movie II

attention usa: terrorist alert!

photo by jewels

Here she is - the latest threat to the USA!

Travelling on an Australian passport,
five foot two, eyes of blue,
left thinking "Hey America - screw you!"

What is it with the states these days?

She was travelling from Fiji to Vancouver, with a refuelling stop in Hawaii. Where else in the world do you have to pass through customs to wait for two hours in a secure transit lounge? No time to get a bite to eat - it's all taken up by the "homeland security" goons. Fingerprinted and photographed for a two hour layover! What a sorry, paranoid empire it's become...

I knew that despite being regarded by the US's Great Leader as "our staunch ally", Australians (like all potential enemies) were nevertheless subject to fingerprinting and photographing on visiting the US. But on a layover, where you're not even entering the country and the 'plane you're boarding isn't going there either? WTF??!!

I guess it's no wonder they're so scared - their empire's looking more and more like the roman one just before the vandals arrived...

BTW: Think I'm out of line calling it an empire?
Read this article by Robert Lindsay.

peace kite joy

because it's the first windy day of winter...

Looking for Chief Engineer AE Psarros(message in a bottle)

14/6/99
M/T.W Kudos
Ch. Eng. A.E. Psarros

To my special wife Chrisoula and our chilndrens girls Vassilia - Maria, Thoma'i' and son, boy Efstratios -

My many - many kisses - kisses and my biggest love. Regards to all the world...

Apostolis - La Go??ssi

Greece - Ellas

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Every morning while shaving I see this beautiful message.

It's held captive in a Vat69 whisky bottle which lives among the bottle collection on our bathroom shelf.

Erin and Shani found it several years ago on Redgate Beach.

Over the years, I've googled all the variations of name and vessel and keep coming up empty.

Maybe you can help...


redgate beach

A scan of the original can be viewed here.

movie I

rory's garden

thinking of you rory...

wollumbin: cloud catcher

From Ananda's garden,
the last rays of day illuminate the cloud catcher.

The eroded core of an immense ancient shield volcano, Wollumbin is the first point on the Australian mainland to be touched by the sun's morning light. Captain James Cook named it Mt Warning in 1770, as it was a prominent landmark for the dangerous shoals he encountered off the coast.

I relate much better to the local inhabitants' name for the mountain - Wollumbin (Cloud Catcher).

If you're curious, you'll find the local perspective here and an aerial view from Google Maps here.

no news...

eyes closed
dreaming
a world away
no news
sensationalist views
obscure manipulations
of the colour
of our souls' imaginings

reflection on scatalogical synchronicity

Hmmm...

I've been wondering what motivated me do the whole tibet flashback thing. Perhaps because this is the first year since it happened that the days and dates coincide? Maybe 'cause I thought it would be a more interesting read than what's going on at present? I couldn't be sure... Then it was suggested that my last week's blogging should have been titled "Dear Diarrhya"...

AHA!

If you're a regular reader (do I have any?) you might recall this post from June 7, about events that started on June 3 this year. It was two days after that post that I began blogging from the tibet journal.

I was well over this year's attack when I wrote "I'm not up for it, 'cause the damn diarrhoea's back." on June 13. Yet, within 15 minutes of typing that, this year's damn diarrhoea WAS back! That got me thinking...

I checked the journal entry for June 3, 2000. It was the day we flew from Kathmandu to Simikot to begin the trek up the Karnali valley. The day before I'd been walking in rain in the city streets. A passing car's wheel dropped into a pothole and drenched me. I felt the grit in my mouth and knew I was in trouble. The trouble began 1.00am Saturday June 3 2000...

What strange (and shitty) synchronicity is this?

I'm not sure whether I should continue the journal blog now...

Oh - by the way - if after yesterdays post, you're wondering what happened six years ago today, I've already written it up here.

take me back! (part six)

THURSDAY JUNE 15 2000 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIE

from the journal:

I'm sitting in the shadow of this mighty mountain I've come so far to see...

...I'm so shaken up. We've spent another 9 hours bouncing over the tracks of western Tibet to the foot of Mt Kailash. My stomach is a mess, my emotions are a mess, my body is a mess.

I'd decided yesterday not to do the kora, as I'm so broken up that I felt I'd probably just give up and die there. When we got here, I looked at it and thought Don't wallow, fool! Don't be a pussy. There's absolutely nothing you can do now about what's going on at home. So: Do what you came for - face your demons!

Now I've heard that Drolma La (the 18,500ft pass on the route) is thick with ice and somewhere between two and several people have died crossing it. The down side is apparently really steep and without crampons (which we don't have) these people allegedly slid to their deaths after crossing it.

