Backpacks and Bra Straps (25 page)

Not much further on, we stopped again, and all eight of us were instructed to pile into the Toyota Land Cruiser our family was travelling in.

“We were told that you can’t have more than five people in one vehicle because it’s illegal. But here we are, with all eight of us crammed in one to cross the checkpoints. What a bunch of crap,” Ammon said between pursed lips, the side of his face squished to the ceiling.

“Obviously they do it to avoid paying bribes for two vehicles full of tourists. Now the other truck will drive right through,” Mom said. This deception did not sit well with our entire group, but I’d personally never been happier to fall victim to a scam. Without it, it would probably have been my face that was plastered to the ceiling for the entire trip.

A well-armed policeman peered in our window and, after a deft bribery exchange with the driver, he waved us through. As we left them behind at their remote station, the dust that our vehicle had disturbed obscured the sight of the soldiers with machine guns strapped over their shoulders.

After long stretches of nothing, we’d come across small, random, and apparently forgotten communities in the mountains. Each one appeared to have at least twenty kids for every adult, not to mention dozens of mangy dogs around every corner, scampering about with their heads hanging low. We finally stopped at one of them for dinner.

“It’s like some kind of terrible horror movie,” Bree said as kids grabbed at our pockets left and right, leaving trails of fresh snot on our arms. They charged toward us with outstretched hands, shouting “Money! Money!” Bree soon became even more horrified. “Oh my gosh, that boy whipped out his freakin’ thingy. I’m seriously going to kick his butt.” What was meant to be a rest break from an exhausting journey rapidly became even more stressful. The restaurant owners rushed us to what we thought was a secluded room.

“Those kids are definitely little demons,” I said as I struggled to find room to pull out a chair at the big round table in the small room. “It’s like escaping the paparazzi, except that the paparazzi probably don’t spit or bite.” It didn’t take long for them to find us, of course. The first girl invited herself in, and she was soon followed by her little tribe of sisters, brothers, cousins, and all their friends’ cousins and siblings.

“Money?” she asked. Adrian reached in his pocket and, before any of us could cry out “Noooo,” he dropped the coins in the lead girl’s hands and, like flies on stink, we were surrounded. Although they were small, we were far outnumbered.

When the waitress entered our private dining room, I could see the main part of the restaurant through a gap in the curtain. Chinese customers were eating, slurping, and talking loudly, but they were not being hassled by obstreperous children. She placed our food down on the table and then began flinging her arms up and directing a verbal storm at them to shoo the kids away. As much as I welcomed the relief she offered, her actions seemed a bit extreme. But I’d learned that it’s best not to take offence at however the locals may interact with each other. Different cultures have different ways of dealing with things. Beggar kids don’t accost the locals because they know their place in society. We tourists come in and let them get away with everything and then, in addition, we give them money. They’re taught to respect their elders, but they logically learn, from our own actions, to disrespect foreigners. It’s all in the way we present ourselves and how we expect to be treated. If we hand them money, we’re promoting that type of behaviour. They often don’t see us as people, but instead, as stupid Santa Clauses who owe them something. If we saw an old woman on the curb or others who were truly in need, we’d often slip money into their hands, but we couldn’t support them all, and resented being constantly harangued.

After the waitress had cleared out the kids, I looked at my small plate of food and slumped. We were all famished, and we’d been really excited when we saw familiar items like ‘French toast’, ‘sweet and sour chicken’, and ‘stew’ listed in English on the menu. To my dismay, what we got was a depressing meal of two pieces of untoasted bread and a tiny plate of burnt “chicken” scraps.

“I’ve never had French toast like this before.” I looked disdainfully down at my plate, but before I had time to complain further, a very small head popped out from the curtain behind Ammon, and the sound of a child demanding, “Hello, money,” made us all jump.

I shook my head. “I swear they must be hiding in the furniture.”

“Why does everyone here think my name is Money?” Bree joked.

“It’s like they’ve all gone to the school of ‘Hello Money’,” Ammon grimaced. They didn’t hesitate to barge in on our meal from the sliding glass door behind the large curtained wall. Another poked her head in through the curtain with a mischievous look in her eyes. Before too long, they were back in full force, laughing and stealing bits of food like vermin and nearly pulling the plastic tablecloth out from under us.

