Written while in China

dated
31st May 2000

But the military would never grant us permission to cycle this route through their extra-sensitive area, (the wide open, triangular, dusty space in the middle of Bamda was already in constant motion with the arrival and departure of army convoys 30 - 40 trucks long). We'd persuaded our truck to stay with us for one more day until just before the first checkpoint on the eastbound route at Zogong; from here, without paperwork, they couldn't do much more and we would have to continue alone to try our luck against the fabled Ogres of Eastern Tibet. We would leave Bamda at first light in the morning so as not to attract the attention of the PSB as we pushed our first illegal pedal strokes towards Markam. Sony was on edge!

He pre-empted our already early alarm call by half an hour banging hard on the downstairs door of the hotel. This was a rude awakening and we lay wondering who it might be. Sony had assured us the town was crawling with Public Security Bureau officials - had they decided to apprehend us before we'd even pointed our front wheels towards the closed area? When it turned out to be Sony we asked him to sit tight for half an hour and we'd be there. The hotel and small town was silent again and I lay thinking. It was a bit mad. Was this it for the next week or more - early mornings, paranoia, fear of being apprehended, turned back, fined, arrested? Would our fantastic view of Tibet so far, from behind the handlebars soon turn into a slightly more restricted view from behind an altogether different set of bars?!

In actual fact the entire route we'd followed east from Lhasa was through a closed area, just not quite as closed as that beyond Bamda. We were lucky to have had the opportunity to cycle this way - it was dramatic and amazingly beautiful. But also unstable in so many ways. Politically, it's a geographical buffer zone between Beijing and Lhasa. Socially, it's a cauldron of Chinese immigration, incongruous settlements with their harsh right-angled architecture descending on the landscape, (in stark contrast to the charming Tibetan villages which seem to grow out of the land), and within the populations of these towns, Tibetans almost appearing as outsiders in their own country. And geologically, the stability of the landscape itself is precarious, the mountains and river valleys scarred with landslides and random rock falls. We were teetering along the relatively dry but narrow spit of time between the Spring thaw and the Summer rains which saturate the landscape and block the road time and time again with mass movements of rock and earth! Come to think of it, poor Sony was on edge most of the time!!

But with his help, our own endeavours and the marvellous generosity of the Tibetan people, who are incredibly strong and more than a match for all this instability, we were to make it through the 'Land of Ogres' and into China without so much as a sniff from the PSB!

The people in the villages we were riding through don't see westerners, let alone those on bikes, for months on end, whole seasons; (as it turned out we bumped into a group of four cyclists and a lone frenchman travelling in the opposite direction, engaging in the same nocturnal checkpoint antics as us, so the locals were in for a European-spotting bonanza during May, 2000, but this, I think, was something of an exception!) Our arrival in a settlement would often be greeted with shrieks and, should we stop, a scrambling in the quickly gathered crowd. But the villagers would very soon overcome this initial shock and gather round, inquisitive, grinning widely, pleased to see us and very open with their emotions. One village trooped down, en masse, to join us where we had stopped on the road by their stupa and with only a tiny amount of shared language, we exchanged huge amounts of good will and glorious wishes with them. The Tibetan greeting - "Tashi Delek" - one of the few bits of language we did master, actually means 'good luck, every success and I hope you remain free of sickness'.

We were privileged to be invited on several occasions into the expansive but quite empty homes of Tibetan families, what few material belongings they did have almost looking out of place in their totally non-materialistic but warm and comfortable dwellings. Here the true character of the people became apparent - strong, (physically and spiritually), self-reliant, dedicated, devoted and very independent. Their staple food - Tsampa (barley flour) and the legendary Yak Butter Tea with its somewhat acquired taste - is incredibly simple. Their hard work ensures their self-sufficiency. The independence shows itself in their unique way of life, their inspirational celebration of the elemental beauty of the country, (with prayer flags at the top of the mountain passes for example), and also their individual decisions to set out on pilgrimage to Lhasa, converging from every remote and difficult corner of the country. This, of course, is also a reflection of their devotion and dedication to Tibetan Buddhism which unites so many individual spirits and has survived all the Chinese attempts to destroy it.

The Buddhist faith asks its followers to circumambulate temples, deities and important sites in a clockwise direction. Around the Jokhang Temple in the capital a spiral seems to be in force drawing followers around the Barkhor Circuit lined with market stalls outside the temple, then inside to do a shorter lap between lines of prayer wheels in the outer courtyards, then into the dark, but exquisitely and colourfully decorated interior to finally arrive at the very sacred Chapel of Jowo Sakyamuni in the heart of the Jokhang. I was struck with the idea that this spiral might be effective on a much larger scale, touching every individual pilgrim who, in turn, fuels the momentum of this great journey to the heart, the very pulse of Tibet.

Lhasa is beautiful, full of pilgrims on these clockwise circumambulations of sacred, curvacious and beautifully crafted deities. The Barkhor Circuit flows like a constant tide with people mumbling mantras and spinning their litle prayer wheels. The market place is so bright and appealing, bursting with exquisite jewellery, hangings, flags and clothes. The sensory experience, once again, is truly elemental: the eyes almost overdose on colour; the nose breathes in clouds of incense which plume out of specially made burners around the circuit; the low mumble of the pilgrims, the banging of drums and flute-blowing treat the ears; for the hands, the smooth handles on prayer wheels, and floors slippery with yak butter dripping from the thousands of candles for the feet; and for the taste buds, salted yak butter tea, which I seem to have acquired the taste for, (marvellous for rehydration after all), but the rest of our group seem to leave to get cold!

It's a welcoming city, too, with an atmosphere as generous as the smallest villages we cycled through in the far east of the country. It seemed amazing that the whole country, from Nyalam to Lhasa to Bamda and Markam, should come together in this vast spiral, this pilgrimage which is so central to the Tibetan culture, fusing as it does so many independent spirits into a brilliantly spirited whole. A race of people rightly proud and strongly protective of their identity.

So what about these Ogres?! Eastern Tibets reputation as a Land of Ogres comes from its position bordering more populated areas of China from where repeated attempts at invasion have been made. The 'Ogres' are historical ones, marauding empire-builders which the area has had to endure for centuries. But I have eluded to political, social and geomorphological adversaries even now, and it is almost impossible not to class the Chinese as modern day Ogres. The possession of pictures of the spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is still prohibited, the population is being gradually eroded by Chinese immigration, (these immigrants more often than not dictating the economic direction of the country), and the generous Tibetans who offered us food and shelter were risking punishment for harbouring foreigners.

And our Ogres, (although on a completely different and infinitely less pervasive level which doesn't really bear comparison at all), were, of course, the PSB! They forced upon us a series of covert checkpoint night-runs and in the end a secretive and very sudden departure from the country that had welcomed us, fed us, entertained and fascinated us, that had kept us like kings for the last seven weeks. I resented the guard who’s eyes I looked into as we sneaked quickly and quietly under the last barrier - (he was watching TV and didn't look back into mine) - but then realised that this was a shallow emotion. In the last fifty years the population of this country have endured untold cruelty and hardship at the hands of the Chinese machine.

But it is a magnificent testament to the Tibetans that we left the country with a deep impression of a people with their spirit not only intact, but flourishing; a race with all the physical and spiritual ingredients of one that has survived so much adversity and is strong enough and independent enough to live as fittingly, as gloriously as they do on the plateau for a long time to come.