Altitude, while not an issue for me while at rest, has become very obvious with exertion. The start and finish altitudes of the Guge Kingdom hill climb yesterday were substantially lower than those we face here, and I was completely wrecked there after climbing less than 20 steps. I'd need a 3 to 4 minute pause before tackling the next 20. Translate that to this mountain and it becomes pretty daunting. To hear that people have died...

No decision either way has yet been made. The Saga Dawa festival is here tomorrow and we weren't planning on beginning the kora until the following day. The mountain looks so easy and friendly in the late afternoon light - the thought of death waiting up there seems so unlikely and yet it came pretty close to us on the trek out of Nepal. And that's supposed to be easier than this...

take me back! (part five)

WEDNESDAY JUNE 14 2000 - THE GUGE KINGDOM

from the journal:

Another freezing night.

Found a thermal left on the ground - frozen stiff with rocks glued to it. Ice on the tents again. Slept fully clothed and jacketed.

Huge hares bound around our campsite...

I'm recalling a recurring dream I used to have when I was a kid.

One of those ones where you feel hunted.

It would always begin as I was drifting off to sleep. It would start with flashing impressions of delicate things destroyed by immense, insensate, mobile things. Think of trying to pick up the tiniest crystal chalice with the maw of a stripmine excavator.

Receiving them, I'd always know: "Oh shit, here we go..."

Every minute mote of dust in the atmosphere began to grow. Eventually they began to fall from the sky, growing as they fell, until it was raining stones. The rain of rocks would intensify, rainrocks becoming a hail of boulders. They'd keep growing even as they piled up on each other.

Eventually the rain would stop, growth would cease, and the world would be silent, buried miles deep in stones. I would be buried too, and then begin the slow journey upward through the winding maze of gaps between the titanic monoliths.

At the surface it was always night - black sky. I don't remember stars.

I would walk the crevassed rock surface until I'd come to the edge. A vertical drop into blackness. I always knew I was facing a great chasm. I always knew there was something on the other side. I always knew it was where I had to be.

How to get there? I'd search the precipitous edge of that world, looking for some kind of bridge. In a different place each time, but always close to the edge, I'd stumble across a box. A box like an old valve radio transmitter, wedged solid into the rocks, its face bearing glass dials and switches. I would bend toward it and flip a switch. It would instantly light up and a dazzling arc of colours would leap across the void, solid in the blackness, solid enough to walk on - a rainbow bridge!

I'd mount that bridge just as my sense of foreboding would peak. I'd run like the wind, but every time I reached the peak of the arch I'd look over my shoulder to see that huge cloaked figure loom from the rocky landscape and sweep toward the box.

I'd run faster every time, but would always hear the click as the box was switched off.

The long fall into the void would always end with a BANG awakening back in my bed.

I'm thinking: Is this where that happened?

I wonder: Is this the world of stones?



Midday: We're sitting in the 4WDs in the sunbaked heat of the Chinese military town of Zanda, waiting for approval to continue the final 20km to Tsaparang. The town is small, but is planted with the first real trees we've seen for a long time. The usual complement of dogs idle in the shady patches while men play pool on the torn felt of dilapidated pool tables set up in the street.

It's recommended we don't stray from the vehicles, as we could be departing at any time. We check out the few shops and see if there's a public toilet. There isn't. I decide to go in search of soft ground and a screening wall or bush...

It took us another four teeth-rattling hours to get here, across some once again incredible terrain. On leaving our camp this morning, we drove across high, rolling plains while the Garhwal Himalaya rose higher on the horizon. As we approached the Sutlej valley, the ground before us fell steeply away and we were entranced at the sight of an immense valley stacked with convoluted hills of banded sand or mudstone, backed by the blinding white of the range between us and northern India.




Mt Kamet 25,413ft Garhwal Himalaya

We wound our way down into the valley and the world contracted to the narrow canyons between those convoluted hills. It was a truly unexpected landscape. It looked like some film location in the Utah badlands. The scale is of course outrageous, and to be in there in heavy rain would be deadly, I think. Giant towers of solidified mud, scored by water, full of stones. A maze of branching, hairpinning canyons carved into ancient lake or seabed. No wonder the Guge Kingdom got lost!



Check it out here - the marked location is Tholing/Zanda. You can see the "mineral mountains" I mentioned in yesterday's post in the top right corner of this view.)

When we emerge from the maze onto the floodplain of the Sutlej River, I'm blown away by the smell of grevillea. In so many places and ways, I'm struck by similarities between home and here.