“Screw off,” Sebastian said. He swatted their hands away from his plate as they continued to snicker and egg each other on. The Swiss guys were starting to swear and get really irritated. Feeling guilty about the role he’d played in encouraging this mess and then not being able to defend his personal space made Adrian’s husky-blue eyes and pale skin redden.

The kids were energetic and feisty, and they didn’t seem to be desperate or suffering as much as simply bored and up for any challenge. What did they have to lose? Bree and Ammon eyed each other and he stared deviously into his bowl. I knew they had something up their sleeves and that a counter-attack was in the making. Bree lip-synched “Three, two, one. Go!”, and he blindly catapulted a spoonful of stew over his right shoulder.

My jaw dropped open in disbelief at what they’d just done. A snort escaped me, and I knew then that everything had gotten completely out of hand. Should I be laughing or ducking for cover? The comedic aspect had more to do with just how insane this scenario was than it did the fired missile itself. The girl looked down at a blob of potato and then slowly picked it off her shirt and placed it in her mouth. She began chewing dramatically before she actually leapt toward us. Still clawing frantically at the air, she was grabbed on all sides by her comrades. Finally, Mom sternly led the kids out and shut the door and curtains behind them.

We were looking at another full day of being tossed around and pulverized on that not-so-very-friendly Friendship Highway, but by that time, I’d have done almost anything rather than stay here with these spitting ankle-biters. We decided that, before we could be cannibalized, it was best to just make a run for it after we paid for our meal.

Ch. 26-30 photos
here

Changing Faces
31

“S
o Ammon, how much longer is it to Kathmandu after we cross the border?” I asked.

“Well, we’re going to need a ride through the ten-kilometre stretch (6 mi) of no-man’s-land once we get there. Same as the other times we’ve crossed Chinese borders. After that, we’ll catch the final bus or truck or who knows what – likely a jeep – to the capital. Why does it matter?”

“Oh man,” I groaned. “And how long will it take from there?”

“I don’t really know. Maybe about five hours? But you saw how yesterday went – five hours turned into thirteen.”

“That’s just not right,” I said.

“Don’t remind me,” Bree moaned as she squeezed her head between her palms. By the second day of this trip, our legs were cramped and our backs felt like they’d been used as accordions. We’d spent the night at a roadside “hotel.” The smoky kitchen downstairs, where the local family fried food between sooty walls, made us cough, and our eyes watered almost all night long. Himalayan nights were pitch black and cold. With no heating in the room, we were freezing. The only bits of warmth we had were the cups of hot tea we hunched over in our room.

“Today should be better, though,” Ammon said. “You’ll be able to see five of the world’s highest peaks: Everest, Lhotse, Makalu, Cho Oyu, and Shishapangma. I think they’re ranked as the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, and fourteenth highest mountains in the world.”

“Honestly Ammon, when do you have time to memorize all that?” Bree asked.

“I read it last night.”

She shrugged. “I don’t even remember the last page of what I read in my book.”

“Geez, I hope that’s not true.” I looked at her sternly.

“Ammon has a photographic memory,” Mom explained, as if it must be obvious to everyone.

“Not quite, but close enough,” Ammon said before he continued his mini-lesson. “A lot of tourists branch off to go to the North Base Camp on the Tibetan side, because it offers the closest road access to Everest. Everest is called
Sagarmatha
in Nepali and
Chomolungma
in Tibetan.”

“Everest is in Nepal though, right?” I asked.

“Actually, what a lot of people don’t realize is that the border between Nepal and China literally goes right down the middle of its summit point. That makes it not just the highest mountain, but also the highest border area in the world.”

“That’s cool,” Mom said. Bree looked thoughtful. “So then, if you climb to the peak, you’d technically be standing illegally in one of the countries.”

“I guess so, but it seems like a pretty hard way to sneak into a country,” Ammon said.

It was so distant on the horizon when we first saw it that it looked tiny, but I was still overwhelmed when I first glimpsed it. I never could have envisioned myself bumping down a gravel road in Tibet and laying eyes on Mount Everest.

The rare villages we encountered along the main highway from Lhasa to Nepal seemed to be nothing more than piled stones, mud brick walls, and neatly stacked cow dung. The same white walls, rusty red roofs, and black window frames we’d seen at the Potala Palace were evident on these homes, as well. I lost myself in the authenticity of one of the smaller villages as I wandered down the ragged dirt alleyways. A few chickens and the tiniest baby yak I’d ever seen were just roaming about. I felt a genuine cultural atmosphere here among the worn prayer flags that were thought to bless the countryside, their colours and holy scripts flapping in the wind.

