Kingdoms in the Air

by Bob Shacochis

  The snow peaks to the east and west of us along the Tibetan border flare into being but within the hour are snuffed out by the low-­pressure system that refuses to retreat to the lowlands. Back in our tent, my wife is in terrible shape, lying very still to keep from vomiting up the Imitrex, but when I check on her an hour later, her condition has improved and she swallows a second pill with a weak smile. Chhundi serves breakfast and the Sherpas break down camp around her. On the hillside above the village, Laird and I consider the bucolic illusion of Tange, the surrounding landscape like the Canyonlands National Park in Utah on steroids. Everything’s quiet except for the ravens cawing and the high-key drawling of Tibetan music coming from a cassette player in a house below and the click of Tom’s shutter. Lower still on the green terraces, a woman returns from weeding her barley field. In town, no dogs bark, no children skip to school because the school has no teacher. The only person we see is the old woman in the plaza weaving her endless bolt of woolen cloth, as if her only plan in life was to die at her loom.

  Finally back on her feet, Cat is woozy but able, and we mount up and leave Tange with no more ceremony than when we arrived. The result of her illness is that we will bypass the ten-hour side trip tomorrow to the monastery cave of Luri, have a more leisurely day, and stop short at Tsarang, Mustang’s second-biggest town and the gateway to the valley of Lo Manthang. Not a bad idea, we all concur, to slow the pace, which has taxed both horse and human, and allowed us to pay only glancing attention to the wonders of so alien a world. Still, Jamling’s frisky this morning, perhaps he’s caught the smell of the king’s rich pastures on the flux of currents, and back down on the floor of Tange’s canyon we gallop on the sandbars, chased by Laird and Mahendra and Rajendra and the mountaineer Ang Tsering, who has grown fond of the cowboy’s life and whipping a horse’s ass.

  At the confluence where Tange’s canyon spills into the Kali Gandaki’s, we wave farewell to Rajendra and his extra horses, who turn south back into the gorge toward Chuksang and quickly vanish into the resounding emptiness. The main canyon is windless, its baking heat abrupt, and we head inexorably north hypnotized by the crunch of gravel, the horses’ bells, the regular clop of their shoes, iron on stone. Vultures pinwheel overhead; eagles levitate on the thermals. In another month or less the river will jump its channel and roar like a hundred freight trains, off the plateau and into Nepal, and Asia will drain its sacred waters into the seas.

  Ahead perhaps a mile atop a distant bluff to the west, greenery announces the valley of Tsarang, and the trail up. Laird, excited, points along the eastern flank where another side canyon drops out of the snowy range, and this one, he believes, is the mother lode of saligrams, fossils the size of Volkswagens piled in its recesses. There are no more river crossings until our final ford at the base of the trail, where we’ll halt for lunch. Hearing this news from Mahendra, Jann is off her horse in an instant, and then the rest of us, wandering in a stupor through a rock hound’s prolific dream.

  At the ford, the clear glacial waters of the side canyon’s river empty into the Kali Gandaki; the parallel currents where the two rivers blend run half transparent blues, half chocolate murk for a few hundred yards until a bow of rapids churns the two streams into a milky froth. The Sherpas cross on horseback and Mahendra brings the ponies back to us. From our side of the river, we’ve had ample time to study the trail rising from the opposite bank up into a ravine that appears to dead-end into a vertical three-hundred-foot cliff, and the ascent looks suicidal. No, no, Mahendra assures us, this is a well-used trail, the only route to get from the floor of the canyon to Tsarang, a thousand feet above us.

  Remounted, we splash across the turquoise flow. A third of the way up the slope, where the ravine gradually attenuates into natural staircasing, Jann climbs off her horse, shaking. The trail becomes insane, more and more rugged, and we’re forced to dismount and lead the ponies through a steep obstacle course of boulders. Two-thirds of the way the path flattens onto a small shelf at the base of the insurmountable cliff, and we find ourselves peering saucer-eyed up a sixty-degree chute, a cornucopia of loose, smooth, round rocks the size of grapefruits and basketballs and everything in between, a stalled tumble of rocks flowing out of the sky somewhere far above us. Just to scale the chute on hands and feet seems like an extreme act of foolishness, given the instability of the course. Except for Mahendra and the slothful Bangkokers, we’re of a single incredulous mind concerning this approach—No fucking way! How high is it? I ask Ang Tsering, who has remained on horseback. Two ropes, he answers. Two three-hundred-foot ropes. No one’s willing to bet a hundred dollars we can ride up the chute, and even Mahendra concedes it’s impossible to ride down.

