The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  We took the back road to Everest beside the chalky white Ra Chu River, along a track rutted, bouldered, swampy, mountain-sliced, gravelly, jarring and jolting. Later this joined a wide, graded road where barriers were being installed on the open side. In five years there will be tarmac and neon. At the end of the track, the world’s highest monastery had a lucrative sideline in providing accommodation – at least that is what they called it. No doubt they believed that an upgrade on a monk’s quarters would be sufficient and so were happy with a nicely painted restaurant which only served boiled rice or noodles. Patrick Leigh Fermor’s comment on a bad meal came to mind. ‘The cooking was so appalling that a stretcher may profitably be ordered at the same time as dinner.’ There were four beds to a room (torn curtains to match torn wallpaper), running water (a glacially cold dribbling tap 60 ft (20m) down the hill) and lavatories (a long drop, 130 ft (40m) down the hill and no clothes peg supplied). We pretended it was all a bit of an adventure – pioneers exploring up the sharp end; no room here for wimps and sissies. Had we needed a second night there would have been a mutiny.

  And so to our journey’s goal. We passed a collection of small tented ‘hotels’ that sported such names as Heavenly Peace or California Dreaming, providing accommodation for those prepared to accept even less than the spartan amenities of the monastery and the usual stalls of imported amphitrites, amber and beads and bangles. The transport for the last three miles (5kms) was by obsolete traps and we rode in a little patched and rattling cart pulled by a weary and bony pony whose driver was as old and weary as his beast. The way was hard and slippery and our driver whacked the rump of our struggling beast until I snatched away his whip of a length of fan belt and yelled “Mind!” – No! And then, rounding the last bend there was Jomolangma, Sagarmartha, Goddess of the Mountains, Everest. Not as dominating as I had expected but nevertheless imperious, authoritative and head high over its acolytes of Lhotse, Makalmond and Cho Oyu. For the hour that we were at the deserted Base Camp the wisps of cloud around the summit lifted, parted and vanished and then, as we turned away a storm came in from the North and drew a dark curtain across this empyrean stage.

  At 8 am, the architecture of Lhasa’s new railway station seemed imposing and intimidating. No doubt this was intended but to those who scurried through its concrete caverns, the concerns were about form filling, the fear of losing the flimsy paper train ticket and the bewilderment of where and when to board. After filing through ever narrowing barriers like sheep to be dipped, the Sky Train suddenly appeared like a mile long tethered dragon that was eager, snorting and impatient for the journey. On board there was chaos with boxes, bags, suitcases and provisions, pushed into spaces too small and too few to accommodate them.

  The permafrost high plains spread to all horizons as we slowly climbed East up to the Tangulla Pass (16,900 ft, 5,150m) that marked the boundary between The Autonomous Region of Tibet and the Qinghai plateau of China. White tents of nomadic yak herders sparsely dotted the plain like little mushrooms as we continued through gorges and wide open spaces at a leisurely and confident pace. On board, cards came out onto impromptu surfaces of a sack or unsteady knees, babies were breast-fed, grannies were spoon-fed, pot noodles reconstituted and melon seeds cracked. Dozing, sleeping, laughing, chatting and texting, this pot pourri of the Chinese nation was trapped and transported in the world’s highest train. One of our compartment’s occupants was a young military officer as inscrutable as a brick wall and addicted to films of the Fu Manchu/Genghis Khan type which he watched continuously on his laptop. Not a muscle moved nor a lip twitched whether the barbarians were routed or a princess rescued. When he left at Tianshui, two elderly passengers arrived who both occupied the lower bunk; they coughed, spluttered and drank tea all night. Amid this fervid travelling community, the train’s staff, smart in their dark green uniform emblazoned with stars, badges and chevrons (how the Chinese love their uniforms), moved aloof and efficiently, guarding each carriage as their personal fiefdom. At Lanzhou, the three diesel engines were replaced by a single electric engine and the pace quickened as we followed Hon Wey, the Yellow River; first east, next south and then, leaving behind this lifeblood of central China’s agricultural valleys, headed north to Beijing. Towns became larger, monoliths of bland apartment buildings blander, the skyline a fretwork of tower cranes and the pollution denser.