The villagers were friendly and curious. The women all braided their hair, wore basic jewellery, and wrapped ornamental rope around the crowns of their heads. They dressed in heavy woollen skirts and vests for warmth. Children with dirty, rosy faces wore bright smiles as they ran freely about with the earth caught between their bare toes.

“Do they boil water over fires fuelled by dried cow droppings to bathe? It’s way too cold up here to have cold bucket showers. Then again, maybe they don’t shower at all. From the way they look, that possibility doesn’t seem too farfetched,” I said, but no one had an answer for me, so I was left to wonder where on earth they found electricity or water for bathing, or even enough food, for that matter.

While we were visiting the settlements, we three girls looked for opportunities to take refuge behind a poop-patted, white-stucco shack to have a quick pee before the kids found us again. I always made sure on travel days to wear my sweat pants, which didn’t have a zipper or buttons, so I could swiftly squat, wipe, and pull up.

Once we were on the road again, we climbed quite a bit higher, till we reached a large overhead sign draped with colourful prayer flags. It said we were now at five thousand, two hundred and sixty metres (17,257 ft), indicating that we’d reached Gyatso La, the highest pass on the Friendship Highway. The Swiss bunch got out to celebrate their highest-ever smoke, proving just how invincible their lungs actually were.

“Any cigarette company would be proud to have you guys make a commercial for them,” Ammon told them.

“I don’t know how they can do that,” Mom said, never having taken a puff in her life.

“Neither do I. I already feel like I’ve been hit by a truck,” Ammon agreed.

I shivered. “It’s so flipping cold and windy up here, too. I don’t quite feel like I’m ‘on top of the world’ at all.”

“No?” Ammon asked. “We practically are, though.”

The scenery wasn’t the type I’d typically have considered beautiful – tropical palm trees or lush forests with green grass – but it was certainly magical. It hadn’t taken long for the land to open up and for us to truly feel the magnitude of the place. Behind layers of brown hills, snow-capped mountains sprang up like icy fortresses. Powerful snow giants exhaled breaths of light snow from their peaks.

We’d traversed the three major overpasses and reached altitudes of over five thousand metres (16,400 ft) before finally starting our descent to the border. As soon as the nose of our Land Cruiser pointed downward, it was as if we’d stepped into a game of Jumanji. Everything was transformed. Wet, succulent green jumped out at us as we quickly dropped over two thousand metres (6,561 ft) in the space of only thirty kilometres (18.5 mi). Western China and Tibet had been so grey and windswept that it felt like we were living in an old black-and-white movie. But now stones turned into blades of grass, then into small bushes before they finally let loose and burst into a thriving jungle that dripped with life. Waterfalls poured from the cliffs onto the roads and onto some of the bridges that crossed the deep river gorges. The bubbling white rapids splashing over the huge boulders below made me incredibly thirsty. I was too exhausted to get overly excited, but my mind was actively processing this incredible change.

“It’s sorta like, instead of going up to heaven, we went down to heaven,” Bree said, her face glued to the window.

“This is just the start of an incredible four thousand, six hundred metre drop (15,090 ft). In only a hundred and fifty kilometres (93 mi), this road winds down from the Tibetan plateaus to the fertile rice fields of Nepal,” Ammon pointed out.

“Just think, we’re going to have to walk all the way back up to this altitude,” Mom said, transfixed at the thought.

“And then some,” Ammon said. My body felt the physical changes in the atmosphere as the air thickened. I spent a good portion of the descent analyzing my breathing: inhaling made my lungs feel like an empty balloon being filled. The heaviness of the air returning to them somehow rejuvenated me. The temperature quickly increased, and the extreme amount of moisture in the air made the loose strands from my braid spring up in curls around my ears. It was an incredibly unique experience.

“It’s hard to believe such a dramatic contrast can exist.” Mom was as captivated as the rest of us.

The driver stopped beneath one of the larger waterfalls gushing down the granite cliff onto the road. Simply driving back and forth through the waterfall provided a much-needed rinse from the effects of the dusty washboard roads we’d driven over.

