The world turns, and the silver light takes on an unholy shine. It pierces small figures high up on the sieves, the peasants of fateful, demon-ridden ages, stiff two-legged effigies of men, harassing the accursed brutes that drag the dull wood blade. E-ughaa! Grunting and bellowing, man turns beast with the cruel ring through the nostrils, back again, turn again, back again, century upon century, in the grim plod that drags the harrow through the stony soil. And the Iump woman, bent to earth one row ahead, hacking at stones with the crude mattock—step, hoe, step, hoe, step, hoe— Whut! She flinches as the twig goad whips, stinging the hard flanks of the beasts. Whut! E-ughaa! Whut!
Below the track, an old woman in wild black rags flails barley heaps on the flat roof of her hut; the wood blade cuts the mountain sky as she rears to strike. Under a walnut tree, a hangman's limb, a black cow awaits the dusk; its bell is still.
The trail climbs through a gorge to Kalibon, which Tukten tells me has been occupied by Kham-pas for many, many years, long before "Nepal and Tibet were not the same." No doubt in some sense this is true, a Tukten truth: and by "Kham-pas" Tukten means not the nomad guerrillas, but plain folk of Khams, in eastern Tibet, who have come to Nepal more recently than the Sherpas and are thought of as slightly inferior on that account. As in the Hindu villages, these Kham-pas take no chances with the local demons, and have decked out their stupa as a cairn to Masta. They are hospitable people, eager to be of help, and Tukten obtains some shelled wild walnuts, green buckwheat flour, and potatoes, while I wash in the sun and take my tea, and, led by the children of this village, stroll out happily onto the eastern ridge. In the warm sunset, there is a view of the Dhaulagiris that we never had while skirting those massifs, and when Tukten comes, he points with pride to Churen Himal and Great Dhaulagiri, the mountaineers' Dhaulagiri One, to which he once accompanied an expedition. A north wind streams across these peaks, carrying off great clouds of powdered snow, as if the spires had gone up in fire. From Kalibon one can almost see the region of Jang La—how long ago, in another life, those days now seem!
NOVEMBER 26
A moonless night. I lie with head out of the tent, watching the stars, which twitch a little, drift a little, in the blue-black sphere. This morning I am tired, though I slept well for eight hours. Usually six hours are enough, and yet I was dozing again at dawn when Dawa brought me tea, and I still feel sore and heavy when I rise.
Now that Dawa feels better, he seems a little spoiled by special treatment: for the first time, he is dodging work, taking advantage of the fact that Tukten does not mind. With Karma gone, I carry most of my own gear, and Tukten has inherited a heavy load; though much smaller than either of us, he refuses to share his load with me and asks no help from Dawa. From the beginning, this leopard-eyed saint has outworked and outwalked us all; not once have I seen him downhearted or tired, nor has he responded with sullenness or rudeness to my own evil temper of these recent days. On the steepest slopes, pausing to rest, he talks to whoever is at hand, his soft deep voice as soothing and pervasive as this southern wind. All animals and wayfarers are Tukten's friends, and listen to him carefully, yet he rarely speaks except when spoken to, and never seems to speak too much; without obtruding, he becomes the center of each situation, so naturally does he belong where the moment finds him.
The sun pours a fine golden mist into the Bheri valley, warming my back as I climb the trail through rhododendron wood and shining oak. A boy in a sky-colored cap overtakes me and is gone, leaving a strange shadow in the air. He makes me shiver; I don't want him to look back. I never had a sky-blue cap, I never saw his face, yet this boy who vanishes into the trees is the same as me.
The pass is no higher than 13,000 feet, and there is little snow. I am hobbled by a sharp pain in one knee, and favoring it excites some odd pains elsewhere, and so I am grateful that the descent on the far side is the most gradual path we have yet walked in Nepal, following round the forest rims of four wild valleys before emerging on a hogback ridge. From the ridge, the path turns steeply down to a pretty village with old prayer walls, by a river. This warm season is the season of a dream, not quite like any autumn I have known. I smell fresh frog mud at the rivulets, and sweet chicken dung in sunny heaps, out of the wind, and woodsmoke and the acid smell of rotting leaves—the smells of childhood morning days that tug my heart.