Anthony points out that the telecoms booth we're parked outside offers international calls for 2 yuan a minute. That's about 25 cents! One of the benefits of having the military in town, I guess: Cheap calls over their satellite network. I try to call home... can't get through...

1.00pm: Still waiting. We've used the time to find the telco's head office where some of us place successful calls home. I marvel at being in such a remote area and being able to bounce a call off a Chinese military satellite, but the 'phone rings out...

It's so hot waiting in the sun in the center of town and my illness adds to the discomfort. I hope we can leave soon. It's really frustrating having to spend this length of time waiting, unable to explore the town and nearby Tholing ruins because we could be leaving at any moment.

A little later we get the green light...

Tsaparang!



Wow! What to say? I've never seen anything like it. Inspiring, mysterious, melancholy, organic, ghostly, resonant, towering, dissolving, echoing, dreaming...

The road into the ruins is gated and when we arrive the gatekeepers are loath to admit us. Jagat Man paid all the admission fees for the trip when he organised our group's visa, so a long discussion ensues. Of course we wind up paying a little more - nobody's paid the gatekeeper!

Once inside we begin the climb up the hill into the heart of the old capital. It's hard going at this altitude. The path to the top alternately hugs the edge of a precipice and tunnels straight through the mudstone of the hill. The place is just incredible. Nature has been the ruler here for almost 400 years and although in ruins, the hilltop keep is still holding out.



The aeons of weathering have created flumes of material washed down from the heights. The fan of sediments at the foot of the flumes reveal scatterings of artefacts, obvious to even a casual observer. I find a tongue of corroded copper, about 3cm long by half that width, maybe a millimetre thick. It's pierced by six drilled holes, two on each side midway down its length and two in the tip.

I'm wondering what it may have been when Cyril approaches and holds out about 8 of them. They're still held together in two overlapping rows, by what looks like leather thonging passing through the holes. It's body armour! How it must have looked, when these ramparts were manned by guards resplendent in burnished copper mail!


Norphu sitting with the gatekeepers



From the Summer Palace at the peak, the extent of this ancient city is obvious. Invisible at ground level, I can see the outlines of canals, walls and building foundations all over the plain below. The cliffs on either side of the valley the hill rises from are honeycombed with cave dwellings. The range of vision is stupendous - it's a true eyrie.

A funny thing: Just before leaving home, there was a Red Bull advertising vehicle driving around town. Nobody at home had ever heard of it then. When I enter the Summer Palace a man is waiting with cans of soft drink arranged on a table. He knew what condition we'd be in if we made it that far! Among the various cans is Red Bull. I can't believe it: Brand new at home and here in the most far flung reaches of western Tibet it's already on sale. I have my first Red Bull...





All too soon, it's time to go. I struggle with the concept of driving for so long to spend only a few hours here. It was definitely worth it, but I could wander here for a week and am disappointed to have to leave. There's more for me here, I feel...

Here's a bit more about the kingdom...



6.10pm: We're about an hour out of Zanda on the way home and now I'm feeling as desolate as the landscape we're stuck in. The second 4WD is bogged some distance behind us and we're frying in the sun again as we wait. I don't know why we - ah! - we're heading back to help...

6.50pm: The white 4WD's stopped again. Clutch fluid problems. I can't stop crying. I just want this trip to be over now...

HUH? What's going on? Well, suffice to say that I managed to place a call home on our way back through Zanda and now I'm just TRIPPING as a consequence. I'm smashed by a wave of emotion that reverberates throughout my consciousness. Deep down, I'm aware that my mind is just looping on this emotive swell - that the things I'm conceiving have no reality outside my being - but I'm powerless before the visions so conjured. This is completely alien psychology for me. I look back at the otherness of it now and can almost believe I was under some kind of spiritual attack...



Some time later I open my eyes to see a huge rainshower in front of us. Rain. After such a scorching day. In the middle of shifting veils stalks a towering shadow. Hood? Cloak? Ponderously walking the rocky hills. Has my rainbow been turned off again? I'm falling, I'm sorry...


thanks for the pic Kerry:
No, really, I'm FINE... Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional

I can't stop crying, I can hardly see or breathe. I cannot face this kora. The pain I'm in already will suffice. 40 days in the wilderness.

stop the clocks... sweep up the stars...


and for this one! xxx

take me back! (part four)

TUESDAY JUNE 13 2000 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN

Back in time to Lake Manasarovar, a day's drive from Taklakot...

from the journal:

Man! Was it cold last night!

