The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  Meals were cooked on a kerosene fuelled pressure burner and from a collection of battered aluminium pots, delicious vegetarian dishes of eccentric variety were served up in huge portions. Spicy soup, tofu stew, chow mein, tuna momo (boiled dumplings) and cheese pizza were typically and collectively on the plate; hot fruit salad was the cook’s favourite. In the sanctuary of the warm dining tent, the talk is of our objective, Panthera unica, the snow leopard. It is rare, elusive, mysterious and so well camouflaged that from a few yards away it can be almost invisible. Its coat of pale, misty grey is patched with black rosettes whose edges are blurred by the rich depth of its fur. It is a solitary beast and an adult weighs in at around a 100 lbs (45 kilos) and is six feet long including a tail that is as long as its body; as soft as pashmina and as heavy as a marine rope, this tail is both a scarf and a counterweight. It is a crepuscular hunter capable of killing creatures three times its size, has enormous paws and is able to leap 15 ft (4.5m) in a single bound. There are thought to be between 3,500 and 5,000 living in the horseshoe of high peaks that encircle central Asia and nominally belonging to a dozen countries including Pakistan, India, Nepal, Mongolia and China. This is a realm that has more affinity with clouds than nation states. In the state of Ladakh there are thought to be about 200. Put simply, we were searching an area the size of Switzerland for an almost invisible animal the size of a large dog, in inhospitable mountain terrain during a Himalayan winter.

  We searched diligently for five days but then came The Great Leopard Day. Breakfast was late: where was the porridge? At that moment the guide of our two neighbouring Indian photographers burst in.

  “There’s a cat up the Husing Valley.”

  Breakfast was abandoned and I set off at a run, shoelaces akimbo, tent flaps ajar and camera frozen. Namgyal the cook left the eggs, forgot that his apron was still around him and ran with me. The trail was hard; it crossed the ice river, slithered across loose dust and shale, wound around rock falls and then steadily and exhaustingly crept uphill through deep snow over scattered stones. My lungs hurt, the thumping of my heart could have been heard back at the camp and for an hour I trudged and panted and climbed and slipped and climbed and gasped and listened to the wind of my breath. Would I be there in time? Was the message clear? Would I die before I got there? But there she was, in the lens of the scope 500 yards (450 m) away across a valley, lying on a warm rock ledge, sunbathing and asleep. Posed and positioned like a Himalayan Olympia, she enraptured a dozen voyeurs, occasionally lifting her head to stretch a cramped muscle or move her tail which lay alongside her as thick and furry as a bell ringer’s rope. She claimed suzerainty not only on this great rocky cliff face where she lay but the whole valley, and we claimed our prize.

  With our steps lightened by the achievement of our goal, we wound our way further up the valley to the mountain village of Rumbak which lay at 13,500 ft (4,100m) looking out to a glacier and a multitude of interlocking valleys. All of these were mantled in snow. The nearest vehicle access point was a four and a half hour trek away from this isolated community of nine houses. A monastery of low, drab buildings was barnacled to the mountain side and manned by three ageing monks. All lived here harmoniously, if precariously. Alongside them, and sometimes with them, lived their animals: four pack ponies, a dozen donkeys, a few cows, several dzos and a male yak named Tashi who was entrusted with keeping the dzo population flourishing and at regular intervals performed his duties enthusiastically.

  ‘The profile of the gentle dzo

  Always seems so full of woe.

  I’m afraid he worries so

  Upon the fact that he’s a dzo.

  His mother was a buffalo,

  His pa a yak – and that’s a dzo.’

  In our homestay house there was a framed certificate to show that Tsewang Dolma had attended a five day course in the Basic Skills of a Homestay Provider. This did not seem to include providing fuel for the primitive stove in the centre of our room, and a 200 rupee bribe to Dolma’s father who did the root splitting (any other wood being scarce above the tree line) did not provide much either in spite of gestures that such largesse was intended to finance a woodpile the size of a bus. When the father came in to replenish the stove, he squatted for a while warming himself. Similarly, Dolma, on bringing spicy marsala tea and chapattis (their toughness eased with a generous spread of wild apricot jam), stayed to observe the strange ways of her guests. Electricity came from a village generator and a satellite dish allowed the India v England World Cup cricket match to be broadcast to enthusiastic applause by the whole village and its guests.