  Like the horses themselves, we’re balking. Cat wisely gets off; she’ll walk with Jann. Mahendra admonishes us to put aside our fear, if we’re afraid the horses will be afraid, be confident and go. Just then a wizened old traveler astride his pony comes up behind us from the ravine, acknowledges us with a gap-toothed smile, and whips his horse into the chute as if there were nothing to it. “See?” clucks Mahendra. Mike and the captain kick their horses ahead and we wrap our fists into our ponies’ manes and advance. Every step tortures the animals. I haven’t gone fifty feet before Jamling is exhausted, panting, lurching for solid ground as his hooves slide in the loose rocks. I try to dismount but Mahendra strongly objects; this is not the time for foreigners to quibble with Mustang’s principles of sound horsemanship, because if I throw the horse off balance he’ll fall before I can even pop my foot out of the stirrup.

  Directly above me, Mike’s horse seems about to collapse backward and roll on top of Jamling. Above Mike, the captain, indifferent to the purpose and function of reins, threatens to crush my wife into the side of the chute as she tries to scramble out of his way. And higher still, it has not slipped my notice that the old man has hopped off his pony to assault the chute’s final, most radical section. Mahendra yells at me. “Just hit the horse,” he urges. “Beat the horse. It will go.”

  Mike and Ang Tsering embrace this advice and strap their ponies mercilessly with their reins. “I left my guilt behind,” Mike shouts triumphantly as his horse skitters upward, and I wonder if perhaps Mike’s been in Asia too long. Myself, I kick and prod Jamling and command him forward until I imagine his lungs bursting, blood spraying from the flare of his nostrils. The rocks are too wobbly to allow him to catch his breath; he gasps and slobbers up and up, noble eyes wild from the effort. I let go of the reins and grip his mane with both hands, my head against his sweaty neck. Rocks clatter in our wake and finally he lunges up out of the earth into the opening sky and we are both, horse and rider, reborn into a world so beautiful and alive and human in its difference that the chute from which we emerge now seems purgatorial, a mythic passage between hell and heaven. One by one, the horsemen are released from the canyon and we walk across the grassy pastures of the plain of Tsarang and then remount and ride joyously into the village.

  Shady, fabulous, urbane Tsarang is a balm to our senses. While camp is pitched in a backstreet corral, we wash our hair under the icy stream of a nearby public fountain, toss our pocket trash into ACAP rubbish cans, change our soiled clothes, and walk through a grove of ancient cottonwoods for a late afternoon visit to Tsarang’s fairy-tale landmarks, its dzong—palace fortress—and monastery, both five hundred years old and unmarked by the passing centuries. Born in 1968, Tsewang, the village headman and king’s nephew, accompanies us on a quick tour of these extraordinary structures, which we will return to in the morning to observe the monks’ preparations for Tsarang’s own Tiji ritual. The Sherpas have made their kitchen in the stable of Tsewang’s family home, which is also a guesthouse, and it is there on the cushions of the tearoom, in the weak light of two overhead electric bulbs powered by the town’s generator, that we have our dinner, and a long conversation with our host.

  Tsewang is a Bista, the surname of most high-ranking families in Mustang, where
the vestiges of feudalism linger in everyday life in the relationship between peasants and the traditional ruling class, but even so there’s a solidarity between Lobas, the indigenous population of the plateau who trace their lineage to Tibet, and Thakalis, members of the more populous ethnic group south of the restricted area who dominate the political infrastructure of the entire district. Tsewang lives half the year with his wife, children, and parents in Kathmandu, returning to Tsarang in the more clement seasons to administrate the affairs of the village. It’s not uncommon for any Loba with means to clear out of Mustang during the winter months rather than endure the harsh conditions. Even Mahendra takes his family to an enclave of Loba expatriates in India.