Finally got to use the sleeping bag as a bag. Socks, long thermals - top and bottom, beanie, gloves, silk liner, bag - and I was still cold early in the morning. Ice heavy on the tents in the pre-dawn. My handwriting's different 'coz I've still got gloves on.

A glorious dawn.



Chiu Monastery in the early morning light



on the monastery roof, looking north toward Kailash



and east - Lake Manasarovar on horizon


We're at 14,500ft here and breathing while sleeping is difficult. I keep playing catch up. I'll be breathing OK, then slow down as I fall asleep, run out of O₂ at some point and be woken by the first gasp of several quick breaths. My lips are really cracking up too - I'm a bit worried about having enough lip balm...

Sqek: I remember when you were little and I used to stay home with you. You little terror - you'd run off up the street to Karen's whenever you felt like it! You're a big girl now - I hope you're happy with your life. I love you xxx

Today we drive all day toward Tsaparang - the lost city of the Guge Kingdom.

It'll be good to have a day out of boots...



on the road - and followed by Gurla Mandata (25,350ft)








It's surreal and heart-wrenching to be driving through this amazing landscape with our driver's reggae versions of "I Can See Clearly Now" and "Wild World" playing on the 4WD tape player. I can't believe I'm feeling so homesick after only 12 days away - but there it is! It happened last time too, although I lasted three weeks before really suffering... It's a strange, almost schizophrenic headspace, flipping between awe and wonder at being here, and intense longing to be home.

We've been driving for hours now. I'm dozing fitfully, sliding in and out of consciousness as we make our way into western Tibet. We're travelling parallel to the Kailash Range and have passed Darchen and the foot of the mountain where we'll begin our next trek in a couple of days.









It's remarkable how similar the land is to northwest Western Australia (if you don't look at the mountains!). Same dry, stony, rolling hills and very similar looking vegetation. Much like what I remember of the country around Carnarvon and Roebourne.





We drive for hours more. The track is incredibly rocky and bumpy - I'm sure the headrest has rubbed all the hair off the back of my head. This drive is turning into a nightmare. It doesn't matter how stunning the landscape is, when you're stuck inside a vehicle, it's like watching television. You've just got a window - not the experience.

On horseback would be heaps better, hey Ju?

So: Watching TV quickly becomes an incredible pissoff when you're subjected to constant bone-jarring vibration, incessant dust and the cramp of being confined to one posture for so long.





After nine hours of this I'm really shitty. I can't even have my eyes open coz of this shitty dust and my nose is giving me hell. You could get silicosis like this!

Think about the good stuff:

The broad valley parallel to the Kailash Range, scalloped by numerous small meltwater streams.

Kailash itself. Despite my not being a deep believer, that impressive mountain exudes a powerful and attractive aura.

The breakup of the valley as its scalloping streams turn to rivers in deep canyons.

The nomadic herders' tents in the side valleys. Prayer flags flying amid herds of goats and yaks.

The climb up out of the valley over a 16,400ft pass into vividly coloured and contorted mineral mountains - scary!

The incredible expanse of rolling land framed by mountains. Vision just goes so far...

The huge vulture sitting on a clifftop by the car who rises and disappears in the direction of our travel. A big bird - BIG! Twenty minutes later we see him circling over the far bank of a river. As we approach, a small tributary valley enters the river opposite us. On each side of this valley are raised stone platforms and prayer flags. A few crows scatter from them as I look. I think I've just seen my first sky burial site...





We stop for lunch in a little town (I think it was Moincer) where everyone piles into a restaurant to eat noodles. I'm not up for it, 'cause the damn diarrhoea's back. I'm leaning against the car, drinking Chinese Coke and watching the street activity.

A person begins to crawl out of the courtyard of the house opposite. I can't tell if it's a man or woman. He/she appears very old. There's a 10m length of rope which begins inside the house, runs through the courtyard and terminates in the street. The person I'm seeing crawls slowly to the end of the rope, rises to a squat, drops pants and voids one enormous turd. (I'm jealous of this ability!) Pants retied, the old one turns and inches on hands and knees back down the rope to the house. The end of that rope looked like a dangerous place for a blind person's toilet...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I call myself a photographer, but there's so many deeply moving scenes I just can't convey. One inhibition is my perception of invasion of privacy - of treating people as subjects in the creation of an image that attempts to convey my emotional response. Unless I'm able to make some kind of personal contact and seek permission, it feels too voyeuristic... somehow exploitative...

