Kingdoms of Experience

by Andrew Greig

  It was good to be out in the hills again, though the altitude pace was frustratingly slow. But that sense of spaciousness, physical and mental, of being on the move under a huge blue sky, offset the effort. Shattered rock, little cairns, dry shrubs, feet moving steadily up in the wind-silence, ravens drifting overhead. A little light-headed, like mild inebriation. It was peaceful and satisfying up there, like coming home to somewhere one had forgotten was home.

  That evening brought no news from Dave in Chengdu. We celebrated Kurt and Julie’s combined 99th birthday drinking Chinese sweet red wine and The McCallan whisky, chasing it down with beer and a slimy Chinese spirit amid the debris of last night’s party. Things hot up quickly; I bash out a few climbing songs – it feels good to have a contribution to make. We reel next door to Reception to involve and chat up the three lovely, strapping Tibetan girls and soon install ourselves there with booze and music. Girls mean dancing, so I thrash my fingers raw on Julie’s Spanish guitar playing rock-’n’-roll while the dancers leap and fall. Just as the girls are losing their shyness and the fun is most fast and furious, the shifty CMA man enters scowling and the girls quickly sit down and go silent. But Uncle Kurt grabs him, pushes him into a chair and pours an enormous whisky into his hand, than gets the girls up and going again. Something of a star, Kurt, absolute authority in a crisis.

  So the party went on. The Pink Rabbit appeared, pogoed wildly with the tallest girl, then exited into the night. The CMA man hurriedly had another drink. Across the smokey room Allen Fyffe with a glassy, beatific smile poured himself half a pint of whisky. ‘One-pint’ Wattie was motormouthing, Mal on ‘babble mode’, Sandy in seventh heaven, trying to propose to the tallest and loveliest of the Tibetans.

  They introduced us to the Tibetan custom of filling a glass, passing it to another of the company who then has to do a turn, drink, and pass it on. This brought out some star performances. Sandy Allan did a bizarre camp Highland scarf dance that left us gasping with laughter; Jon leapt on a table and delivered an inspired anti-Chinese version of ‘They’re removing Grandpa’s grave’; Mal improvised a ditty on Dave’s fortunes in Chengdu; the girls sang and shuffle-danced, Urs yodelled. Rick turned out to be hilarious when he lets himself go. Fyffe was unconscious but hadn’t realized it yet; Tony, Bob and Nick delivered North of England ethnic ditties, Sarah sang; good to see her getting involved.

  In the end the only non-performers were the sick Danny and ‘the appalling, disgusting Nisbet’, in Jon’s phrase. Andy refused quietly to do anything, the lads kept pressing him, he sat on his hands and shook his head. Someone suggested that his turn should be simply to recite his top five unclimbed Scottish routes – a secret he guards like the Crown Jewels. The more they pressed him, the more he dug in his heels, the more they pressed him. Andy Nisbet is a very determined character underneath his diffidence. Eventually – in the first open display of bad temper seen on the trip – he simply walked out and banged the door behind him.

  ‘Base Camp material!’ Jon shouted joyfully. Liz criticized us for getting on at him. ‘All take and no give,’ someone commented. She was partly right, of course, but climbers always tend to give each other stress, it’s part of the testing-out. Andy finds it impossible to get his emotions out, to speak of anything other than the purely factual. He’s entitled to be like that, but the lads felt that on an expedition he has to try to contribute something. ‘Even Dougal Haston could be bloody funny,’ Allen Fyffe murmured from a horizontal position.

  Not important. The party went on. It was three in the morning when I finally blundered back to my room, clutching cowboy hat and guitar and found Allen stretched out like a medieval effigy, hands clasped on his chest. ‘Not asleep, just dead,’ I thought, and gently switched his Walkman off.

  ‘Somebody borrowed my body and abused it,’ Allen moaned next morning. Tony lay remembering the dream he’d had of arriving at the summit of Everest: there seemed nothing very much to do there, so he’d clipped into the Chinese tripod on the top and fallen asleep … Chris Watts lived up to his nickname ‘One Pint’ by being seriously ill for the next two days. His stomach cramps and acute dehydration from being constantly sick made Urs inject him with the most powerful nausea-suppressant drugs he had.