  Down from the mountains and back in Delhi (a heavy fall of snow had brought travel to a halt for two days), I sought warmth and set out for Bharatpur in another creaking but sturdy Ambassador with Mr Subass at the wheel. On the way there were pedestrian crossings, roadside markets and whenever there was a blade of grass to crop there were goats. Anything mechanised was overloaded with goods and overburdened with people. There were tractors, pedalled rickshaws, two person tuk-tuks holding nine persons and buses with the roof as loaded as the interior; trucks of doubtful mechanical integrity were beaten, battered, bent, bashed, broken and bereft; insouciant, plodding camels pulled enormous carts of dried dung and there were individual wandering cows and a herd of sheep. All this is the familiar traffic of an Indian road but this was the dualled National Highway N2 from Delhi to Calcutta.

  The Barg at Bharatpur had been the shooting lodge of a Rajasthani prince and a huge marble slab was engraved with the bag for the years to 1964. The King of Malaya was a guest in 1961 with a bag of 350 birds (an astonishing slaughter by 50 guns in half a day); the King of Afghanistan had topped this with a bag of 600 birds and 77 guns and more moderately in 1960, the party of General Sir Richard Hull KCB, DSO had a bag of 200 with 57 guns. The Barg’s cool and spacious marble guest houses were the antithesis of everything I had left behind a few hours ago in the alpine conditions of Ladakh. It adjoined Keoladeo National Park, the premier bird sanctuary of India. Avian migrators rest together in this staging ground either going south for warmth or going north to escape the heat but in whatever direction, they were going to breed. At dawn, I joined my naturalist guide Balraj Singh in a rickshaw whose wheels were uncomfortably misaligned and pedalled by a giant and amiable Sikh, to discover the huge flocks of birds that make this temporary stopover. Sarus cranes, black necked cranes and the endangered Siberian cranes were fattening up on the frogs of the wetland, bar-headed geese (the ones that fly over Everest) grubbed around in the mudflats, herons in many varieties lunged into the water to catch their breakfast and 100 different resident species went their separate ways in the light of the rising sun. In the grass and the dry forest, golden jackals, spotted deer and porcupine lived in natural harmony.

  Connections for the homeward flight required a final night in Delhi and my agent’s choice of the Ramada was an unhappy one. All the bedrooms were identical – a hermit would have been cramped in them. So bizarre was the décor that it mixed Italian renaissance, Russian glitz and contemporary furniture; there was a Watteau in the coffee shop and Vishnu in the gents. Byzantine columns supported chubby cherubs. I escaped to The Imperial, as classy as its neighbour was vulgar, but even so it was a little too extravagant in its use of scented candles that hinted of Laura Ashley. The inhabitants of the bar provided a pastiche of a decaying expat community. Two elderly but elegant European ladies, a couple of bellied and brash Englishmen disputing every decision of the World Cup cricket match being displayed and a tall forty-something in dinner jacket and pink scarf ensuring that his invitation would not be as dry as he anticipated. A selection of the lonely tinkered with a beer and rather disturbingly, a handsome fellow in a black tee-shirt and Piaget watch took the adjoining bar stool with a smile and an enquiry as to the rules of cricket. Having dined on the bar’s nuts and poppadoms, I left before his friendly hand found mine.

  Om shantih, shantih, shantih.

  Postcard Home

&nb
sp; Why am I here in this old town of Leh

  (The highest, most time worn in all of Ladakh)

  Embraced by fleece layers and a 30lbs pack?

  I’m seduced by snow leopards, the rarest of cats.

  If it snows they will vanish; smells me I’m lost.

  It’s above 12,000 feet and 30 below,

  My heart’s beating fast and my footsteps are slow.

  Can this really be worth the sums that it cost?