  An unwanted, unscheduled but unfortunately necessary visit to the 20-storey granite block of the Bureau of Public Security in Beijing was an irritating transit stop before we moved on to Hong Kong. There, the burnished steel and polished crystal of the skyscraping towers were as astonishing as ever. In the smog that sullied the air for our three days, they glowed ghostly grey but at ground level, in every small space that remained unbuilt, exquisite little gardens and landscaped areas were squeezed in or, when the ground was sloping as it so often was, torrents of water gushed and bubbled. On the pavements, people worried and scurried, twisting little human trails between the monster stalagmites ‘…through caverns measureless to man down to the sunless sea.’

  I looked down from our hotel window to a swimmer in the turquoise pool 48 stories below. He seemed trapped, arms and legs slowly moving like a gnat caught in a jam jar: a modern Xanadu’s sapphire lake – regulated, enclosed and sanitised. Two thousand miles to the northwest, the shoreline of the sapphire lake, Yamdrok Tsa in the Shannan mountains, wandered free, fed by snow melt and nurtured the valleys below, where the wind was chilled by the Himalayas, the water reflected the sky and the horizons slowly vanished in ever diminishing tones.

  Postcard Home

  The roof of the world is majestic but barren

  In contrast to temples and smiling Tibetans.

  It seems it’s just monks who inhabit Tibet

  But for the yaks (there’s no yeti yet).

  We’re both in good spirits (in spite of the drains)

  Tomorrow it’s Ev’rest, the king of all mountains,

  Then two days by train, two days in Hong Kong.

  How we long for some wine and a comfy chaise longue.

  Burma III

  January 2008

  ‘You cannot see the whole sky through a bamboo tube’ – Burmese saying

  Air travel in January brings extra hazards. If in this season of ‘good will to all men’, you are fortunate enough to escape a baggage handlers’ strike, an air traffic controllers’ go slow or a caterer’s walk out, the wheezing, coughing and sputum spraying on board ensures that you add another 300 colds to the one you already have. The need for a panacea to winter’s blues was not the primary reason to visit Burma again; there were corners not yet discovered, a tribal festival and in that troubled land, the appealing tranquillity in its people.

  Form filling goes hand in hand with dictatorship: an obsession with control, the gathering of statistics and the busybody state, so it was no surprise to find that the immigration formalities at Rangoon’s flashy new international airport were a lengthy affair. The form, printed on a large piece of pink card, was longer than on my last visit; perhaps the authorities were getting nervous. I have never understood the need to ‘State your occupation’; I usually put ‘enjoyment’. ‘State your profession’ is a little trickier; this time I entered ‘trapeze artist’. Once, when entering Sabah I was asked for my interests. Where, I wondered, would the filing clerk have put my entry of ‘foghorns’? I had considered ‘pantaraxia’ (a word that I had come across by chance when researching Who’s Who for the credentials of a keen but insipid boyfriend of one of my daughters; it was the entry of that splendid millionaire and eccentric Nubar Gulbenkian) but then I thought I might be considered some sort of deviant.

  The River Kaladin discharges into the Bay of Bengal on the northwest coast of Burma at the town of Sittwe. Built by the British to control the troublesome people of Arakan, it is home to a largely Muslim population, the product of Bangladeshi labourers brought in to work the paddy fields and build the railways. In a tributary near the river’s mout
h a great assortment of craft were each secured by frayed rope knotted around one of a number of angular and dismembered trees scattered along a bank that was muddy and malodorous at low tide. Newcomers jostled for a gap and many had to tie up two or three abreast. Chanting stevedores, glistening with sweat, were working on cargoes of wood, coal and bricks, passing them up hand to hand. Irrespective of the tides, the air was tainted with the stench of fish – both fresh and rotten, detritus and diesel fuel. There was clamour, clutter, rust, ropes and the cries of helmsmen squinting into the low sun as they judged their run in to a vacant slot with a precision born of 1,000 such previous manoeuvres. Out on the river, the horizons of the broad plain were scalloped by distant hills whose silhouettes were blurred in the evening haze like watercolour smears. The banks were covered by a rich velvety turf and clumps of waterpalm had been kindled by the setting sun into a glowing, green fire. Large flocks of egrets on their way to roost, the largest I had ever seen, splashed the sky like an unseasonal blizzard. Pagodas had been placed like little follies on hillocks that thrust up like nipples from the unwrinkled meadows and pale mountains were reflected in the dark waters.