  Round midday Dave Bricknell returned in triumph with our remaining gear including the gas and oxygen. He had discovered our gear in a room full of freight at Chengdu airport. It had arrived there a day behind schedule weeks before and no one had got round to loading it on a plane to Lhasa. If he hadn’t intervened, it would probably be there still. He’d managed to charter a plane, then he and Luo sat in solitary splendour with the gear all the way back to Lhasa, trying to figure out just how much this would cost and who would pay for it in the end.

  We’d worry about that later. What mattered was that he’d saved the day and we were on the move again.

  I took a last walk through Lhasa, its streets and temples and bazaar. It was good to be on my own; most of us would wander off alone from time to time. On expeditions solitude is something one has too much then too little of. Behind the Potala is a shallow lake and a small, brightly painted temple framed by flags and early apple-blossom. Some nomads were there on pilgrimage: three children were being taught scriptures under an awning by a white-bearded monk.

  I sat by the edge of the lake. A cyclist silhouetted against the low sun approached an arched bridge across the lake, dismounted; the black figure pushed the bike slowly over the bridge, light flashed from the spokes, then he slid back into the saddle and pedalled leisurely away past four road-workers who stood like a Greek frieze by the road, their long-handled shovels shouldered like pike. I thought then of friends and family and the women I loved, all leading their lives at that moment on the other side of the world, all distant and separate but now pulled together by invisible threads of affection and memory.

  Bob, Allen and I went one last time to the Jo-Kang temple in the bazaar. Though the Potala was the focus of spiritual and temporal authority in Tibet, the humbler Jo-Kang temple was and still is the centre of pilgrimage and religious life. It took us several days to realize that this modest-sized building, surrounded by the swirl of the bazaar, next to a building site where monks wearing gold coxcombs played moaning horns, is the Mecca of the Buddhist world.

  The temple courtyard was strewn with men, women and children prostrating and praying. They stood facing the temple doors, fell to their knees and then in a swimming motion stretched flat out full-length, then back up again. This was repeated over and over, a sort of physical Hail Mary, a crucial act of reverence for the pilgrims who had taken days or sometimes weeks to trek across Tibet to renew themselves here. It looked like hard work.

  Many of the pilgrims then prostrate their way around the cloisters of the inner courtyard. Those who are really serious about it can prostrate clockwise round the much larger quadrangle of the bazaar itself, through the dust and bustle. The tour-de-force is the outer circuit round old Lhasa, including the Potala, several miles of continuous prostration, advancing three steps at a time. It must take a day or more. But there’s a dispensation that allows you, if you have a lot of bad karma to lose and are too busy, stiff or lazy to prostrate around Lhasa, to pay someone else as your stand-in. So we came across professional prostrators, marked out by the pads they carry to protect their hands. As we watched and rather selfconsciously took photos it crossed our minds that professional mountaineers perform much the same function for the interested but non-participating public.

  Clustered round the temple were stalls selling incense, prayer scarves, scriptures, offering-bowls, clay plaques with distinctly Indian-looking Buddhas, and sacred aromatic herbs for burning. There were also tin badges of the exiled Dalai Lama, which a number of Tibetans now openly wear in the face of their Chinese ‘liberators’.

  Revolving slowly by the entrance to the inner courtyard was a drum some ten feet high, inscribed with prayers worn smooth by tens of thousands of hands. I brushed it with my hand and
passed inside. The cloistered courtyard echoed with the creaking of the dozens of smaller prayer-drums that spin without end as the pilgrims slowly walk by and lovingly brush them, keeping the universe turning. We moved on clockwise, taking in the shadowy cloisters, feeling out of place as the only westerners here yet in harmony with this unselfconsciously reverent place.