  But to find the Grey Ghost, the monarch of mountains

  Will turn out to be the best of all bargains.

  Australia

  October 2011

  ‘Modern travel is not about travelling at all; it is merely being taken to a place and is very little different from being a parcel’ – John Ruskin

  The greatest benefit of flying first class is the loo to passenger ratio; in the case of Thai Airways this is one to five. (This knowledge comes about from an accumulation of air miles rather than a generous bequest or an obscene salary.) This benefit was not available to the manacled convicts transported to Australia in rotten ships. ‘An excrementitious mass’, ‘a swinish multitude’ – Burke; ‘dreadful banditti’ – Nepean. Take your pick. The first of these arrived on 26th January 1788.

  Our accommodation in The Rocks area of Sydney was built for a convict overseer and Geoff, the present proprietor, now wielded the whip. “In after two, out by twelve. Two or three rashers at breakfast?” The breakfast table was animated by a collection of foreigners who displayed their nationality by their preference for muffins and syrup, scrambled eggs and bacon or fried eggs and definitely no bacon. A small, fat, tailless terrier patrolled around the sandaled, booted, trainered or espadrilled feet begging scraps that would soon cause him to explode. The gathering included an American couple who, finding accommodation impossible in Auckland, New Zealand, on account of the Rugby World Cup semi-finals, had flown to Sydney. They were to fly back the next day to join their cruise ship whose first port of call was Sydney. Of such are the wheels of the travel trade indulgently oiled.

  The convict association continued, at least in mind, when we tackled the Harbour Bridge Climb. Dressed head to toe in grey overalls; we were drilled on safety and set off shuffling in single file shackled to a wire. Snaking along a route that twisted through girders, along steel beams (one foot carefully in front of the other) crossing over transoms above eight lanes of traffic we arrived at the base of one of the great arches. Like mountaineers nervous of slipping off the sides of a vertiginous col, we slowly shuffled our way up the outside stanchions marvelling at the view and our courage. At the top, resting under a huge flag, Sydney was set out beneath us with the sails of the Opera House set in miniature and boats buzzing about like toys in a bath. Nearby, workmen engaged in repainting, sauntered around unroped and as nonchalant as a pavement artist.

  With our feet back on safe and solid ground, Asians seemed to make up a large proportion of the population and the city’s taxi business had been commandeered by Indians but this vigorous city was full of the young and active that worked hard, played harder and were universally cheerful. It was all rather exhausting. Ferries constantly crossed the azure waters of the harbour, perhaps the greatest natural harbour in the world, and we boarded MS Lady Northcott to take a scenic trip to Manly on the Pacific coast. By a broad stretch of white sand bordered by neat Norfolk Island pines, families spread themselves on jolly beach towels while the bronzed and athletic played in the surf. The less active sauntered along the shops and played the gaming machines, clouds puff balled the blue sky, ice cream parlours had queues and dogs chased balls and bicycles. It was the first week of November and arriving from England the previous day, it seemed we had stumbled into a film set.

  The Blue Mountains were blue, studded with vertical escarpments some of which carried waterfalls from their head that streaked the granite walls in wispy threads and isolated houses sent up smoke like strands of unspun silk. Surreally, we passed through Chipping Norton as we skirted Liverpool and then we headed north for the playgrounds of Queensland’s coast and the Great Barrier Reef. This top right hand corner of the continent is only a few hundred miles below Papua New Guinea so it was surprising to find acres of sugarcane plantations, with their own railway system. Desolation Point, the landfall of Captain Cooke on 26th June 1770, belied its name with idyllic white sand sandwiched between a blue sea and a bluer sky but the reef had turned to the colour of putty, apparently a victim of pollution. This bleaching had not affected the fish and diving in the gin clear water; they stood out in technicoloured brilliance as they flitted through their concrete surroundings. The completion of our four hour flight to Adelaide in South Australia was something of a miracle since the Qantas boss, weary of union intransigence, without warning and evidently without regard to public relations, precipitately grounded every Qantas flight worldwide. The god of travellers can be vengeful but this swipe across all the flights of Australia’s national airline missed ours by a whisker and we touched down in Adelaide, the last of the 802 planes of the Flying Kangaroo to land. All this was unknown to us until the audacity of the deed covered every front page the next day. Insulated from these commercial troubles by vacational tranquillity, we wandered the streets charmed by the Victorian ornamentation of the city’s little villas with their frothy front gardens and wrought iron decoration. Leaving these pleasures behind, we headed down the Fleurieu Peninsular to the mainland’s southernmost point at Cape Jervis. On the way, rolling hills were interspersed with ordered olive groves and vineyards, contented herds of Hereford cattle and sleek horses.

