Border Crossing

by Rosie Thomas

  The atmosphere of the rally had changed somewhat, too. So much of everyone's energy and attention – and all the organisers' warnings – had been fixed on just getting to Kathmandu, through Tibet and over the Himalayas via those cruel, unforgettable roads, that there hadn't been much time to speculate about the distance that lay beyond. Now, studying the new book of route notes marked 'Asia and Persia', what should have been apparent all along suddenly became very obvious. The competition wasn't over. There was still a very long, very hard way to go. After the partying in the Yak and Yeti and Tom & Jerry's Bar, there was a post-celebration atmosphere of rather weary apprehensiveness.

  Some of the big-talking, more intimidating contestants had faded a little too, beset by mechanical failures or navigational upsets, and different, more dogged characters had begun to emerge. The most likeable of these were the quiet couples – David and Sheila Morris in their 1956 Austin A90, Geoff and Jennie Dorey in Jennie's 1960 Morris Minor, Murray and Amanda Kayll in Murray's Mercedes 250 SE. Murray told me that the Mercedes had belonged to his family for years, and all his sisters had learned to drive in it – it was pleasing to think of the faithful old family runabout being rolled out of the retirement garage and taken on this ultimate adventure.

  None of these people ever made any kind of display of themselves or their cars, or talked too loudly about how good they were, but they were always there on the start line, dependably ahead in the order, unflashily doing themselves credit.

  Phil did a wickedly funny imitation of Murray's mellifluous burble.

  'Yers, jolly nice chaps these Iranians, but they do drive awfully farst.'

  Like the other couples Murray didn't drive fast, and his only declared ambition was to get his much-loved car safely to Paris. They all thought Phil went like a maniac too, but he was popular enough for them to tease him gently about it. He rather enjoyed his reputation as the wild boy racer.

  We lined up for the start of the second leg at the Kathmandu Conference Centre. The cars had been repaired and cleaned of all the mud and dust, and most of the crews were at least nominally rested. Phil had been out the night before with the Exodus staff, and he looked slightly stretched. I felt glowingly healthy by comparison because Jon Turner had taken me out for a superb vegetarian thali dinner and we had enjoyed some non-car conversation before parting for an early night, and because my pills were working. Once I had started taking the right medicine in sufficient quantities, the bleeding had stopped within twenty-four hours. After all the anxiety the solution was so simple, and the relief was immense.

  Dan and JD looked grey-faced. They had met and pursued a pair of Kenyan girls through an obstacle course of whisky sours, and had only withdrawn from the chase as dawn broke. The rear shock absorbers that had been giving them trouble ever since Xigatse were still causing problems – they had had to have welding work done in Kathmandu on cracks around the lower mounting points – but they thought they were good for the onward journey.

  The Gulikers were waiting on the line to wave us off. They had had their Chewy pick-up transported to a garage and all the work to enable it to run again had been completed, but they had received some bad news from home. They were forced to withdraw, and were flying out to Amsterdam that day. It was generous of them to come and see the rest of us start.

  'How are you feeling?'

  I smiled opaquely at Phil. 'Never better.'

  Not very surprisingly, there was still a residue of ill-feeling between us although – inevitably – it wasn't properly acknowledged. We hadn't seen all that much of each other in the two days in Kathmandu, and had spent no time at all alone.

  I had begun to think that my driver didn't actually like me very much, and I was beginning to wonder about my feelings for him. At breakfast I had indicated the chair next to me and asked him – perhaps too forcefully – to sit down so we could have a talk about the day and the car's requirements. He had turned on me almost savagely.

  'Don't order me around.'

  I hadn't meant to. But at least he knew me well enough now to let his irritation show, instead of treating me like a client on a mountain trek.

  'Okay. Let's go,' he said, and we rolled in line towards the start.

  Beep. Start time 9.12. First stage, Kathmandu to Naryangat, distance 141.50 km, time allowance 2 hrs 27 mins, Phil driving. Route notes indicate steep, twisting descents, bad road surface.

  Here we go again.

