Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains by Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent

Author:Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent [Bolingbroke-Kent, Antonia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

12

THE KING

The first thing that struck me was his height. I was accustomed to being a head and shoulders taller than people in Arunachal Pradesh, but Dorje Tenzing was a regal-looking Khampa of almost six feet. Undeniably handsome, his high, arched brows sat above searching eyes, an elegant nose and a wide, sculpted mouth. Although visibly older than the Ata of the American’s decade-old photos, his short hair was still jet black, his skin unlined and his closely clipped moustache – half-Japanese emperor, half-Victorian explorer – only slightly peppered with grey. A rosary of dark-brown prayer beads hung around his neck, its silver drilbu, bells, and namesake dorje, double-headed thunderbolt, resting on a neat pot belly.

He spoke in thickly accented English, his voice quiet but commanding. ‘I not been Pemako three years,’ he sighed, as his apple-cheeked wife served us tea on the half-constructed balcony of his family’s Tibetan restaurant. His two sons sat nearby, listening, and beside us a mallard was tied by its leg to a concrete pillar. ‘I sixty-two. Last year I nearly dead from heart attack. I have operation in Delhi five months ago to put three stent in my heart.’

‘What about now? Would you consider coming with me to Pemako?’ I didn’t want to give up quite yet.

He sat back in his chair and looked at me sagely, rolling the beads of his rosary between thumb and forefinger. I had the feeling he wasn’t sure what to make of me – this lone Englishwoman who’d appeared from nowhere, so keen to find him. ‘You want to go trekking or pilgrimage?’

‘Pilgrimage,’ I replied, after a brief pause. I wanted to find out more about Guru Rinpoche and his hidden land, I explained, and was far more interested in this than simply striding up distant hills.

At this his eyes widened in glad recognition. ‘Ah, you know about Guru Rinpoche!’ He muttered something and rolled a few more beads, then looked out across the cloud-wreathed hills that encircle Yingkiong. The mallard waggled its tail and pecked at the concrete, and somewhere in the alley below a dog barked.

‘OK, I come with you,’ he said, turning to me a minute later. ‘My son Kabsang too.’ He nodded towards one of the sons, a boyish twenty-something with a wispy moustache, short wavy hair and a tattooed dragon poking out of one T-shirt sleeve. ‘His English better than me and he good cook.’

Guru Rinpoche must have been on my side. Not only had I found Dorje through a glancing stroke of luck but, against the odds, he’d agreed to be my guide. We made a plan to take a Sumo the 100 miles to Tuting the next morning, pick up porters and provisions there and walk southeast along the Yangsang Chu River Valley, the heart of Lower Pemako, staying in Tibetan villages on the way. It was too early in the year to trek to the higher passes, but we’d aim to reach Devakotta, a sacred mountain on the river that was said to be the dwelling place of the dakinis, or female spirits.

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