full of old fashioned, diaper-style menstrual pads. “I’m lightening my pack, and I don’t need them anymore. I picked them up in China because I couldn’t find any tampons. Do you guys want them?”

  Feeling a bit put on the spot and awkward even as I appreciated the fact that she’d cared enough to bring them over, I reached out for the bag of thick pads and thanked her.

  “I’m catching an early bus out of here, but I wanted to wish the rest of your family safe travels. And good luck – with everything.” With that and another of her infectious smiles, she turned and left.

  “Well, you know what they say: ‘one person’s trash is another one’s treasure’.” I lifted the bag to inspect my gift as best I could in the dark.

  “What are you going to do with them, though?” Mom asked from her bed.

  “That’s a good question. But I just feel like I can’t waste them. Obviously, she felt that way, too.”

  “Isn’t it funny how things change?” Bree smirked, pleased to see that we were finally beginning to imitate her affinity for hoarding.

  This kind of travelling and learning from the cultures we were immersing ourselves in had taught us not to throw anything away thoughtlessly. Bree had been a terrible hoarder even before our trip, but for me it was an enormous transformation that had happened subtly. Every plastic bag, tissue box, toilet paper roll, and plastic cup was considered for reuse or was repurposed entirely. Every last drop of toothpaste was squeezed out before the tube was cut open to salvage the last remaining bits. Old shoe laces were saved in case a spare bra strap was needed. Naturally, something as perfectly good as pads, which might once have been tossed without a second thought, could be used in an emergency for first aid, or as a clothing stuffer or a towel.

  “So you’re telling me you feel the same about this package of pads as you do about everything else you’ve always saved, eh? But why?” I asked Bree.

  “Dunno,” she shrugged. “I guess I figure that I just might need it one day.”

  Cause and Effect

  19

  While we were being held hostage by our symptoms, I spent some time reading a bit of Ammon’s Lonely Planet book and had some trouble figuring out some pronunciations, particularly Uyghur.

  “It’s the name of the Turkic ethnic group here,” Ammon explained.

  Before he could explain further, Bree started laughing in a way that indicated another corny, homemade joke was on its way. “Oh, okay. I got it, I got it. You say it like… ‘we grrrr!’ or, ‘My ger. Your ger. We all ger’,” imitating what must’ve been her distorted version of a Mongolian caveman pointing at his home.

  “Sort of. Kind of. Yeah, I suppose. Whatever works for you,” Ammon said.

  “You sound like a caveman, Bree. Or should I say german…wait, ger-man. German. Do you think Germans had gers in
stead of caves and that’s why they’re called Ger-man?” I proudly delivered my contribution to the nonsense.

  “I don’t think so. I’m not sure I even get what you’re saying,” Mom said, rolling her eyes.

  “Or because they had lots of germs,” Bree fired back.

  “Okay, you guys are just being officially stupid now,” Ammon said.

  I nodded at Bree, giving her a silent, “that was a good one, sis” face.

  We girls hadn’t had a chance to explore Kashgar yet, but we’d kept Ammon busy fetching food, retrieving money, and doing just about anything else we needed. The first time he’d gone to the bank for us, he’d discovered that he and Mom’s debit cards didn’t work. Thankfully, thus far we hadn’t had any problems with ATMs, which were our main access to funds, but now we were forced to exchange some of the American money we’d been holding in reserve; each of us carried five hundred US dollars stashed in our packs or money belt for exactly this type of emergency. Once we had some money and were able to trust our bowel movements enough to go a few hours without using toilets, we decided to venture out to discover the city.

  As Ammon was strapping his money belt on for the day, he noticed the clothing I was wearing and carefully made a suggestion. “If you want my advice, I’d say cover up and put on some more clothes.”

  “What? Why? What are you talking about?” I asked, looking down at my clothes with my arms outstretched.

  “I’m just sayin’ that you probably won’t feel comfortable in that. Trust me on this one.”

  “But this is China. What’s wrong with shorts and a T-shirt? It’s fifty degrees Celsius (122°F) out there,” I said.

  “It’s actually only thirty-five degrees (95°F),” he corrected, “but that’s fine. Do whatever you want. It’s not that you can’t wear that, ’cause the Chinese minority wear the same type of clothing you saw in other parts of China. Just know that the majority of the women here are fully covered.”