  As an entrepreneur, as a functionary, as a Loba, the talk of throwing open the doors of Mustang tantalizes Tsewang, who was educated in Darjeeling and speaks fluent English. Yes, he says, right now people don’t benefit much from the kingdom’s limited tourism and he wants the restrictions lifted, he says, “because it will change life here for the better. A certain number of people, not wealthy people exactly but young people, have been exposed to the world; they get sponsorships to school. That’s a major change here and it’s been good for the people, good for the monasteries. The Lobas are pushing the government to lift the restriction,” he says, “but we don’t have the infrastructure to handle much of an increase, and we’d have to be able to manage it well, starting with food, because we’d have to bring it all in by mule or porter.”

  The strongest argument for restricted tourism, says Laird, is fuel, not just trekkers but the porters hacking up everything to cook their dal bhat. Tourism hasn’t cut down trees here—yet.

  To everyone’s amazement, throughout the night it rains, and we wake up marveling at the snow line, which has dropped ever closer to our elevation at 11,000 feet. It’s far too early in the monsoon season for rain in Mustang and perhaps this is a propitious omen, but Ang Tsering gazes south at the eastward-sliding storms on the Himalayas that have been stuck there for a week and we all know what he’s thinking, that the hundreds of climbers on Everest are getting clobbered.

  At the dzong, a severe, square, five-story stone tower guarding the village from marauding nomads whose bones have long turned to dust, we pass from light to darkness, feeling our way up crude, broken stairs, landing after landing, toward the bumblebee drone of chanting monks. On the cold bare floor of the fort’s chapel, eight adult monks sit on cushions facing each other, four to a side, for the annual reading of the holiest of Buddhist texts, the gospel-like Kangyur. Rocking in the lotus position, their heads bob over the ancient rectangular manuscripts, gold-leaf script on black paper, set between brass tea bowls on the low benches in front of them. Against the back wall underneath a row of cobwebbed windows, maroon-robed novitiates—small boys with shaved heads—giggle and pinch each other and try to follow along.

  Apparently this event adheres to no strict ecclesiastic regimen, and this particular bunch of holy men strike me as Shakespearean, given the earthy pleasure they take in our diversion. “Have you been drinking yet?” asks one of the monks. Of course not, we tell him. “We have,” he smiles pleasantly. It’s only nine thirty in the morning. A white-haired lama pats his lap and wonders if my wife would like to sit there. When I drop my pen, he snatches it up and, flashing an impish grin, slips it into the folds of his robe. What jokers, these monks of Tsarang. We leave them to pose for Laird’s camera and Tsewang leads us along an interior balcony to a room unlike any other I have walked into in my life. Pegged on the wall are medieval weapons—coats of mail, maces, battle axes, spears, scimitars, leather and metal shields, bows and arrows, all the armament any Loba might require should he need to defend Tsarang from Mongol invaders. Hanging on a rawhide thong there’s an amputated human hand, black and mummified, but nobody seems to know its story.

  In the center of the floor, monks and village women are making mud cones from clay and barley flour, smearing them red with berry juice, and plopping them into a basket; on the day of the Tiji festival, these cones, like Tange’s fetishes, will become sin incarnate to be carried beyond the village walls and destroyed. Tsewang takes an old hand-forged key from his pocket and unlocks an elaborate cabinet in the corner. For the first time in a year, Tsarang’s protector deity, Gombu, is exposed. All I can see is the gold nose of a statue poking out from an avalanche of white silk khatas but for the villagers in the room the occasion is momentous and they sprawl on the floor. Ang Tsering goes down too, prostrating himself three times before this god that commands his immediate devotion, and I am glad I’m there to see it happen, because my respect for Tsering bridges over to a respect for his beliefs and creates the first truly spiritual moment of our fellowship, in this land of spirits.

  Too gorgeous, too comforting, too serene, Tsarang was, and no one’s eager to leave, but we eat our lunch and hike down a ravine and over a footbridge behind the town to mount up for the three-hour ride to Lo Manthang. Jann and Mark take off ahead of us, fed up with life in the saddle. Captain Jack, we cannot help but notice, has been under­going a sartorial evolution attuned to the equine ethos of Mustang and his presumed status within it, and today he’s completely forsaken the Eddie Bauer look for a style that most resembles a colonial trail boss on the Burma Road—jodhpurs tucked into knee-high riding boots, linen shirt, soft leather riding gloves, topped off with a wide-brimmed felt hat and a black leather quirt perhaps formerly used to spank underage fannies in Thailand. As a fashion statement, the sensual, out-of-the-desert Lawrence of Arabia image that Michael has concocted with head scarves and lassitude seems to express the journey perfectly.