Another is that the act of raising camera to eye separates me from the reality I'm experiencing. At that moment, I'm removed from engagement and immersion and instead am thinking of composition and focus, lighting and exposure. Too much time spent creating images results in: "What was Tibet like?" - "Dunno. Haven't seen the pictures yet..."

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Evening at wildlands camp:

I'm sitting in the now empty dining tent, fairly pissed off at the organisation of this day. Some of our Nepali porters have had to ride all day in the rear luggage compartments of the 4WDs. I swapped with Boras in the back of ours to give him a spell. It's a truly cramped, bone-breaking, dust-smothering hell! Wrong, I reckon! Three vehicles would have been the go - especially since one of the two we have will never make it to Lhasa without repairs.

We covered just over 200km today and have to travel another 50km to Tsaparang tomorrow, then back to this campsite. Then retrace our route to the mountain.

I'm not looking forward to it...

Oh well...



the mineral mountains' pool of blue dreams

take me back! (part three)

FRIDAY JUNE 16 2000 - SAGA DAWA

What? I hear you say...
Friday? June 16? What happened to the week?
Well - by the calendar you'd be right,
but by the moon, aahh the moon...

Today's full moon is Saga Dawa 2006.

Saga Dawa is the most auspicious day of the Tibetan calendar and for centuries pilgrims have travelled from all over Tibet and Asia to circumnambulate Mt Kailash on this sacred day.

It's the reason we've all travelled so far...

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from the journal:

cold
flagpole raised
deals done
monks sung
smoke stung
video crews
chinese machine pistols
prostrating pilgrims
prayer flags
prayer notes
juniper and sage



Lha Chu valley camp - Kailash's south face rises in the background


God, I'm such a wanker! All this intellectual shit I say doesn't mean a thing before the power of my emotional mind...

...The 2 night, 3 day kora (pilgrimage) is to begin tomorrow. It was bullshit trail talk about people dying - although conditions are pretty tough. Whether or not I do it is now in the lap of the gods. I think my diarrhoea is passing, although I'm still pretty weak.

Paul is pretty ill with a flu type thing and says he won't make it if he's not better tomorrow. If he ain't, then I'll go with him to the Chiu Monastery guest house (and hot spring!) at Lake Manasarovar, where we'll wait while the others do it. If everyone is OK, then I'll screw up my somewhat weakened resolve and do it too.

Shit! it's just started raining and I definitely don't wanna do any more rain trekking - it's just too fucking dangerous and tiring.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Tarboche Flagpole Ceremony

Prior to beginning the Kailash kora, pilgrims gather at Tarboche, where the flag-bedecked pole is raised anew each year. While pilgrims walk in clockwise circles around the pole, ceremonies are performed under the direction of the oracle. The raising of the pole is breathlessly awaited as the pole's final position portends Tibet's fortunes for the coming year...



the dedication of prostration...



and always, the watchers...









and watchers with guns...



the oracle checks preparations to raise the pole



while a watcher watches me



clouds of hurled flour announce a vertical pole: the best omen



windhorses on paper everywhere...



...and an hour later... everybody's gone!


from the journal:

Just found out at dinner that people did die a few days ago: Whoa! The Tibetan guides have said that if it's still raining in the morning, nobody's going.

Stuff it - I'm not going anywhere now.

What I did last night was harder than any kora.

I think I've learned the lesson this trip was for...

...Just before I sleep, I step outside...

I see the moon...

Do you see it too, and think of me?

take me back! (part two)

from the journal:

SUNDAY JUNE 11 2000 - CLEAR SUNSHINE!

The sky is clear. The wind dropped and it's really cold. I woke in the dark this morning with my left knee killing me, my right knee complaining, and my entire body coated with tent condensation, which had the effect of making me feel muddy all over.

Last wash (except essentials):
Monday June 5 back at Kermi's hot springs.

Six goat trains cross the bridge before tea at 6.30am.

Today we enter Tibet.

Leaving at 8.00.



We're a little slow to leave - everyone's slow after yesterday. At 8.20am the sun is viscious, the wind is icy. If I close my eyes while I put on sunscreen, the smell, sound and air let me imagine I'm on the beach at home on a brisk spring morning. Jagat Man says it's the most troublesome trek in 25 years. More about lazy porters later.

We have to pay the horse dude Rs10,000 for his horse that died, although it was sick when we started. Oh well - it's a hard life for man and beast in these mountains and the horse man was really looking after us yesterday. It was fucking amazing watching those heavily laden horses negotiate places that were extremely difficult and dangerous for us.