Cross a bridge, the westward path climbs the length of a long valley; as we draw near, a low pass through the hills brims over with the setting sun. Since I am lame, Tukten and Dawa are ahead, and their humble shapes, bent under loads, rise up in silhouette on the solar fire; like faithful pilgrims at the gates of Heaven, they appear in halo, burn, and disappear.
I turn and, resting on my stave, gaze eastward, the last look in this life, perhaps, at the great Dhaulagiris and the Bheri. Then I cross the divide and slowly descend into the vale between low mountains.
A drum resounds from Sonrikot, across the valley. Hobbling now, I shall not reach there until after dark, but this much-used track is smooth and wide, and I make my way easily enough by the light of stars. The path follows an open mountainside, descends to a dark stream, and climbs again.
Coming up toward the lightless huts, I set myself for dogs. But there is Tukten's silhouette, and I am touched; he has watched me coming across the valley, and now stands waiting on the track, as if taking the evening air.
"Good night, sah," he murmurs, as I approach; he takes my pack and leads me up into the village, where my tent is pitched already on a roof. The last tough neck meat from the yak killed by the snow leopard at Murwa is served up with some local turnips, and our namu brings fresh yogurt in a bright brass bowl.
In Sonrikot, as at Roman, the tent spikes are driven into a clay rooftop, in a friendly and informal atmosphere of prayer flags, pumpkin seeds, fuel, fodder, dog dung, and red peppers spread to dry. But unlike Roman, this is a mountain village where strangers are made welcome. According to Tukten, many of the people here are from the north, come for the grazing, or to hire out their yaks as pack animals on the Jumla trade route. This is the last Buddhist village we shall see, and even here, the faith is dying out; the prayer walls are ancient, and no one has added a new stone in many years. For this is the Kali Yuga, the Dark Age, when all the great faiths of mankind are on the wane.
NOVEMBER 27
Today my boots seek quiet footholds and avoid loose, skidding stones, wasting no energy on stumbles. I move lightly, and my knee is better, and climbing through oak forest and rhododendron, I soon arrive at a high ridge with a wide western prospect. This pass, like the one yesterday, must be less than 13,000 feet high—before man came, neither pass on this Jumla track was above tree line—but the wind is cold, and the path on the north side is icy and precipitous, twisting down into deep virgin forest. Strong resin and sharp needle smells fills the great evergreens, and a dark humus that brings minerals into the nostrils.
Just ahead, where a stream brings light into the forest, the sherpas point. In the water shimmer, treading the iced-green moss on a fallen fir, an unfrightened furred creature, the size of a wolverine, crosses the sun shafts. The sherpas are gleeful, eager as two boys; I am grinning, too. The red panda—this one is lustrous red-and-black—must be the loveliest of all forest animals in the Himalaya; with the wild tracts of the Suli Gorge behind us, I had given up all hope of seeing it. And it makes me happy that the sherpas take such pleasure in it; the panda has brought the first smile to Dawa's face since the dancing party at Saldang.
Drawn together by this rare experience, talking and laughing, we pause in the sunlight by the stream to share a piece of bread; it seems to occur to all three of us at once that our life together is almost at an end. The last pass is behind us, and a day and a half of gradual descent will bring us into Jumla.
Tonight we are camped on a birch island in the Zuwa River, since the canyon sides are much too steep to permit pitching a tent on the river shore; the air is dank and bitter cold, and the flood's roar is oppressive, drownin
g the voice and rushing it away. Earlier, I resisted Tukten's good advice that we make camp in open valley, some miles back; this river makes me restless, and I snapped at him that we would never reach Jumla by tomorrow evening if we made camp in early afternoon. (On other days I have complained when we make camp after dark instead of arriving in good light, in time to wash; the poor man must think I have gone crazy.) But at twilight it was plain that we would not make the huts at Muni, at the far end of Zuwa Gorge, which narrowed and grew dark as we went along: the island, reached by a fallen tree, was a last refuge.