  The way led from the Kathmandu Himalaya down a series of long, sweeping hairpin bends, and then turned west along Nepal's East–West highway. As we descended we came into thick bands of trees and sub-tropical vegetation, and the road grew busy with strolling bands of white-faced monkeys, and ribby cows with curled horns and hide so black and shiny that they looked carved from ebony, and an occasional buffalo or wandering goat.

  Every village we passed through had a welcome banner strung across the road, and all the schoolchildren were drawn up in ranks, shepherded by their teachers, to wave Red Cross flags at us. The children looked very spruce and disciplined in white shirts, the girls in uniform blue or red pleated skirts and the boys in dark trousers, all of them with lustrous dark eyes and wide smiles. Education is a serious priority in Nepal, although what opportunities exist for these children after school ends is less certain. Even so, after Tibet there was an appearance of lives being lived a grade or two above subsistence level. The sight of men smoking in convivial groups under canopies of branches and old people resting in doorways even suggested the possibility of leisure.

  The Terai is the lush lowland section of Nepal. With Phil driving hard we made good progress through here on stretches of fast road, reaching the day's three time controls without difficulty – except that I was hanging out with the other crews and laughing too much on my way to the marshals with my book, took my eye off my watch, and reached the control one minute over time.

  Not once but twice. Something was different today.

  I had been a better navigator when I was ill – at least then I had been containing my anxiety by concentrating on the job. I kept this 2-minute penalty guiltily secret from Phil, thinking that my crew solidarity had better renew itself pretty soon and hoping that my lapse of concentration wouldn't lose us a place in the order that evening.

  The night's stopping-place was in a broad, enclosed field at Kohalpur, our last camping of the journey. We had said goodbye to Himal and Arkle and the other Sherpas when the Exodus camp crews left us at Kathmandu and there was a new, unfamiliar organisation here, with different mess tents and equipment. There were lavatory tents in striped canvas with jaunty awnings; pitched in colourful lines they made the camp look like the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Except that the humidity was punishing. It drained us of energy and made every movement a sweaty ordeal. We spread out the tarpaulin between the cars and JD and Dan lay down, too flaccid with their hangovers to do anything but lift cold beers to their lips. I discovered that some of the striped tents were rigged up as bathroom cubicles, with a plastic bucket and a jug that could be filled from a generous tank. The arrangement was quaintly reminiscent of the basin and ewer in an old-fashioned Welsh washstand, and I thought of Caerwys – how far, far away – as I sluiced myself in agreeably cold water and poured the remainder over my head.

  Darkness slowly gathered, moist and thick with layers of heat, and luminously soft. The camp generator started up a low hum, and lights flickered on poles across the campsite and in the mess tent.

  With the lights came the bugs.

  Grasshoppers, pale pistachio-green and six inches long, launched themselves out of the grass. When the first one landed on my bare leg I screamed and leapt up and Dan managed a sardonic twitch of the dimple. Dan had worked for a long time in Africa with Operation Raleigh, and merely helicopter-sized insects were beneath his notice. Clearly they would have to be in the jumbo-jet league to warrant remark. After the fifth or sixth blur of gossamer wings and accompanying plunk on exposed flesh, even I stopped doing more than half
-heartedly brushing them away. Bat-sized velvet moths spun past our faces, and every lit bulb drew a fur of midges that thickened until the harsh light was diffused through a billowing veil of grey gauze, like a tactful photographer's. It was time to retreat to the mess tent, where at least the lights were widely enough spaced to leave pockets of breathable air in between them.

  The scene was like an English country marquee wedding, on acid. Instead of pale pink or demure white and gold, the tent lining was sizzling tomato and green, and chrome yellow and orange and blue, with twirls of gilt ribbon for extra emphasis. There were little round tables with gilt chairs drawn up to them, but instead of women in hats and heels there were sweaty rally crews, either half-naked for the heat or swaddled against the insects. In place of the poached salmon and strawberry meringue, there were great aluminium vats of curry, and bowls of rice and daal bhat, and floppy towers of naan bread.

  I was ravenous. I loaded my plate and ate, feeling my blood count rising with every searing spoonful, and letting the beads of sweat prickle on my scarlet face without bothering to mop them away. Sheila Morris muttered about the canvas screen masking scenes of indescribable squalor in the kitchen preparation area, but I didn't care. I sat next to JD, who was also eating heartily. We were joined by Nigel Challis, the Land Rover enthusiast.