We've just climbed out of the valley to the Chinese checkpoint at Sher. The rain yesterday, which was quite heavy over this side of the range as well, has taken out the road between here and Taklakot, so we have to walk to meet the vehicles instead of being picked up here. My strapped and salved knee says no o o...

We will wait at the Chinese' pleasure now. We sit in front of a low, white building with five yellow doors, next to five ninepane red painted square windows. The top of the walls are capped with a thin red, wide black, thin red line. For 200^o around behind and above the building are the snows of the mountain range we have come through. The sun shines brightly as the clouds begin to build on the far side of the mountains. Will any rain fall here today?



I sketched this 'cause Jagat Man reckons I prolly shouldn't take a photo as it might upset the guys hiding inside. We wait. The whole of China's on Beijing time, so all of a sudden it's 12.30pm. At 9.00 in the morning! The clouds continue to build over the mountains.

The porters crowd around to check out my drawing - they seem impressed, at least. One of them recites the alphabet - I wonder if they can read this scrawl I'm writing. I'd be surprised.

Yeah - I can hardly read it myself now!

I saw myself in a mirror yesterday for the first time since leaving Kathmandu. My goodness! I look like shit! I feel like a strong and handsome mountain man with my new short beard and suntanned face - but I really look like crap. The crew have taken to calling me "Johnny" or "Jack" as in "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" from The Shining. Paul reckons my hair makes me look like Jack Nicholson in that movie and the others agree...

...A Chinese guard's shadow just fell over me. He'd sauntered over for a look at what I was doing, I guess. And now Anthony's Reiki-ing my knee - he's a cool guy...

...How the mind gets to see things as it wants! I'm glad I've come to where I'm at now, without attempting any crystallization of this infatuation of mine - I wonder how many hearts are broken over the consequences of acting under the influence of this state? It's sort of like the shit you do when drunk I guess... another kind of intoxication.

There's a NuShape logo on the mountain opposite!

A young Chinese guard just invited us to shelter from the sun in their bedroom. It must be a punishment for them to be posted here. The facilities are so basic and there's nothing for them to do other than harass passers by. But this guy's been nice. They are the power here - minor functionaries raised to the status of demigods if you want to pass their checkpoint. It's so strange to be held hostage by a bureaucracy in this remote place, so far from any concentration of office-dwelling suits.

Tania just said she wants to go shopping. Kerry said my eyes look a little yellow. The rest reckon I look like a wildman definitely not to be messed with! I just took a self-portrait - we'll see... Now they're all raggin' on me about bein' in love with my camera! Anthony (a fellow Virgo) cops a ribbing for working on his hi-tech walking sticks. Diane observes that neither of us ever hold still...


jack, diane and hi-tech walking stick

Jagat Man's pacing the courtyard outside, waiting for our Tibetan guide. He's serious again. The horses range across the hillsides browsing, their loads still carried as we don't know how long we'll be.

It's been a couple of hours now...



I've gone back out in the sun. I want to watch the snow some more. I'd never been in snow before yesterday and yet it felt like I'd been in it all my life. I had no urge to stop and play - although conditions and altitude may have had something to do with that! A little lizard zips by me on the pine I'm sitting on. The three young Chinese guards are standing, hands in pockets, watching the trekking staff clean up after making us tea. They all seem very young and quite open. There is another however, maybe a little older, who looks extremely surly - we don't see him much. I think he's probably in charge.

One of the younger ones (the one who offered the room) came in a while ago and offered boiling water from his thermos. He has good English and told us that he's thousands of miles from his home and will not be back for another month. What the hell are these poor people doing here? Man, it's hot in the sun, but cold in the wind.
You could get fried to a crisp so easily up here!

The little horse dude enters the room where Jagat Man and the others are. "What now?" I wonder. Whoa! He comes out and over to me: He's got a busted zip on his jacket pocket he wants me to fix. (Probably where he's got all the cash we gave him this morning.) I try for some time, but it's Boras who eventually fixes it. We draw the usual crowd. When it's done, Boras starts making injection jokes with the needle he used to secure the bottom of the zip!

The old man has a son who reminds me heaps of Ross Haigh. The lad was SO dark on us the day the horse died. If looks could kill... He's fine now though - hope it wasn't just the money!


the master of horses...


...and his son.

I also hope I'm not frying through this long-sleeved thermal I have on.

There are some Tibetan guides here, waiting for a group of Americans. We can see the Americans high on the far side of the valley - it'll take 'em quite a while to get here! The Chinese watch them through binoculars, much as they must have watched us yesterday.