  We continued even further south, taking the ferry to Kangaroo Island. Here, Snelling Beach is on the south coast and its azure water is all that there is between its eucalyptus fringed shoreline and Antarctica. The water felt that way too, but New Zealand fur seals like it cool and they flopped around the rocky foreshore. The island is home to 4,000 humans, several more thousand sheep, kangaroos, wallabies and sleepy, adorable koalas. A ban on non-native animals has ensured an untainted island fauna and flora. The koalas are everyone’s favourite of course but when they are not chewing eucalyptus (a more unpleasant and indigestible diet would be hard to find), they pee and poo scattering the crowd of onlookers whose upturned faces are in the vertical line of fire. The straight dirt roads were regularly and tragically the mortuary of kangaroos, wallabies, wombats and monitor lizards but the koalas never seemed to wake up long enough to unwedge themselves from their tree and venture on to dangerous arterial territory. Eucalyptus trees of many species were spread over the island and none had a disciplined habit. In attractive disarray and with their mottled bark highlighted by the sun, they lined the roads like a queue of pretty girls whose hair is flying in the wind.

  On a grey and windswept day we took a look at Vivonne Bay; the pleasant name, its position adjacent to a colony of fur seals and especially its accolade of ‘Voted the best beach in all Australia’ had tempted a visit. There was only one other person on this five-mile long, prize-winning beach: an old man who moved slowly with a stick that dug into the sand causing him to limp. As we passed he said “There’s a chill today.” We agreed. “Did you know this is the best beach in all Australia?” His face was veined and scarred with the rigours of the Southern Ocean’s climate and time had dragged its harrow across his brow. In a beau laid face, a nose akin to that of Ernest Borgnine was set amongst the furrows of Wilfred Thesiger but his eyes, sunk deep into the chasms, were bright. His olive, quilted coat was sun-bleached over its shoulders and a small black dog romped cheerfully beside him, jingling several metal discs on its collar. The old man had lived on the island where he had had a small farm, then his wife died and he had moved to Adelaide. His accountant daughter had no time to look after the dog so he had adopted it and was back for a while. Each day he exercised himself and the dog on Australia’s best but deserted beach. Each time we gestured to move on, another chapter of his ordinary life trickled out. We indulged him, of course; one day
we too might be alone and grateful for a stranger’s attention. Then he held out a gnarled and cracked hand and limped away. We had not even asked the name of his dog.

  We shared the ferry back to the mainland with a monster truck hauling Aberdeen Angus cattle. The cows headed north to Adelaide and we turned east for the Great Ocean Road – ten centimetres away on the map, 1,000kms (620 miles) on the ground. We learnt of the birth of our fourth grandson at Port Fairy (not an omen, we hoped) where avenues of huge and ancient Norfolk Pines overpowered more little Victorian cottages. In one of these, we ate spaghetti in a French restaurant run by a Turk. Out on a promontory, 10,000 pelagic sooty shearwaters arrive each year within a day or two of the tenth of September. Many corpses were spread around where birds had landed only to die of exhaustion from their nonstop flight over the Pacific from Alaska. On the nearby marshland were Australian white ibis, yellow billed spoonbills and black winged stilts. In the ponds there were black swans and on the rocky shore pied cormorants hung out their wings. The hinterland was sprinkled with mimosa, elderflower and angelica of giant size, at least to a European, and casuarina pines spread their spiciness all around.