We carry on for as long as we can, past valley walls hung with rocks eroded into wonderful sculptural shapes: pinnacles of mud with enormous boulders poised on top of them and Stonehenge-like slabs teetering on the edge of mud cliffs. At just over 18,000 feet (5480 m), I get as close to Everest as I think I ever shall. A moment of regret as we turn back. The ribbed stone pyramid above looks daunting but beckoning at the same time. I can see why it makes people do crazy things. In the 1930s a man called Maurice Wilson planned to crash-land a plane on the side of Everest and climb on up to the summit. In 1980 Reinhold Messner made a successful ascent of the North Face, on his own, there and back, in four days, without oxygen.
As I take one last look, I put myself, as I have done so many times in the past, in Mallory and Irvine’s stout walking boots and tweed jackets and feel what it must have been like for them to stand here 80 years ago, knowing that only two miles separated them from the top of the world.
Day Sixty Three : Rongbuk to Shigatse
Howling packs of dogs, yelping and snarling in the village last night, and, closer to home, some angry argument in the passageway outside my room, hoarse shouting and a man being restrained.
The words of Captain Scott on arrival at the South Pole come to mind: ‘My God, this is an awful place.’
Today, though, I wash in the metal bowl for the last time, pay my last visit to the stained, encrusted lavatory, and take my last look at Everest framed in one of the squares of my cracked and much-repaired windows.
A Dutchman and his wife who stayed here last night are on their way from Lhasa to Kathmandu, on bicycles. It’s taken them a month to get this far. I never thought anyone would make me feel pampered in a place like this, but as they wobble off on their bicycles and I climb into my four-wheel drive, that’s exactly how I feel. A sturdy, smiling nun in a maroon robe, with a milk churn strapped to her back, stands to one side as our convoy pulls out. I’m torn between admiration for her indomitable cheerfulness and indignation at the grinding poverty that is the way of life for her and the villagers of Rongbuk. This is a beautiful, bleak place.
We run down into the valley, stacked high with glacial rubble, then climb up through a landscape of bare, brown, undulating hills, over a couple of spectacular passes and down through villages with snooker tables in the streets and horses tethered up outside front doors. We’ve almost 200 miles (320 km) to go before Shigatse, Tibet’s second biggest city.
By the time we’ve passed through the town of Lhatse we’ve dropped down to 13,500 feet (4110 m) and are running past ploughed fields. There’s not much traffic on the Friendship Highway: a few trucks lumbering along, a lot of horse and carts but hardly a private vehicle to be seen. As dusk falls we’re in wide, desolate country, with dust blowing and the setting sun catching the tops of the smooth, brown hills and turning them a rich, mournful maroon. As we get closer to Shigatse we pass brand new electric pylons, at first lying in the fields awaiting construction, then, a little later, upright but unconnected and finally cabled up and striding over the last hilltops into the city.
It’s a major culture shock after Rongbuk. I really feel as if we’ve come in from the outback. With its red lanterns and gold and stainless steel trim, the Shigatse Hotel, in the heart of the Chinese-built new town, gleams and glitters like a Las Vegas gambling joint. As we wait to check in, three girls in white coats emerge from a door off the lobby, marked, in English, ‘Beauty and Massage’, and ask us, quite ingenuously, which one we would like to choose.
This is all too much for us to get our heads round and we politely decline their services and, joy of joys, are taken up to rooms with carpets, lights, double beds, hot running water, no dogs and, luxury of luxuries, a bedside table.
This has to be better than sex. Sorry, Beauty and Massage.
Day Sixty Four : Shigatse to Lhasa
Shigatse, with a population of some 60,000, is the second city of Tibet, and boasts the second largest monastery in the country, the Tashilunpo, which is the seat of the second highest incarnation in Tibet, the Panchen Lama. In many ways, his recent history has been more interesting than that of his more illustrious superior, the Dalai Lama. In 1952, three years after the Chinese invaded Tibet, they brought the Panchen Lama to Shigatse and set him up, with his connivance, as their official choice of spiritual leader. After the Chinese had raided the Tashilunpo monastery in 1961, the Panchen Lama became increasingly critical. He sent a report to Chairman Mao calling for freedom of religion to be restored. Mao called the document a poisoned arrow and kept it secret. After a speech in Lhasa demanding Tibetan independence, the Chinese lost patience with their man and he was imprisoned for ten years in Beijing. His death, in Shigatse, at the early age of 50, created further confusion. The Dalai Lama and his advisers in Dharamsala found his reincarnation, a six-year-old boy from northern Tibet, and the Chinese promptly arrested him.
Tashilunpo once again became the centre of a power struggle, when, in 1995, Tibetan monks favourable to China came up with another candidate for Panchen Lama, and he was duly enthroned at the monastery.
No-one seems to know where the Dalai Lama’s choice is at the moment. He’s been kidnapped, and the Chinese-nominated Panchen Lama is rarely seen in Shigatse.
We drive to the monastery along modern, urban streets decked with ads for China Mobile. The temple, however, is resolutely Tibetan and mightily impressive. Its complex of buildings is laid out on a slope leading up to the row of tombs of the Panchen Lamas and a chapel that contains the tallest Buddha in the country.
A steady line of pilgrims, many in sheepskin coats and clutching prayer beads, are making their way up the stone-flagged pathways, flanked by juniper trees, that lead between the low, long buildings housing the various living quarters (there are 800 monks here) and the colleges where they can study Tantric philosophy, astrology, Tibetan medicine and history. Inside the colleges, small courtyards and whitewashed walls give the whole place the look of a mediaeval Spanish village.
Migmar tells me that boys are sent away to monasteries from the age of six, and they’re only allowed back home once a year. He admits that when he was young all he wanted to do was become a monk, but his family sent him to school.
I ask him if it’s right to say that education at a monastery would be more exclusively Tibetan, and school would offer a more international approach.
He agrees but says things are slowly changing.
‘Today, in a monastery most of the monks try to study other languages, something like English or Chinese. In the past it was only Tibetan.’
We join the crowd, who seem to be heading for the Maitreya chapel to see the Buddha. Migmar says that the majority of the pilgrims are from the rural east of Tibet and some may have travelled over 1000 miles to get here. Not only that, but they would try and make the journey once a year.
Everyone who goes into the chapel, man, woman and child, has to squeeze up one of three steep and narrow stairways, about as precipitous as ladders, that can barely take two people abreast. The steps on either side are for going up and coming down and the ones in the middle are reserved only for the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. Everybody struggles up and down. Quite happily.
Once up the steps the familiar sour smell of hot yak butter suffuses the chapel. Many of the pilgrims have brought butter and knives with them to cut slices, which they then drop in the copper bowls that contain the lighted candles.