  At the back is the heart of it all, the inner shrine consisting of two paintings and a gold Buddha that symbolize the coming of Buddhism to Tibet from China in the 7th century AD. The shrine itself was built in AD 652, making it much older than most of the Potala. Here incense and yak-butter candles smoked as the pilgrims muttered prayers and we stood awhile, for once not taking photographs.

  We emerged blinking into the dazzling light, feeling gathered in ourselves and ready to go on to Everest and our own painful pilgrimage.

  Through Tibet to Everest

  17TH – 21ST MARCH

  ‘So much is different now. We are so happy.’

  Our trucks thundered into life in the half-dark while the moon set behind the encircling hills. Sandy leaned back in his seat, gave me his rubbery, lazy grin, and said, ‘Good value, eh?’

  We rattled and rolled for hours along the Friendship Highway that runs from Lhasa to Kathmandu across the hallucinatory high plateau of Tibet. It’s an endless expanse of shades of brown, dun and tan, serene and desolate, flanked by distant hills. At this time of year much of it appeared desert, then in the middle of nowhere we’d come on a patch of irrigated fields surrounding a clutch of basic houses, their yak-dung fires uncoiling into the still air. In the wildest country we’d pass a man on a horse, or a child sitting by a flock of sheep, or a group of yak herders and their animals drifting across the plain.

  Some hours later we came to a halt. Wind had drifted a foot of sand across the road, bogging down a truck and van coming the other way. We couldn’t drive round them because of soft, deep sand on either side of the road. When we tired of watching the drivers footling around ineffectively with a rope, we donned face-masks against the clouds of sand now whistling past and went to push the truck and van out of the way. Then we forced our coach through the drift and re-boarded it, gasping desperately for nonexistent air, our eyes and ears crusted with sand.

  The next barrier was a wide, fast-flowing river, where a ferryboat winched itself across on a cable. The captain refused to set off because of a strong cross-wind. Luo argued with him, but the CMA appear to have little clout in inner Tibet, for the captain finally locked himself in his cabin and refused to come out. An hour later, having made his point, he emerged to take us across.

  From then on the country and weather became much wilder. Sand storms whirled across the valley, reducing visibility to a few yards. Two yak skeletons poked out of the desert. The road was blocked over and over; each time we wearily put on our masks, went out and pushed, our hearts beating wildly. We came on a virtual traffic jam at one point, where a good twenty drivers and passengers stood around helplessly. Impatiently we pushed their vehicles off the road and got ours through. When we drove off they were still standing there, though with their numbers they could probably have lifted their vehicles bodily. It reminded us that despite the powerful effect of the Buddhist monasteries we were still Westerners, creatures of desire, restlessness and drive. A more laid-back and philosophical approach to life has much to be said for it, but it doesn’t get you to mountains, let alone up them.

  ‘Yes, but what about the Sherpas?’ someone says. ‘They’re Buddhists and have been known to climb a hill or two.’ These inconvenient questions remain lodged crossways in the mind. We finally entered Shigatse in the evening, tired out and encrusted with sand, but feeling good to be going forward and working well together.

  Shigatse is the second largest town in Tibet, but small enough for all that. Like Lhasa it’s a curious mixture of traditional Tibetan houses and new concrete, corrugated iron and steel. It is dominated by the Tashi Lumpo monastery that is built up the slope of the hills behind. This was the only monastery not sacked during the Cultural Revolution, because its head, the Panchen Lama, agreed to cooperate with the Chinese. In the Dalai Lama’s continued exile, the Panchen Lama is the highest spiritual authority in Tibet – though he has to spend practically all year in Peking, just to make clear who’s really in charge.

  ‘Collaborator’, one tends to think, but it’s not as simple as that. The rivalry and power-struggle between Lhasa and Shigatse and thus between the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, is centuries old. The Chinese have traditionally been drawn in as a counterweight in this struggle, usually by the Panchen Lama. One or other of the Lamas has frequently had to flee the country, sometimes to India or Nepal, sometimes to China. Power-politics, and it’s always been that way. It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 7th and 8th centuries, Tibet was the dominant military power in this part of the world, controlling large parts of China, Kashmir, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. Then for a long time Tibet was an autonomous region under Chinese suzerainty. The Chinese invasion or Democratic Rebirth, the Dalai Lama’s flight and the Panchen Lama’s co-operation are nothing new, just part of the continuing story.