  'Fixed many cars today?' he asked JD, conversationally.

  'Only my own.'

  'Must be hard work for you, confusing, so many different cars.'

  'Er, I'm a competitor too, actually.'

  After the man had moved away JD scoffed, 'Just because I'm young and I've got short hair and an earring, he assumes I'm a mechanic.'

  I never saw JD angry, or even irritable. He only ever shrugged and smiled. Even when Dan howled at him for losing a crucial bolt in the snow at Tuotuoheyan, JD just said gently, 'Look, it's not important. I'll get you another bolt at Lhasa.'

  Once dinner was over there was nothing to do but withdraw to the tents. I would have liked a drink and some talk, but Melissa had gone off to be sociable with Rick and Jingers inside the bug-impregnable Frontera and Phil had zipped himself into his, pitched within touching distance of Melissa's. Everyone else was similarly in retreat. I crawled into my own nylon capsule and fastened every mosquito flap behind me. I resisted using my head-torch – I had seen some of the spiders outside, and I didn't want to make any discoveries where I was about to lie down. I spread the Rebecca Stephens bag, for the first time without offering up thanks for its warmth, and lay down naked on top of it.

  The burr of the generator swelled in volume, and the chirp and scrape of cicadas and whine of mosquitoes was as loud as a brass band. I rammed in my earplugs and lay back under a film of sweat.

  Against the odds, it was one of the best nights' sleep I had on the entire journey.

  In the morning, there was a porcelain-pink sunrise and a dew so heavy and silvery it looked as though there had been a rainstorm. In the cool and delicate light, before most of the rest of the camp was stirring, I felt a surge of optimism. We were about to drive into India, where I had never been and had always longed to visit; the car was going well and we were steadily climbing back up the order; Phil and I had solved our differences, superficially at least, and maybe that was enough. We had come this far, and we were going to get to Paris. I plodded through the soaked grass to the mess tent for black tea and cold rice with a balloon of exultation expanding inside my ribcage. Rally Syndrome.

  The day was announced as another of the toughest of the trip. There were thirteen river crossings to be negotiated before we reached the Indian border. RO's river-crossing tip-sheet listed last-minute waterproofing techniques, in his usual admonitory style, for those who hadn't followed his preparation instructions in the first place.

  '. . . Condoms over coil-leads, Plasticine or Blu-Tac in joints. A can of WD40 can make a big difference . . .'

  'You will lose time if you slip the fan belt off, but you don't need a fan in water and it does spray a lot of water over the engine.'

  Dan fanned himself with the instruction sheet.

  'At least I'll get to use a condom for something on this trip.'

  We all knew that almost any of the women would be happy to accommodate him, if he had made the choice. I thought Phil's laughter was touched with just an edge of resentment.

  We had two time controls to reach within Nepal, a third at the frontier, and the end-of-day control in India, at a hill-station called Nainital. The road took us on through the Terai, on long, unmade dirt sections that wound through marshland and scrubby trees, and onwards through busy villages where it seemed, yet again, that the whole population had come out to look at us. Adults as well as children thrust Red Cross flags and drawings and scrawled messages in through the windows.

  Wel Come in Nepal. Sir Augustine and Sangita, from the Shree Pushpanjali English Boarding School.

  Wel come to nepal and I also love you, Dinesh, emblazoned with a heart pierced by an arrow.

  Dhulikel Municipality: Dear participant, Peking-Perish old Timer Car Rally. We heartily welcome to you we wish all the Best for Your Travel & Your Mission. Bel Prasad Shrestha, Mayor. Ashok Byanju, Deputy Mayor.

  Dear sir, this is my full adress, I do not forget you, Please write to me from time to time and I will visit your country some day.

  Smiling faces and clapping, and hands beating on the Amazon's bonnet. We collected all the tributes and tried to stow them safely, and attempted to drive slowly enough to be appreciative of the welcome without indicating that we had a long way to go, and were always watching the clock.

