To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron

Author:Colin Thubron
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mountains, Religion, Thubron, Nature, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, Asia, General, Spirituality, Tibet (China), Colin - Travel - China - Tibet, China, Ecosystems & Habitats
ISBN: 9780061768262
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-03-01T02:13:07+00:00

A mile from my camp, an isolated hill rises like a termites’ nest. Its crags are disintegrating into scree, but around its crest the monastery of Chiu, ‘the Little Bird’, is plastered into clefts and caves, where its whitewashed chapels and cells look coeval with the rock. Stony paths and stairways meander about it, and strings of prayer flags, moored to cairns and boulders, billow from its summit like rigging in the wind.

A lean figure at the hill’s foot turns out to be Ram, who has wandered here alone. He is gazing at the monastery in puzzlement or unease, so that I wonder what faith he follows. But he says: ‘My people know nothing of religion. They are very poor.’ His English comes shy and halting. ‘They hardly know if they are Hindus or Buddhists. In my village it is all mixed.’

‘You have no temple?’

‘There is one lama started try to build a temple. He covered half of walls with tankas, then no more money…’

His village is remote, he says, somewhere east of Everest, and his parents are old, his mother sixty-seven, his father sixty-two. ‘My father is sick, with pains around his chest. But my mother very strong. They grow some barley and vegetables in exchange for rice. That is what we have.’ He smiles hardily. ‘And I have a little girl…’

‘And your wife?’

‘My wife is twenty-five.’

I say, half-laughing, as if to hide indelicacy: ‘There is time for more children.’

But he answers gravely: ‘No. We don’t want more. We think one is enough. In Nepal families grow big, and it becomes hard to eat.’

Fleetingly I wonder at this unexpectedness: Iswor who will not marry until forty, Ram who does not want a son. The wind is stretching the prayer flags above us, the sun dipping. I say: ‘Are you going into the monastery?’

But he only answers: ‘There is nothing I want ask for,’ and turns back.

A rough path winds among the prayer-hung crags and fissures. I climb into a courtyard and a temple hall where a novice is chanting. A century ago the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, examining the frescoes in Trugo monastery nearby, identified the muralled god of the lake, riding a pink horse, and the fish god rearing from the waves to greet him, his head gushing snakes and his body tapering to a dolphin’s tail. But everything I see is new–no fresco has escaped the Red Guards–and the novice breaks off his prayer to usher me away and point out another path. It slides close under the crags. The lake below is darkening towards dusk, but Kailas is rising clear beyond it, and light clouds sailing above.

A monk emerges on the path in front of me, and waits. He is whiskered and frail, his face battered to teak by the wind. He opens a tin-bound gate labelled ‘2’, which almost falls from its hinges. Beyond it a double door–startlingly rich–shines vermilion in the rock. Its leaves are bossed in brass and dripping with scarves. Beyond it, a now-familiar dark descends.

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