By late afternoon I started the climb up the 16,600-foot [5060 meter] Marium La, the last pass before Mt. Kailash. In the distance up ahead I saw a truck off to the side of the road. As I got closer, I realized that it was the German couple whom I had seen the day before. The Tibetan pilgrims who had ridden in the back of their truck built a fire on the side of the road. They spent their time having a Tibetan “tea party,” while the truck driver and guide fiddled with the broken truck. When I stopped, the guide ran over and greeted me, his smile showed that he was happy to see me again. He begged me to rest for a while and have something to eat. He took me over to the fire and made sure that they fed me well with all the hot tea I could drink and tsampa I could eat. When I talked to the older pilgrims around the fire, one man asked me for medicine. He described problems with his left leg. Unfortunately I could not do anything for him, and it required at least a week's trip, in the back of a truck, to arrive at the most basic medical clinic. I often wondered what I would do if an injury befell me in this desolate land so far from modern Western medical care.
Later another truck rolled around the corner. I could see the bright-colored clothes of Westerners inside. I had learned to the tell the difference between Tibetans and foreigners from a long ways off, just by the way they walked and the color of their clothes. With the aid of another truck there was a good chance that the Germans would be able to get their vehicle on the road again. The second truck also carried a few folks who were doing research in China and on a bit of a vacation. I walked down to meet the newly arrived visitors. They said they knew something strange was going on, because back at the last river crossing they saw what appeared to be bicycle tire tracks in the sand at the river's bank. As it turned out, we all decided to camp where we sat and enjoy a dinner together. This was a delight for me, to have a conversation in English with interesting people.
For the first evening in a long time, I sat out and enjoyed intriguing conversations about setting up national parks in Tibet and Nepal, about Chinese politics, and the politics at the United Nations. When I first started talking to the gentleman who just arrived in the second truck, I thought for sure it could only be George Schaller, the famous Himalayan biologist. It seemed that this man worked on all the same projects as Mr. Schaller. He talked about working as one of the original people who helped set up Chomolangma National Park, the new park on the Tibet side of Everest, and the new Chang Tang National Park. I had just seen an article by George Schaller about the Chang Tang Park, in National Geographic a few months earlier. Only much later did I learn that his name was Daniel Taylor-Ide. Daniel had spent a good part of his life doing ecological research in various parts of the Himalaya. Later on in the evening we all shared some excellent chocolate that one of Daniel’s friends had just brought from the USA.
By the time I was ten days out from Saga, the last place I bought any food, tiredness sapped most all my remaining energy. I had never had enough to eat since I left Saga. I needed a couple days to rest but I did not have the extra food to just spend even one day in the same place. I had to move forward every day. While I rode I would often find myself singing the same line of a song over and over to myself as sort of a mantra. I would never consciously pick what songs to sing. At some kind of subconscious level, the words would just come out. During this part of the ride my mantra became “I'm so tired, so tired of waiting for you…” as weariness filled my body, speech and mind. Much later in the trip, while riding at 17,000 feet [5182 meters] in the Askin Chin, the words changed to “Knocking at Heaven's door, 'cause I don't think that I'll be coming 'round here anymore”, a verbal distillation of thoughts regarding the thin line that separated me from death both on this ride and during all of life.
Some of the only times that I got to talk to any Westerners out in the Chang Tang occurred when their vehicles broke down. The drivers and the passengers do not like to stop out in the middle of nowhere. They would drive all day and sometimes into the night to get to some place where they could stay inside away from the freezing temperatures and howling winds. While I descended from the Marium La Pass, I encountered an American woman and a French woman whom I had met back in Shigatse. These women had originally told me the story of Jay, the American who had so many problems on his way to Mt. Kailash. A clogged fuel filter, in their Land Cruiser, left them stranded on the side of the road. Both of these women showed extreme kindness and compassion toward me. They gave me some extra supplies that they had, and told me where I could expect to buy more food. My life had started to become focused on food, more and more, and staying alive for that matter. They had just left Lake Manasarovar early that morning, I ran into them during mid-afternoon. The distances involved in traveling in Western Tibet are often difficult to understand. They told me, “Oh, you'll be at Mt. Kailash tomorrow.” I did a quick mental calculation, I was only cycling about 30 miles a day at that point. “It is four more days of riding for me to get to Kailash,” I replied. They had no real understanding of exactly how far they had traveled. “Do you know how many kilometers it is back to Shigatse? We had heard that it was only 300 KM.” I pulled out my Chinese maps that had all the distances marked, it looked like it would require about 900 KM or 540 miles. My answer surprised and disappointed both of them. The French woman had felt sick. The high altitude aggravated a heart ailment that she suffered from. They had hoped that they could return to Shigatse in just two or three more days. For the last five minutes the driver tried to start the engine. He had removed the fuel filter and tried to blow the gasoline through it with his mouth. After a few attempts and a spoonful of swallowed gasoline he got the filter unclogged. Once he finally started the truck, no one wanted to sit around and exchange stories if the engine ran fine. Besides, they could not take the chance of it not starting next time and being stuck for another couple of hours, or possibly days until it got fixed again.
While everyone else traveled in trucks and Land Cruisers rushing from town to town, trying to avoid the desolate expanses of the high altitude stony desert, I lived my life in the places between the destinations. I would wake up in my tent by myself in the desert and ride for most of the day by myself through the middle of nowhere. Only maybe once every week or so would I see a road sign or some kind of building. I would fall asleep in the dusty dirt by the side of the road during the afternoon for a nap, or walk five feet [1.8 meters] off the road to go to the bathroom. There was no one else around and nothing to even go behind. On another trip in Tibet, I spent a couple days traveling on a bus with an Australian woman and her wonderful nine-year-old daughter. When the bus stopped one time, Delia asked, “Mom where is the toilet?” “The whole world is your toilet,” her mom replied, embarrassing Delia a little.
The first time I traveled to Mt. Kailash during the fall, after the real pilgrim season had ended. I knew that I wanted to get to Kailash but I did not possess the most accurate maps. A few days away from Kailash I flagged down a truck that was headed southeast toward the mountain. I tossed my pack into the back of the truck and squeezed in with the 20 or 30 Tibetans. After about three hours into the ride I realized that this truck was not headed to Mt. Kailash. Instead they moved toward Parang, at the Nepal border on a shortcut track that did not appear on my map. When I realized this, I yelled for the driver to stop, and jumped down from the truck. I could see Kailash out on the horizon, I could see exactly where I wanted to go. I spent the next three days walking cross-country toward the mountain. During this wonderful walk, I would often see herds of hundreds of wild Tibetan asses, khang, and antelope. As I would crest a rise and look down into the next little valley they would all raise their heads to look at me. The small streams and rivers that flowed through this region teemed with countless fish.