  In some of the bigger places there were dancers performing at the roadside for us. These were teenaged girls of breathtaking beauty, dressed in brilliant embroidered tunics with flowers in their hair and with bracelets of silver bells on their wrists and ankles. They stepped in perfect unison, making slow, sinuous arm and head movements, always with their eyes modestly downcast. The eastern equivalent of American high-school cheerleaders, perhaps.

  The river crossings were exciting. It was a toss-up for me whether to get out and film and take photographs of the Amazon churning through the water, or to stay put instead and enjoy the experience at first hand, as well as adding my weight contribution to keeping the tyres on the riverbed.

  'Slip the clutch. Keep revs up, speed down. You need lots of revs to make sure the water does not creep up the exhaust. Whatever you do, don't stall as water will be sucked up into the engine, bending valves or even conrods.'

  I read the instructions in awe and fear, but Phil knew what to do by instinct and did it perfectly. He took the car sailing across river after river, with the Nepali spectators perched midstream on rocks and balanced one-legged on stepping stones, like inquisitive storks, waving and applauding us onwards.

  In the punishing lowland heat Phil had wrapped his head in a white turban, like a Moroccan herdsman. I teased him about it, but I also thought secretly that he looked absurdly handsome – a bleach-job version of Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik.

  Our team-mates were having a less successful day. At the first river JD got out to film, and slipped on a treacherous stone. He crashed on to his back and lay hurt, immobile and incapable, while Dan drove by in a plume of water. The crews of other cars assumed he was sunbathing, and Dan waited impatiently on the opposite bank thinking he was playing silly games. At length he went back to retrieve him and they struggled on, but at the last crossing of the day their car stalled in mid-river. They opened the doors to get out and push, and watched in dismay as river water filled the car and gently flowed out the other side. Several cars passed by, including David Arrigo and Chris and Howard, with the occupants' eyes firmly fixed straight ahead, and their wake washing even more water into the back of the Amazon. Eventually they coaxed it ashore and bailed out the water.

  For long days afterwards the inside of car 69 smelt worse than an abandoned fishmonger's slab in a heatwave.

  Phil and I reached the border time control without
mishap, at 11.15 a.m. We passed straight through the Nepal frontier, and drove a couple of bumpy kilometres through no-man's-land to the Indian frontier. Just outside the border there was a small huddle of shacks, grubby little shops and stalls, and a steaming queue of rally cars stationary in the blinding sunshine. No onward progress was being made.

  Paperwork was my responsibility, so I took the carnet documents for the car and our passports and walked forward to see what was going on. I soon discovered that what was happening was that nothing was happening. A huge mob of drivers and navigators was milling around outside three bamboo huts, inside which the Indian officials were processing their documents at the rate of about one car every 15 minutes. Sweating rally officials were trying to mediate with the immigration officers and explain the delay to crews. It turned out that RO had paid the Indians a large sum of money to ensure that we would get fast-track document processing at the border. The money had vanished, and so had any chance of getting through this bottleneck in less than 3 hours.

  There was nothing for it but to attach myself to the back of the crowd outside the first hut. The procedure went like this. First of all, queue to collect embarkation cards that had been completed and handed in to Mick O'Malley at camp last night. Then join another queue to have the car import–export carnet checked and stamped, which took about ten minutes per vehicle. Then finally queue outside the third hut for passport verification. All the papers were needed by each set of officials, so there was no question of drivers and navigators dividing the job between them.

  I stood in the line behind Richard Clark, from the 1948 Buick 8. He was so enraged by the tedium of this process that the veins stood out on his temples like knotted string, and I began to worry that he might have a seizure. It was very hot and there was no shade outside the huts, but it was a case of stand your ground or lose your place.

  The final hut, Passport Central, was the worst ordeal of the three. As I inched towards the table in the ante-room I saw that there was one man ruling off sheets of A3 paper by hand into boxes, to make a form, triplicated with two sheets of carbon paper, on which he entered in a laborious longhand script the holder's name, date of birth, occupation, date of passport issue, place of issue, number, Indian visa number, date of entry, place and time of entry, and so on, for each of well over two hundred passports, and then checked slowly that each detail was represented to his satisfaction.