Kailash the Hard Way

By Jamie McGuinness

Summer 98: Jamie McG and Suzy B had more adventure than can easily be imagined when they hitched across Tibet from Kashgar to Lhasa as part of Kathmandu to Hong Kong the long way.

One day in the middle of nowhere:

Mr Chen knows how to Drive. His 21 tonnes of thundering, quivering steel flies along so fast the corrugations disappear. He casually locks all four wheels when confronted with a stream cutting across the track. With air brakes and the latest turbo truck, the miles fly by, 5 of us crammed into the cab. The panorama outside is pure Tibet, indescribably beautiful in the stark shadowless simplicity. We are too nervous to notice the night panorama. The headlights throw perhaps 80m, and and at the speeds we are doing, locked wheels and all, we need 3 times that to stop. We are no longer sure if there is a road, or if we are simply following the telephone poles, driving one side or the other, wherever the ground is less treacherous. At perhaps 3am we stop at the coldest place on earth, the altimeter says more than 5000m. The lake near by is solid enough to drive a truck over. He kicks us out of the cab indicating he is going to sleep. We are thankful - we have been driving for more than 12 hours, he, for 18 or so. There are tents around us. We pile into one and luckily there is a bed free so 3 or 4 of us pile under the blankets for some shut-eye. 2 hours later we shake ourselves, after tea and noodles - it was a 'restaurant (get it?)' - we are off again. But not for long, a crunch and a crack later, we only have fifth gear left. We are towed back to the tents by his buddy. Another ride comes to an end. A new search, new adventure begins.

Another day in the middle of nowhere:

Awesome scenery, turquoise lakes, snowy mountains and soft plains. I am happily being shaken apart, half hanging out of the window of the truck because we are four in a 1960's cab for three, when I notice the front wheel getting wider. Hello, I thought - wheels don't get wider. But try telling that to the driver when you don't speak Uigher, Chinese or Tibetan or any other mutual language. But by miraculous powers of widening eyes, frantic tapping of shoulders, and yelling STOP! despite the fact the word was meaningless to him, we did halt before the front wheel fell off. It was approx 3mm away from doing so.

They dump 1000 nuts and bolts of a 1000 sizes onto the desert and start searching. Yep, we didn't have the 1001th sized nut... So they modify one. When it was fixed they tighten the other front wheel for good measure, bust the thread, so we have two more hours of admiring the lake and splendid panorama, while they dump out the 999 nuts and bolts...

One more day in the middle of nowhere:

After a police interrogation and a day's recovery in Ali, we wait at the edge of town for a truck ride. No luck, next morning, no luck either so we walk. Half a day later we spy a person in the binoculars. Hello, another foreigner, rather strange for this absolute middle of nowhere. "What are you doing here?", we ask... "I have been waiting 8 days for a ride." Surely nowhere but Tibet could this happen.

We don't know where we want to go, we haven't the faintest clue where we actually are, but we walk along the valley passing other century nomad camps knowing that there must be a road ahead. Well, that isn't exactly true because for the last 500kms, and the next 500, a road hasn't been built. The trucks simply drive wherever they feel like, the reason we had missed their shortcut. After three pleasant days of no vehicles we see trucks, stationary trucks. It is a woman moving house so we perch on top of an ornate cabinet and thump along at a fourth gear maximum of perhaps 25 miles an hour. The only thing more glorious than the unimpeded panorama from the back of the truck is the picnic for lunch. Share and share alike: a sack of flat bread appears, a leg of dried sheep, chicken in a barbecue sauce that she assures us is less than 2 days old, tsampa and the inevitable salt butter tea, brewed with a petrol blow torch that makes a lit molotov cocktail look safe. Our dried apricots look rather meager beside all this but no-one cares. Smiles and laughter go a long way. You go a long way slowly in Tibet, so enjoy it!

Yet another day in the middle of nowhere:

We are looking at the carcass of a truck, rather ominous. Our driver is hip deep in the frigid river and shaking his head. No longer possible to cross here. So our convoy hoon across the plains, heading upriver, and asking at nomad camps, searching for another crossing point. Two hours and many miles later we find the perfect spot; he doesn't even wade in to check it. Everyone is jubilant. Half a day later we are on the other side of the place we couldn't cross. Such is travel in Tibet.

One night in the middle of nowhere:

After weeks on the back of trucks, Shigatse is only 5 hours away and the drivers are putting in a marathon 24 hour stint. It is 3 am and we are happily asleep in the back on our bed of dried yak shit, - a present for his wife? - wrapped in borrowed sheepskin lined overcoats, snug as a bug in a rug; and we were - and so were the bugs, probably.

"Gya blyar byar police-y dza" - obviously another police checkpost, but this time the driver wants us to get out, walk thru ourselves, and he will pick us up on the other side. We stagger off, watch the tail lights disappear then let our night vision develop. We can feel the road under our feet, but can barely see the buildings as we shuffle along.

"Woof, WOOf WOOOOF, grrr, Grrrr, GRRRR". We say "*!#@", "%^+*", and more. Tibetan dogs KILL the unknown. We stand as still as our adrenaline-charged bodies will allow. They haven't worked out where we are. A few minutes later we pad away, and "Woof, WOOf, Grrrr, GRRRR". "*!#@", they have heard us again. Again stillness, and we exit a single step at a time to safety, fall in a ditch and sleep there. Shigatse was to be another day and another adventure away.

And the Kailash kora? Not only is a single circuit supposed to cleanse the soul of a lifetimes' sins, it is also beyond doubt the most beautiful four day walk in the world.