OK - I got bored, so I grabbed the camera and took some photos anyway. It's alright. I got back and it's time to do the paperwork and check our packs. The guys in olive green with red and gold are OK! The one with no English searched my pack, said "OK", then took my hand and shook it...


cyril and the sher checkpoint guards - surly guy not surly any more!

God, it's been five hours now! Despite the amazing surroundings, it comes down to wherever you are, there you are. The porters are sitting around drinking beer. We're all just hangin'. Dorje's asked me for another look at our family photo - I think he's fallen for Analise. He says we have a beautiful family. I joke with him that I'll show Analise a picture of him. If she likes, we come back. If they marry, dowry is one free trek a year for her family. He better own his own trekking company soon!

The clouds are streaming across the range
Threatening again destructive rain

Respite from the sun would be good, though.

I look up and through my glasses see multicoloured pastel spectra in the clouds. I'm amazed at how the most vibrant, incredible, edge-of-your-life experiences fade so soon into that dream state of memory. The walking that we've done, the sights we've seen, the fear we shared - in five hours faded to fond memory, like love...

I'm holding your picture Julie, when we were seventeen and life was full of promise. When we'd write poetry to each other and wait only for the time we could be together... I love you...

...A huge golden eagle just topped the rise to the northwest of us - came straight on in, losing altitude until I could see right in his eyes, then flicked out to the southwest. He knows I'm thinking of you - I think he wanted to tell me something...

Alright! Our Tibetan guide finally shows up. We've got a 3 hour, 9km walk to the nearest place they can get a vehicle to - and what a walk it is! Still following the Karnali, we pass through the Tibetan town of Sher. The road has been annihilated by landslides - the whole country seems to be being washed away.



The Himalaya starts to become more obvious as we get further away from the steep valleys in its shadow. By the time we get to the rendezvous with the vehicles, the entire southern and eastern skies are filled with snow capped peaks.

We pay out the guys who are returning to Nepal and climb into a couple of Landcruisers. It's a total novelty to sit in a vehicle. It's a total novelty to sit in a chair with a back! We go for the most amazing drive - about an hour and a half to Taklakot. We pass so many stones - banks of carved orange mani stones - ancient riverbeds - caves and houses in cliffs - villages - children riding cows. The road is scary in places, but our driver's good. All the while the Himalaya grows larger and fills more of the horizon around us. It's funny how when we passed through it we couldn't see it and the further away we get the more perspective we have on it - another metaphor!

We arrive in Taklakot. What a fucking dump! This place is one huge Orwellian shithole. We check into the best guesthouse in town - whewie! It's wild. They have solar powered shower blocks, glass covered vege gardens, electricity - and it's all shot to hell. Nothing works. We head up the street to a restaurant for dinner. It's getting dark now. It's surreal - everything is decrepit. It's like some strange frontier mining town. Imposing entry arches open onto rubbish strewn courtyards before 50's Lego style architecture. It's an army town. Hookers walk the streets, karaoke spills from upstairs windows, few Tibetan faces.


at the back of the best guesthouse in "fucklakot" (as cyril termed it)

The restaurant is OK, although I'm really suss on eating here. Dinner is OK though. Our Tibetan interpreter Norphu orders a bunch of dishes for us - mainly vegetarian. A couple of 'em have an extremely hot but sweet pepper mixed through them. These little peppercorns burn the front of my tongue numb - it's a weird sensation.

I imagine fugu and wonder if these berries are toxic.

The hostess seems proud of her wallpaper.

She gestures at it repeatedly.

The whole evening is underscored by the repetitive sound of digital redial over a disconnected line tone from the telephone in the room next door.

Is it another metaphor?

take me back! (part one)

from the journal:

SATURDAY JUNE 10 2000 - ANOTHER KILLER DAY.

We're camped by the Karnali again.
Tibet is on the other side of the river.

Rose at five this morning - bit warmer than at night. Woke up for a leak last night - saw two mountain massifs glowing in the starlight - another awesome sight! Clouded in and hiding again this morning though.

Jagat Man is anxious to move - we take the trail up toward the pass. Breathing is OK, but I don't have the energy or breath to converse while moving. Heart rate sits about 135bpm for hours and hours on end - only drops back when we pause. With every breath, stuff is coming up for me - I keep harking back to yesterday's fears... ...I know this is my own insecurity speaking, but I can't find another voice to speak against this feeling.



As we rise, we pass mani stones in the landscape and the temperature begins to drop. Soon we're forging upward through cloud, and snow begins to appear on the ground. I look up through a break in the cloud and see an impossibly high mountainside, white with snow, transected by a zigzag line of darkness - is that our path? Yes? Wow! It looks impossible...