  The trail becomes, by Mustang standards, a boulevard, with a hand-painted road sign pointing the way to the capital. Laird is animated, exuberant, perched atop his handsome horse, smacking and pursing his lips in anticipation. Today will be Tom’s homecoming, so to speak. Today he will ride to the ancient walled city of his memory and fantasy and by nightfall be welcomed back to the palace—the prodigal son—and the aging king will ask him to sit by his side and drink yak-butter tea and talk about old times, when Laird himself was Lo Manthang’s big news.

  The boulevard ribbons across a mountainside; Laird and I kick our horses into a gallop and race side by side until the trail narrows back to a footpath and we are forced to trot, then forced to pull up altogether and summon our courage as the footpath dwindles to a goat path carved into a vertical slope that plummets down a thousand feet to the bottom of a boulder-strewn ravine. I feel light-headed with vertigo and can’t look down to where Jamling’s right front hoof falls right on the lip of the precipice, safe by a margin of inches—you could BASE jump here off the back of your horse if the winds were right.

  On the other side of this hazard, the road opens up again into a desolate valley housing a lone chorten in its center and the two of us canter ahead alone into this wasteland. The horses seem to appreciate the freedom to run, and slow down only when we have crossed the valley and the slope tilts up again toward the high pass into Lo Manthang. With the slower pace, Laird and I debate what we’ve learned so far. The preservation aspect of restricted tourism is a success. The development aspect is a failure, which we probably should have expected since this is Nepal and the central government just keeps swallowing the money. Okay, admits Laird, there are water taps that weren’t here ten years ago, but the things you would want to see change, like medical care, haven’t. “My impression so far,” he says, “is the lack of change,” but soon he’ll dine bitterly on the irony of that observation.

  At the top of the pass, the incessant cold wind stiffens and snaps the prayer flags strung across the road. We climb down from our saddles, tie our horses to the guy wires of the flagpoles, and crouch behind some rocks to gaze down upon the city that looks like a barge refitted as a citadel, a derelict Noah’s ark run aground in a long green lake of barley fields and pastures, here on the backside of the roof of the world. “They’ve built outside the w
alls,” Laird notes with regret. “It was the foreigners who didn’t want them to do that.” Tom, who usually expresses himself in rants, becomes reflective, soft-spoken. There below us was his home for almost a year; he had been Lo Manthang’s honored guest, friend and confidant of its rulers; he had counted himself the luckiest man in the world. “I can’t begin to describe the sense of melodramatic romanticism I felt the first time I stood on this pass,” he says, his voice barely audible above the wind. “This was what I bought into—the fantasy, the mystery of Mustang, the young man’s dream of finding the lost land. I had invested twenty years in Nepal, learning the language, courting the politicians, because this was what I wanted and it finally paid off. Now, looking at it, I think it’s so barren, it’s so poor. People here were really dealt a shitty hand.”

  Jann comes up and Tom wraps his arm around his wife’s shoulder in triumph and soon the others are there too, digging into their packs for warmer clothes. As we remount our horses and descend the pass, Laird confides that in 1991 he came up this same valley in ecstasy and left a year later “crying, just crying, because I thought I had failed to really reach across the void to that other culture, to understand them and to be understood. I could never reach beyond my own cultural assumption, or theirs.” But his melancholy fades as we wind up through the valley; his mood brightens and he kicks his horse ahead with Panglossian optimism. He expects things to be better now, a decade after the fact. He expects too much.

  Down we go toward Lo Manthang, riding solemnly past the hollow carcasses of horses and other animals on the rocky slope below the city walls, furry hides sagging over skeletons, the eyes pecked out of the skulls, leering teeth naked with mortality, other garbage dumped ingloriously along the final approach to the city gates. Across the ravine are the houses of the garas—the blacksmiths—and the butchers, impure, low-born, forbidden to live in the city while providing it with their vital service. Everything’s about to change. At the city gates we dismount into Tom Laird’s personal version of hell.