Moving around trying to keep warm until a fire can be made, we wrest faggots from the frozen earth. I feel bad, all the more so because the Sherpas' clothing is inadequate, and Tukten's especially: what little he had was stolen at Ring-mo on his way back from Jumla. He is happy to wear whatever I can spare him, though not once has he asked for it: Tukten never seems to suffer—a true repa. At the fire, I make a special effort to be friendly, to acknowledge my stupidity in not deferring to his judgment—after all, he has been over this same route in the past month. But with this Tukten, all such effort is absurd; how can he forgive me, when he hadn't bothered with resentment in the first place?
Over supper, we discuss the yeti. Still under the sway of the sophisticated Jang-bu, Dawa giggles in embarrassment at talk of yeti, and the older sherpa shifts upon his heels to look at him. Tukten says quietly, "I have heard the yeti," and cries out suddenly, "Kak-kak-kak KAI-ee!"—a wild laughing yelp, quite unlike anything I have ever heard, which echoes eerily off the walls of the cold canyon.
Stirring the embers, Tukten is silent for a while. Dawa stares at him, more startled than myself. According to Tukten, the yeti is an animal, but "more man-creature than monkey-creature." He has never seen one, but intends to turn quickly when he does and pretend he hasn't; the yeti never attacks men, but to see one is bad luck. Yetis were once common in the Khumbu region, but in the time of his grandfather, the people set out poisoned barley to keep yetis from raiding their crops, and killed them off—there were dead yetis everywhere, said Tukten's grandfather.
Looking up, he gazes at me peacefully over the flame. Then he says something very strange: "I think the yeti is a Buddhist." When I ask him if he means a holy man, a hermit with strange powers, a naljorpa, he just shrugs, refusing with uncustomary stubbornness to explain further.
Tibetans claim to be descended from a monkey god who was an incarnation of Chen-resigs; he married a demoness who lusted after him, and they had six children with long hair and tails. However, he fed them sacred grains, and gradually the hair and tails grew shorter, then fell away entirely. According to the chronicles,3 some had the virtues of their father while others had the vices of their mother, "yet all possessed strong bodies and courage," like the Tibetans of today. In a Sherpa version of this legend, a monkey converted to Buddhism lived as a hermit in the mountains, and was loved and married by a demoness; their offspring also had long hair and tails, and these were the mi-teh kang-mi, the "man-thing of the snows"—the yeti.
Sherpas also say4 that yeti are the dhauliyas, or guardians, of Dölma (Tara), the feminine aspect of Chen-resigs. Many dhauliyas represent the animistic deities of pre-Buddhist religions, and supposedly there is "a great religious tradition which has for its focal point the mystery of the Sangbai-Dagpo, or Concealed Lords. This religion certainly antedates Lamaism, and is obsessed with the transmigration of the human soul into the bodies of the lower anthropoids. The Abominable Snowmen are revered by the adherents of this sect, and the heads, hands, and feet of deceased specimens find their way into their ritual. The effect of this animistic doctrine on Tibetan Buddhism should not be underestimated, and ... motivates local people to protect these creatures from the quest of the Europeans.5
I gaze at Tukten, in hopes that he will say more, but he is silent; in the firelight, his eyes are shining. There is power in the air, and Dawa feels it, too; Dawa and I exchange a glance, uneasy. A sorcerer sits on the far side of this night fire in the Zuwa Gorge. When I ask him to make the yeti cry again, he does so, holding my eyes with his, and not quite smiling.
"Kak-kak-kak KAI-ee!"
NOVEMBER 28
In the Zuwa Gorge, in gray darkness of dawn, a pack pony has got separated from its owner. Walleyed and wild as a horse of nightmare, it skids and dances on the sheet ice where the Zuwa overflows its banks, and there is no way to help it, or to reach it, even, since the ice sheets are so treacherous that I can barely stand upright Several times the poor beast falls, kicking and lunging, skinny legs groping in the air. Finally, it attains dry ground and hobbles painfully into the forest. Uneasy, I continue on my way.
