Wow, what an interesting book. I picked this up from the 50p rack at the back of Sainsbury's and I'm glad I did because I have checked online and it is now out of print. Vikram wrote this travel book in 1983 when he was finishing studying in Nanjing, China. He'd just decided to try and get back to Delhi via a land route starting in Xinjiang/Sinkiang in the Far West of Northern China and going through the flooded deserts of Far Western China, (it was the short lived monsoon season.) into Tibet and then a difficult crossing via foot into Nepal. Not many tourists are allowed to go out of China this way and it was quite hair raising. And then finally he caught a flight back from Kathmandu to Delhi.
I love the way Vikram writes and here he really makes you feel you are travelling with him in a distant land in a time which has now vanished for ever. Tourists had to use special tourist exchange vouchers. I was intrigued by this strange parallel money system and had always wanted to know how it worked. And weirdly when I was in the British museum last week I randomly found one and took a photo! I'm such a geek.
Vikram could speak Mandarin and was able to get a seat in a massive truck crossing Western China to Tibet and the wonderfully uncomfortable journey with the chain smoking driver and the young lad who just loved reading comics, was really vivid. The driver was an interesting character who unlike many of the Han Chinese didn't hold any particular negative feelings towards the Tibetians. He was a practical guy who seemed totally at home in his rattling truck. His ancient truck made at least 15 different noises but as soon as a16th noise joined the din he would instantly stop and mess about with the old engine. Windows didn't close properly and there was no heating in these huge trucks. Food was mostly crackers and raisins and people initially seemed quite off hand with Vikram as they couldn't place his nationality. In Urumqi he was taken as a local because in this area of China they are such a mixed community. China was still a very closed country in the 80s just coming out of its dark period of the Mao Cult, the cultural revolution and the imprisonment of the Gang of Four. People were wary of foreigners as they never knew if they were being watched or not. But often Vikram was treated so well. A shop assistant restitched Vikram's 'Muslim' cap to make it stronger. He wore this cap so that he fitted in more in far Western China. People went out of their way when he lost his bag off the back of a truck and officials could go from being complete beaurocratic nightmares to inviting him home for dinner with the family. Lots of extremes.
Finally Vikram made it into Tibet. His description of the scenery is amazing, Lhasa was in the process of being completely eradicated and changed into a far flung generic Chinese outpost. Many Han Chinese were unhappy being posted in Lhasa, they were all homesick and just wanted to go home. Infact no one seemed happy with the political situation at all. Neither the locals or the Chinese. That's what I liked about Vikram's style he never judged anyone. Everyone was just a product of their environment and friendliness and kindness could be found everywhere...apart from one American tourist who was rude to him because she never realised he spoke English.
The right to pray in the Potala had just returned but many other Tibetan monasteries had been totally destroyed between the 60s and 70s. Vikram could only talk to locals who spoke Mandarin and many Tibetains didn't, but the people who did were mostly honest and open. His experience within the monasteries is so well written. A riot of colour, smell and sound. Also he describes the foul smells so vividly. There is one road with a big green puddle in it, in which a dead dog is rotting and everyday he passes the dog is in a further state of decomposition. Urghhh!!
One chapter really affected me. It's a short description of a Tibetian religious death riitual called a sky burial. At sunrise the dead body is expertly chopped up and then personally fed to the waiting vultures. All of this happens whilst the family respectfully watches. This chapter was both fascinating and stomach churning. The ground is too hard for burial and there is a lack of wood for a more common Buddhist cremation so this is the best way of getting rid of dead bodies and it made total sense to me. This practice, like many other things in Tibet, had been forcefully stopped during the cultural revolution but during this time in the early 80s things were beginning to slowly change and local religious practices were suddenly resurfacing again. I wonder how rites like this are viewed now , 33 years later?
VIkram's final leg of the journey over into Nepal is also fascinating. He has to hire a Sherpa guide who takes him up a mountain down a really steep valley, along river banks and then finally a border guard pops out from behind a tree and tells him to open his bag because he is now in Nepal. He tries to steal some of his stuff but his Sherpa guide helps him out. All of this trekking happened because the friendship bridge, which connected the two towns on the two sides of the border, had collapsed. He had to get special permission to cross this border but luckily through patience and diligence he managed it.
He noticed that there was a woman washing clothes on rocks in the river and it was obvious that she was totally unaware that some of her clothes were in Nepal and others in China. It's little observations like this that I loved so much!
Yes, this book was really great, partly because I felt like I was travelling with him. I also loved his observations about people and also the bigger observations he made about his country, India, and China. The two massive countries really have nothing that binds them or unites them even though they are so close. Geography and politics have isolated them from each other. They have no common history or culture, apart from Buddhism. The Chinese and Indians don't influence each other yet their civilisations and food have completely dominated the cultures of SE Asia and much of the world.
PS I enjoyed this book so much I read it twice. Straight back to the beginning once I had finished! Haven't done that for years!!
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