  To celebrate my birthday, my delightful companions had laid out on the deck a feast of foie gras, cheeses, Pfeffernusse and Amaretti, arduously carried here from the best London emporia and these joined the noodles and spiced shrimp bought from harbourside vendors. Approaching Mrauk-U at dusk, a tropical sunset stained a sky as sanguineous as an unstaunched wound, which then gave way to a raven night where the Pleiades, Orion and the Milky Way were mirrored on the dark plains by the scattered, flickering fires of 100 braziers fanned for the evening meal.

  The Kingdom of Arakan in northwest Burma traded rice and slaves with India’s Coromandel Coast and Indonesia and spices and timber with the Portuguese. It amassed great wealth but having no expansionist ideals, instead built temples, stupas and pagodas of substantial size and in enduring stone. These are dotted over the countryside like molehills in a rich meadow and at the centre of Mrauk-U, the kings established a huge palace. But the Burmese, jealous of their peaceful and wealthy neighbour, invaded, conquered and destroyed the kingdom and by 1758 it had been absorbed into the great central plains of the Irrawaddy. One hundred years later the British, irritated by the resolve of the Arakan people to cling on to their inheritance and re-establish an independent state, completed the destruction of historic buildings but the spirit of the people and their distinct and fierce Arakanese pride, was still very much alive in Zan, our guide. We looked at four temples (a fraction of what was on offer but two too many to my unrefined views) and all had dark, dank and dim warrens of internal passages. The Temple of 80,000 Buddhas was only marginally preferable to The Temple of 90,000 Buddhas by the fact that halos of sparkling, blinking lights around the principal 16th century statues were inscribed with the name and telephone number of the sponsoring local restaurant.

  The town was delightful; a little grubby and decayed but car free and seemingly carefree. Well-fed ponies pulled traps with delicate wheels and hooped coverings against the sun, while bullocks lumbered along with the carts whose oversized wooden wheels are of a design that reaches into every corner of Burma. The universal bullock cart, hand crafted with the inherited skills of many generations, its wheels turning on greaseless axles, will outlast any mechanical machine. Norman Lewis found tonality in the wheels’ ponderous turning: ‘.....four notes of a pentatonic scale that repeated endlessly until distance and dust faded out their irritating and melancholy plainsong.’ Two-storied houses with fretted balconies, brightened by flowers lined the streets; an occasional vulgar arriviste with a tiled façade and neon lighting had carbuncled the scene but no doubt these contemporary touches established the credentials of its owner. Several Willys jeeps, abandoned by the Americans pushing down the Burma Road in 1943, were still in use but judged on their condition, it would not be long before there was only a single survivor from its cannibalised companions.

  The Lee Maw River runs into the Chin Hills and on another river trip in another boat, we sat one behind the other in pink plastic chairs of the kind usually seen on the patios of Weymouth bungalows. The seasonal floods bring with them rich alluvial soil and the paludal land on either side provided perfect conditions for sweetcorn, peanuts, flat beans (dried and exported to China), cauliflowers, great gourds as long as a cricket bat that hung from bamboo frames and pasture which was grazed by fat, grey water buffalo wallowing in fat, grey mud. Many people here originated from Chittagong and Dacca and are dark skinned. Some women were almost incendiary, so bright were their saris but these costumed flames were dampened by sombre men with black beards and white, crocheted skull caps. Although there was much activity, the flow of the river and the heavy hardwood structure of the craft made for slow travel. Great lumbering lighters of wide beam and high prow and loaded with stones or timber were laboriously poled along close to shore, sometimes with a tattered handkerchief of a sail. Long rafts of bamboos were even slower and took great effort to control around the river bends, sometimes having a man on the land heaving on a rope while the raft was edged around the boulders and the vegetation of the shoreline. There were patient fishermen, laughing, waving children, market-day housewives and the twice daily ferry packed as tight as any commuter train and overloaded to an inch of the water line with market cargo stacked on the roof. Boys bathed, women washed, girls fetched water and dogs, pigs and chickens scurried and scavenged among the river’s detritus. The celebrated Chin women, whom we had gone to see, looked sad and burdened with the grotesque web tattooed over their ancient faces. These grandmothers are the last to carry this deforming ritual and were now trotted out as an anthropological oddity for the few who journeyed this far.