An hour's trek down the cold gorge brings me out at the police checkpoint under Muni, a fit entry to the lowland world we left behind two months ago at Pokhara. When the sherpas come, the surly guards root through everything, even the rolled tents, on the lookout for stolen religious objects, so they say: they would doubtless confiscate valuable objects frwn a Tibetan or a Bhote, whether or not the man was the rightful owner. Even a bystander dares to pick through my belongings, and I snatch something from his hand with an oath for all to hear; at this, Tukten shakes his head in warning. When the man rides off on a horse, Tukten explains that this nosy fellow is a police official. (This same official was to turn up again at the next check post, closer to Jumla, and intervene there on behalf of the Westerner who had been so rude to him at Muni, commanding his minions to let us through at once. It is hard to adjust to the intricate hostile deference of Hindus, so many of whom-—even the children —seem to be frowning.)
The fear-crazed pony on the ice was a grim portent, for beginning with the intrusions at the police post, the signs of approaching civilization come thick and fast—the litter of Chetri villages, ubiquitous police, dogs, human excrement, the hard blare of transistor radios, and finally Jumla, once a great kingdom of northwestern Nepal, now a frontier town littered all across the eroded hills on the far side of the river.
Excepting the half-day's rest at Murwa, we have been walking for eleven days. I am tired, and as filthy as I have ever been in life, which is saying a good deal. Although it is early afternoon, these villages on the south side of the river he already in the mountain shadow; we must cross over to the farther bank and make camp in the sun, the better to celebrate our arrival with a wash. But Dawa will not keep up with us, he has no animation left, and Tukten is behaving oddly, causing needless delays and making foolish suggestions which are not foolish, only seem so, because I do not know what he is up to: plainly this man is in no rush at all to get to Jumla.
I have no wish to go to Jumla, either, since we may be here for days before air passage is available; a good campsite well outside that squalid town would suit me better. For want of destination, we wander onward, while Tukten suggests one bad site after another—this is as close as he has ever come to sullenness—until at last we reach a bridge wher the Tila River joins the Zuwa. On the point is a pretty village called Dansango, upon which I see that the sun will shine until late afternoon because of a low saddle in the western mountains. The east end of the Jumla airport lies on a bluff just across the Tila, and Dansango is less than an hour's walk from town.
We camp at water's edge, beside an odd white shrine, in the court of which, out of the wind, the sherpas build their fire. While the water heats, I read the mail that was brought to Shey by Tukten; there is no bad news, and I am glad that I put off the reading until now. I finish my wash and take sunset tea in the doorway of my tent, watching the rivers drink the light and the waters spiral round a strange black rock that hes downstream. In a meadow, ponies graze, and the low sun glows in the heavy guard hairs all around their bellies. Figures dark beneath their loads pass down the far bank of the river, rendered immortal by the streak of sunset upon their shoulders. The water turns black, and drops of spray jump up to catch the light as it leaves the valley. Then the sun is gone, the journey is done, the new moon rises.
NOVEMB
ER 29
Leaving Dawa to tend camp, Tukten and I climb to the plateau across the Tila and walk the last miles into Jumla, crossing the fields and descending through soiled, littered outskirts into the mud, smells, and offal of the town. Fortunately, we shall not be here long, for an airplane comes tomorrow at midday with mail and cargo, then carries workers down to the Nepalganj Road, on the Indian border, then returns here before proceeding to Bhairava and Kathmandu.
Once again we explain ourselves to the police, after which we change money at the bank, frequent a tea stall, and buy goat meat, rice, eggs, wizened oranges and apples, and some bootleg arak for the small celebration we shall have tonight. Tukten apparently made many friends during his visit, and knows just where to go to find some arak, which we receive in a soiled container at a private dwelling.
All morning I have been surprised by the number of people who approach Tukten to renew acquaintance, and address him with great warmth and respect; he never precipitates these encounters, and though he seems pleased at being hailed, he accepts the deference given him in a simple open way, in mild surprise.
What is perplexing is why Tukten did not hesitate to come to Jumla this morning despite his obvious reluctance yesterday afternoon. I ask him about Gyaltsen's charges—that, while in Jumla, he entertained a plan to steal our mail. Untroubled by the question, he reminds me that he never said anything against Gyaltsen, but let him do all the talking, telling his stories. He shrugs: not much happened except for that fight in Ring-mo. Tukten smiles a little: "Gyaltsen hit me first." Tukten has no interest in defending himself further, and I am content to let the matter go.