At eleven thousand feet my ears popped. Tsedup's friend Gondi took the wheel – Sando had been driving for seven hours and needed a nap. He soon fell asleep on the back seat and began to snore gently. I was beginning to feel conspicuously underdressed in my thin, linen skirt and T-shirt beside Dolma, resplendent in full traditional costume. With her tiny frame, delicate features, leopardskin tsarer and strings of coral and turquoise, she was, without doubt, the prettiest woman I had ever seen. She smiled at me as Sando let out a loud grunt and the two of us giggled. It was strange not being able to talk: so much was left to instinct, gesticulation and facial muscles. But we played with Gonbochab, her little boy, who at first clung to his mother to escape the weird white woman next to him, then relaxed enough to let me play with the little doll that he insisted on
Soon we turned off the main road and continued the last part of the journey on a winding dirt track through the mountains. We stopped to wait for the rest of the convoy beside a huge lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Tsedup told me this was a bird sanctuary. The cold wind ruffled the water towards me as I peed in a ditch. Then I slipped and ruined my skirt. My sandals were now full of muddy water as well and I sighed. Not only did I feel underdressed for meeting my in-laws, I was now cold and wet. What I had been thinking of when I chose to wear my office clothes to come to such a wilderness, I shall never know. I don't think I had grasped the concept of where I was going.
As we moved on, nomad encampments of black yak-hair tents became visible in the valleys; yaks and sheep were grazing on the slopes. In the steady drizzle of the early evening the tents seemed to offer little in the way of shelter for their inhabitants and I began to wonder if our new home would be the same. These were pitched close to the road on blackened scrub and looked considerably less attractive than I had imagined. In contrast to the breathtaking vista I had witnessed when we first arrived at the Tibetan plateau, this land was more closed in and claustrophobic. I saw a nomad woman in a sodden sheepskin tsarer shovelling yak dung into a basket and children staring at the cars as we passed. I looked forward to seeing the true splendour of the Machu landscape, as Tsedup had described it: although I had been excited at the prospect of living in a tent, I had also hoped that the beauty of the surroundings might compensate me for the loss of home comforts. This area was bleak and I couldn't conceive that somewhere like this would feel like home. I felt anxious.
After two hours of winding through the mud-sludge and mountain fog, we rounded a sharp bend at the top of a pass. The convoy stopped and Tsedup fumbled with the door handle.
This is the Wild Yak range!' he exclaimed. This is Machu soil!' Then he jumped out and ran to the cliff edge of the road. We followed and everyone stood in the pattering rain to survey their beloved homeland.
Far below, the first bend of the Yellow river meandered through the mist that shrouded the grassland. The Amnye Kula mountain range, deep green and dense with peaks and valleys, rolled into the distance. Herds of black yaks grazed on the shallow escarpments and a flock of sheep scrambled beneath us on the shale and rocks. The horizon was blurred by rainclouds, but it was an exhilarating sight and I was stunned by the power and drama of the landscape before me. It was just as Tsedup had described it.
The men climbed up to a stony ridge high above the track, where prayer flags flapped wildly from wooden stakes. Tsedup gave a wild, triumphant cry and flung his arms in the air. At last he was home, and as his voice ricocheted around the mountains, the other men began whooping and shouting, called repeatedly upon the mountain gods, giving thanks for his safe return, tossing fistfuls of long hda, 'wind horses' – small paper squares with pictures of horses – into the wind. The thin slivers of paper fluttered down into the valley and out of sight.
We descended from the high pass to the small town of Machu, which lay in the flat river basin. The car accelerated down a long, straight track of dust and stones, crunching over the gravel and spitting out shingle from the tyre grips. The last pale shades of thin light still illuminated the sky, but dusk would be swift tonight as the sun had already been snuffed out by the creeping fog. It was a race to get there before dark, and Tsedup explained that we still had another six miles to drive through increasingly rough terrain. I hoped the Santana was up to it, and wondered how my parents were faring in the car behind. Ten hours of breakneck roads and precipitous valleys had probably finished them off.
As we sped through the deserted streets, I realised that the town was not quite as I'd expected. I had often asked Tsedup what it was like and, in his search for a suitable parallel, he had told me it resembled a town in the Wild West. I had imagined sandy streets, wooden buildings, tumbleweeds and saloon brawls, but apart from the horses standing outside restaurants, it seemed like just another concrete rural town with rows of squat buildings lining the road. Everyone had shut up shop and it had the air of a ghost town. I glimpsed two streets that day, and Tsedup told me that there were only three altogether. It certainly was a small town and, as this was to be my only haven of civilisation for the next six months, I hoped I would be able to unearth its charms before too long.
At the end of the main street we turned westward and saw a small group of nomads brandishing prayer scarves, an old woman with some children. 'Drive on,' said Tsedup. We were behaving like spoilt royalty, but time was running out and Tsedup's parents were waiting. Later he discovered that the old woman had been his grandmother.
We left the town, then negotiated the ditches of the next rutted track through the grasslands. We seemed to be driving into nowhere, an infinite horizon of vast green plains and mountains that spread for ever in the dim half-light. This was the end of the earth. Tsedup was quiet: it seemed that he wanted to savour the sight of his home for, despite the rain, he had wound the window right open and was leaning out. I watched him and wished I could share his thoughts right then.
As we approached the site of Tsedup's tribe the light was almost gone. We turned off the track on to the grass, and I could just make out the silhouette of black tents huddled in a valley between two ridges. This was the Valley of the Rocks. Suddenly the convoy stopped. Everyone opened the car doors and got out. As we stood peering into the dark, I could see figures moving slowly towards us. Then one broke free and ran faster. An old woman in a dark tsarer, grey hair streaming, necklace thumping on her chest, arms outstretched. It was Tsedup's mother. She flung herself around him, weeping. I watched her clinging and sobbing and stammering with joy. I was already crying when she pulled me to her and held me tight. I could smell the outdoors in her hair.
'Namma, shata go! Shata go! Bride, thank you! Thank you!' She wept.
I didn't know what she was thanking me for, but the pain and relief in her voice touched me. Then his father came, followed by his sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, their children and dogs, and I saw him standing before Tsedup: he wore his tsarer and a smart waistcoat beneath the tufts of tangled sheepskin. He was a real nomad, a proud man with a fine, lined face. He stood still for some time, staring into Tsedup's eyes.
We were guided back to the tent. His mother held my hand and I felt the warmth of her rough fingers as she led me through the wet grass, carefully sidestepping the yak dung. Tsedup was the first to enter. We waited behind him as he paused at the doorway and wept into his hands. The sight of the tent was too much: he wept with recognition of all he had missed, for the lost years, the waiting, for his aged parents, for love of Tibet.