  At the uncomfortably early hour of 3 am we sailed again under starlight for the return trip. The waning moon threw no light as we negotiated slippery, steep planks laid from one boat to another, our only saviours being a dim torch and willing hands. Trying to rescue the robbed hours of sleep on the damp teak deck of a boat which shuddered from the capricious camshaft of its ancient diesel engine proved hopeless. Additionally, there were the cries of the boy at the prow as he spotted for obstacles and there was spray from choppy water.

  From Maymyo, an hour’s drive from Mandalay into the cool hills, we journeyed by train. I do not know the age of its carriages (the engine was a diesel electric upstart), but to judge from their condition and design, they may well have carried my parents when they were resident here in the late ’30s. We travelled first class, the only perceivable difference from the second class being thin, brown seat cushions and an attendant. His principle job was to prevent the ticketless from riding the train while hanging from the exterior or from finding a toehold in a doorway. For the most part he slept. An exception was a sudden realisation of a duty to be performed near the Gokteik Viaduct. Built in 1903 by the Pennsylvania Steel Co on behalf of the British, this was the second-highest railway bridge in the world. Unaccountably, it is considered a strategic structure by the authorities which should not be photographed. The attendant made a half-hearted attempt to inform the passengers of this fact and ignoring the tourists who then crammed the windows for the best shot, went back to sleep. At each station stop there was an unchanging routine. At a moment that seemed solely at the whim of the platform superintendent, he took a bell from under his arm and on ringing it the train lurched forward. Those passengers already asleep awoke and others, crowding the space in between, fell on top of them and then picking themselves up, smiled with dazed pleasure and settled in any space available while those still on the platform made a sudden dash for the doors and hawkers attended to their last customers running alongside the train.

  At the northern edge of Thibaw (or Hpisaw depending upon which map you are reading) and at an idyllic elevated spot above the Dot Htawaddy River, is a building simply known as The Shan Palace. But there is no gilded carving, no crouching lions nor suppliant servants. Here is a substantial and elegant hou
se of the ’30s with a porticoed veranda, double height bay windows of pleasing proportions and a porte-cochere shading the panelled entrance doors; it would sit happily in Hampshire parkland. But at this mansion, the paint peels, the gutters sprout weeds, the garden is made over to corn and most windows are shuttered. Barking dogs announced our arrival to Fern, the elderly niece of Soe Ohn Kya, one of the last Shan princes. Her husband Donald was imprisoned two years ago on spurious charges and she now lived alone in the faded glory of influence and privilege, surrounded by photographs of relatives lounging on cushions of tasselled silk. The heavy and nervous hand of government is also intent upon crushing the spoilt but revered hereditary tribal leaders.

  Our guide on this eastern part of our travels was Hubert, a beaming and charming man with a penchant for hats – a Breton beret, a pink woolly confection or a cotton slouch. His trousers were a little short, his flat feet were shod in red canvas plimsolls and he managed to combine the idiocy of Monsieur Hulot with the beatitude of the Dalai Lama. As a former missionary boy, he paused for grace before even the humblest meal, suggested vainly that we visit each Catholic church we passed and sang a repertoire of World War II patriotic songs. Along a forest path ‘Roll Out the Barrel’ would echo through the bamboo or ‘Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover’ ripple over the river. Each song ended with a giggle of delight. Breakfasting on doorstep-sized slices of toast and fig jam in Mr. Charles’s Guesthouse, where the gloom of the teak boarded walls was lifted by candles in elaborate table candelabra, I chatted to an elderly white-haired woman from New Zealand; her broad smile so creased her face that it seemed a delicate exercise in origami. After Thibaw she was going west to travel on a local cargo boat down the Chindwin for four days sleeping on deck and eating with the crew. Here was the epitome of New Zealand’s pioneering spirit. Mr Charles and his wife Liz (both Chinese/Burmese) ran their establishment with their five daughters and had cornered a niche in the limited tourist market. In my bathroom the towel was embroidered with two blue bears and ‘If you go down to the woods today…’ The flip-flops had ‘Manchester United’ on their soles.