This ten year old has the Himalaya bug. She also has the determination of mountain goat. The Larke Pass is the highest point of the 165km Manaslu Circuit trek and it’s a big day for an adult, let alone a kid. Up at 3:15am, out at 4:30am, climb from 4,460 meters up to over 5,100 meters, then a huge steep descent way down to 3,700 meters about 14 hours later. She did all that in non-stop rain and snow, after throwing up a dodgy hot chocolate. And by the end, she was bouncing down the trail bursting with enthusiasm for future Himalayan escapades.
In 2006, westerners could travel into the Tibetan regions of Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces relatively freely. For one shining moment in early 2007, it looked like the group-tour-only restrictions on Tibet Autonomous Province itself would be lifted. It was a Golden Age, the time when China boosters found most evidence for their prediction that the country would continue to liberalize and ultimately democratize. The Olympics changed all that. Riots and protests brought unprecedented clampdowns in western regions. The internet was simply switched off in sensitive areas and politics nationally took a new, harder-line direction from which it’s never really diverted. Since then, troops are often on the ground in sensitive towns, and for a few years there was a spate of self-immolations. Foreigners are often thrown off buses at Kangding and other towns, long before they get anywhere near the western reaches of Tibet. Cynicism and uncertainty grows on the eastern seaboard, though you don’t notice it unless you pay attention. But out west, by most accounts, well, it’s quite, quite different to how it was when we visited.
In amongst all that, the Litang Horse Festival, a longstanding fixture on the Tibetan cultural calendar and the backpacker loop, was cancelled, and stayed that way until very recently.
On our own journey of exploration in the summer of 2006, we saw one of the last Horse Festivals before the big crackdown.
A breeze can turn to a blast in seconds. We lazed at the door of our yurt in the last light of day, and the wind did just that. “Ai!” yelled the matron of the camp, if that’s the way to describe a tough as nails Kyrgyz mother. Seeing her start tying down the other yurts, we clued in quickly and did the same to ours. Moments later the storm hit, sending dust flying and causing the horses to whinny in complaint, their high pitched wail rising high over the thumping flap of woolen yurt doors cutting loose from their ties. Rain splashed down, brief but hard, and then, almost before it had come, it was gone. The sun put in one last effort, the air was soft again, and the cold night fell.
High up in the mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan, not far from the mountain pass that leads into China, lies Tash Rabat. Precisely the kind of place I really love, it is an old stone fortified “caravanserai“, standing cold in the high, remote mountains, full of ghosts. Not all ghosts are bad, as I would discover. On a cold night, this place takes you back to the Silk Road five or ten centuries ago.
I stand on top of the mountain, arms thrust high, holding my ice axe. All around me, far below, the world spreads out. Valleys, ridges, some of them obscured by cloud. I breathe the thin air as deep as I can.
And then I stop daydreaming, snap the laptop shut, and get ready for the office. All this visualising success, all this planning; I just want it to end so I can get to India and try to climb Stok Kangri.
Summer 2014: Momentarily lost in the tiny village of Hemis Shupachan, I turned down a stone alley and bumped into an old local. He greeted me warmly and asked where I was from.
“Australia? Which city? Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra?”
“Wow, you know your cities. Have you been to Australia?”
“No! But Ricky Ponting is my friend!”
Tall green trees wave in the wind, blue sky behind them. The call to prayer rises, wafts in through the open window, alluring and mysterious. We lie on the bed, staring out that window, listening to the singing float on that cool wind. Later, as the sun sets over a huge white Buddhist stupa, we sip a fresh lime soda and stare at the Kangri Range. Stok Kangri’s summit, a grey wedge of rock streaked with snow, reaches up 6,137 meters above the range. It catches the last of the yellow evening light. We are in Leh, a mountain town in northern India, and after just one day we already love it. A happy, peaceful mix of local Ladakhis, Tibetan Buddhists, Kashmiri Muslims and a sprinkling Indians from down south, this place seems to us to show that people can just get along. It’s stark but beautiful, its people practical, hardy, but above all peaceful, friendly and refreshingly warm.
If you like hiking and you have a child, well, the good news is you can keep hiking. I did a lot of research online before our kid arrived about the best heavy duty child carrier. I wanted something that could conceivably support an overnight camping hike. The Osprey Poco gets a lot of love online, and deservedly so.
This thing transformed my life, because it showed me you can take your kid anywhere.
Our directions were less helpful than a pirate’s treasure map – we didn’t even have an “X” to mark the spot. Just the name of a village deep in the Qinghai plateau: Xiadawu. Near there, so these clues suggested, we could find our way to one of the holy mountains, sacred to Tibetan Buddhists: A’nye Maqen. In all, I’d found two sentences on the internet, and they were a few years old. Not much to go on. But in one of my favourite novels, Professor Lidenbrock had made a Journey to the Center of the Earth with nothing more than a centuries old scrap of paper reading:
Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jokul of Snæffels, which the shadow of Scartaris touches before the kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of the earth; which I have done: Arne Saknussemm.
If a fictional Professor could do that, surely we could reach A’nye Maqen?