We stop at a snow covered high pasture called Sipsip for tea and hot noodles. Heat safely sheltered in the belly, we head up. In... Out... In... Out... In... Out. My heart... my breath... my life. Each step is labour, but what is waiting to be born?... ...Everything turns to white. The trail, the hillside, the sky, my thoughts. We move upward and onward into the pearly light.



We turn to the south. Above us flutter prayer flags connected to the cairn of stones marking the top of the pass. Total whiteout - snow everywhere - three feet deep in places. As we pass, the land begins to fall toward a shallow meltwater lake...

All OK - no altitude effects, just wonder - and a white sadness for where I've let you down...



My left knee begins to complain as we start the descent. News comes that we can't use the usual trail because of... landslides! Fuck! Even on this side of the range it's been raining! Extremely unusual!

As we re-enter the Karnali River valley, I begin to feel that this river doesn't like us. Huge, outrageous, dangerous slipways have taken the trail down to the river and we have to find a new route over the newly unstable slopes. These mountains aren't rock - they're huge piles of mud and stones and when they start moving, they go!

We have three straight hours of incredible tension and life threatening walking. In some places a trail has to be cut into the scree slope and cut again for each person to pass. (By our Nepali trekking staff - all these guys are absolute legends!) It's 2500ft down if we slip. (Or if the land does.) Every time we crest a ridge, we're greeted with the vista of yet more slip zones and gaps in the trail.

It's really scary - Tania freaks and cries, Cyril blanches white, Paul looks like he's at the bedside of a terminally ill loved one, while Anthony is a picture of Virgo stoicism. It takes its toll on all of us. By now my knee is screaming. I drop an Ibuprofen and Kerry straps it for me. Kerry's felt constantly nauseous for a long time now.

For the first hour it pisses rain, as if in replay of Thursday, like the weather is conspiring with Karnali to sweep us off the mountain. Then the sun emerges and it's blistering! All around us are impassive snow peaks, a huge amphitheatre for our performance of the insignificant.

We regain the original trail, round the next ridge and - another huge landslide! Again: Fuck! This one we cannot cross and have to follow its scar to the riverbed where it has left thousands of tons of stone and loopy mud that looks like piped icing. The mud is springy, jellylike - the horses break through and belly out - it's quicksand! More washaways with water still pouring out of the scree slopes left behind. We skirt them to the campsite at Hilsa, which lies in the narrow Karnali valley next to the suspension bridge across to Tibet.



Everybody's buggered when we arrive - it's been a nine hour battle this time. We buy each of the crew beers and crash on the grass in the fierce sunshine. We dry clothes, polish boots, make camp. Since we've come over the range there's been an incessant wind. Now that the sun is gone it's freezing. The river rushes in its bed like the wind. A half moon lights the snowcaps at each end of the valley. A satellite passes overhead...

evenstar = homewrecker!

Dammit! I just wrecked this little guy's new home.

I decided to do a bit in the garden this morning. For the last couple of years I've been watching a small tree growing through our fence and today was the day to get rid of it before it destroyed the fence in this winter's storms. Whenever I have to prune I'm always careful to check for bird nests. I found 4 in this bush. They were all abandoned, so I got into it.

I'd just finished pruning and was dragging the branches away when this bird flew straight at me, swerving at the last minute to perch on the newly exposed fence. He had a sliver of grass in his beak and was looking around, making a quiet little "chip?... chip?" sound. I love these birds and have always wanted a closer look at one - but not under these circumstances! He was oblivious to my presence and repeatedly flew small arcs in search of the tree I'd just removed. On several occasions he perched less than an arm's length away.

God, I felt like a prick!

For the ornithologically minded:
Scarlet Robin
Petroica multicolor
(Race campbelli)
Size - 13cm

a shadow of my former self...

Spent last (holiday) weekend up in the city. A 600 km round trip to catch up with friends and family. Also caught up with someone I'd never met before... The worst gut bug I've ever had - worse than untreated giardia in Nepal!

At 1.00am Monday I was possessed by the spirit of Linda Blair. The bitch came back every hour on the hour until 9.00am, by which time I'd had more than enough and was looking for the window to hurl myself out of. I guess she couldn't handle daylight, coz she didn't come back after that. You could see the words "HELP ME" embossed on my belly for the next 48 hours though.

NOT recommended as a quick way to lose four kilos!

BTW: Rules to follow after demonic GI possession:

1 - no farting
2 - carry a toilet
3 - NO FARTING

walkaway

Lately caught up in the day to day
- tomorrow's the day i walk away