  The Tashi monastery is very much a working one – though whether it’s a working model of a monastery or the real thing is harder to say. It is one of the few places we saw that was geared up for tourism. It is also very beautiful, ancient, with all the now familiar courtyards, labyrinthine walls and alleys, the casual, sprawling accretion of buildings; the strong, simple colours and lines; the shrouded prayer-halls, the shrines with more detail than the eye could take in, the living quarters and the scruffy, healthy little mongrel dogs drowsing in the sun; old monks regarding us with mild curiosity, with eyes intelligent, humorous or vacant; young novices more edgy and uncertain, staring or giggling.

  When we went round this monastery next day, two events stuck in our minds and made us question what this monastery was about – and Tibet itself, for that matter. Once inside, there was a charge and a high one at that, for each room one wanted to photograph. This was new; in other places we took pictures for free, or were simply not allowed to take them. Well, okay, we thought, no reason why they shouldn’t profit by our interest. But what made us really uneasy was then being led into an inner prayer-hall to be present at one of their prayer meetings. These meetings are not like public services, they are intensely private, the focus of the community’s spiritual endeavour.

  So what were we doing there in that low, dim, incense-laden room, hung with thankas, among the flickering butter-lamps? The muttered rhythmical prayers and responses of perhaps a dozen monks were interspersed or punctuated by music – a moaning horn, pipes, a cymbal clash, drums. They made formalized, intricate finger movements, as if playing cat’s cradle with invisible thread to catch an invisible cat, then suddenly threw sacred grain into the air beneath a portrait of the Panchen Lama. We stood silently in the shadows, feeling fascinated, privileged and uneasy.

  Was this a genuine act of private worship we were watching, or a façade for tourists? If it was the former, we shouldn’t have been allowed in. We were clearly distracting some of the monks. If the latter, the whole monastery was in effect spiritually dead and might as well not exist. In other monasteries we’d been quietly turned away from the halls where prayer was going on, and this had seemed absolutely right.

  Kurt and Julie paid their money and went back to film the ceremony when it started up again. We went on round the monastery and became involved in another awkward incident. Under an awning in a courtyard, a hundred or so young novice monks were being instructed in Buddhist scriptures. Not having paid, we were allowed to take pictures; some of us did surreptitiously, aiming from the hip and trusting to luck. Nick had the misfortune to be the one who was caught by two scowling Chinese heavies in dark glasses. There was a big row and demands for money, while Jack, caught in the middle, looked embarrassed and unhappy.

  We were ushered out quickly, under a cloud. To placate them we eventually agreed to pay for B
ob, as our official photographer, to go back and take a reel of shots.

  Nick It seems to my mind these guys were not true Buddhists – a true Buddhist would ask you not to film certain things, full stop. And other things I’m sure there would be no problem. Here they are quite happy to let us film even the most private of religious events SO LONG AS WE PAY THE MONEY. This is not religion, it is a sham and stinks to high heaven.

  There, I’ve said my piece. I guess I just resent being told I’m wrong.

  Was Tashi Lumpo a realistic compromise with financial pressure, or a sell-out? The issue was discussed late into the night, whether it was better to stick to high principles and refuse to go along with the Chinese and/or the demands of tourism, even if that means being unable to practise the monastic way of life, or to compromise on the grounds that something is better than nothing. This was discussed passionately because the same question applied to our Expedition in terms of both the climbing strategy and our financing: purity or compromise? And is compromise realism or selling out?

  The discussion broadened as we pooled our impressions of Tibet. I thought of an old woman Urs and I had visited in Lhasa. She was a relative of some Tibetan refugees Urs had known well in Switzerland and Ladakh. We had asked Luo if it was alright to see her, he shrugged and seemed quite unconcerned – itself a major shift in Chinese attitudes.