“I guess this is what they call a mountain car wash?” I jumped to the side as water gushed in the cracked window. “And of course, nobody cares if the car gets mouldy or soaked, or even if we’re drowning in the backseat.” You really just had to laugh.

After two days of driving on the worst road of the entire trip, we were suddenly just arbitrarily kicked out onto the mountainside and told that we had to walk the rest of the way. In spite of our insistence that they drive us, the driver kept pointing frantically down the steep road, implying that we needed to follow it to the border. Even as Ammon and the guys tried to reason with him, he was up on the roof untying the luggage and dropping it down in a pile. Both drivers shouted in an antsy tone, trying to make us understand the risk they had already taken. They just couldn’t go any further. This was as far as our ride went.

Ammon handed the driver the rest of the agreed-upon money, which included the last few Chinese yuan we had left. He had, of course, planned that all out precisely in advance so as not to leave the country with an instantly unusable currency. The driver then made a hasty, five-point turn on the narrow road, stopping trucks and buses to do it, and headed back up the mountain to his Tibetan village.

“I suppose after all the hassle it took to actually find drivers to bring us here, it’s not really all that surprising that they’re afraid to go all the way,” Ammon said, looking down at our pile of baggage. There was a lot more traffic on this side of the mountain, and we could sense the border must be close from the number of large, heavily loaded vehicles headed in the same direction.

I was grateful that it was downhill, but that didn’t prevent my feet from eventually splitting open. I’d always had terribly dry, cracked feet, and the weight of the bag and the drastic changes in weather conditions made them worse. It wasn’t too long before I felt the wet goo of blood pooling in my sandal. Unable to stop or even get a good look at the back of my heel with my bag strapped on, I just kept walking. What choice did I have? Sitting on my butt and crying about it certainly wasn’t going to miraculously glue my skin back. I decided not to stop to take care of the situation and slow the group down. I had more than enough oxygen in my lungs now but, unfortunately, I didn’t feel its positive effects on my aching limbs.

After half-an-hour’s walk, we reached the Tibetan border town of Zhangmu. The houses seemed to be stacked right on top of each other here, fighting to share a thin slice of the cliffside. Once we’d reached the end of the road going through Zhangmu, we found the Chinese customs office. I couldn’t help but worry about the undeniable fact that we were hoping to leave through official channels despite having snuck into the autonomous region illegally. I was sure they were at least going to ask to see permits.

I felt the pulse stop in my neck when the officials started harassing Sebastian, asking to see proof of his Tibetan permit. He fabricated, on behalf of all of us, a story that we had been part of a much bigger tour group that we had split off from, and that the company had our permits. Satisfied with this answer to why we could not provide any documents, the guard approved the Swiss guys’ exit and then continued to process us through. What a relief!

While we finished up at the border, Sebastian was already busy negotiating the ten-kilometre ride through no-man’s land to Nepal’s customs. Like everywhere else, the drivers pushed to get us in their vehicle before any negotiations took place.

A driver was busy waving an open palm showing “five” fingers to Sebastian, who confirmed that he meant five hundred rupees, which would be a reasonable price, given the current exchange rate of sixty Nepalese rupees to a dollar. The driver nodded emphatically and then proceeded to grab our bags as he waved for us to hop into his Land Cruiser.

“I don’t think he’s even listening to him,” I said.

Sebastian was firm and said, “No, we aren’t going anywhere with you before we know the price.” There was no common language, but his tone of voice and body language as he clutched his bag was clear enough. We weren’t going to get ripped off again. “It’s five hundred for the whole vehicle,” he repeated, signalling the entire car and saying again, “Five hundred.” Nodding his head vigorously again, the driver insisted we come.

“Are you sure about the price?” Ammon asked as we loaded our things.

“Yeah, yeah. I triple checked. It’s about a dollar each,” Sebastian said. With that, the boys helped pile the luggage onto the roof and tie it down, while we weary girls climbed in to take our seats.

Halfway between the borders, the driver began nodding, “American. American.”

“No, Canadian. From Canada,” Mom said, smiling at him in the rear-view mirror.

“No, no, no. Dollar. Dollar,” he said, leaving us a bit puzzled.

But Ammon was quick to respond with a strong, loud, “No way!” He turned to the Swiss guys and said in an exasperated tone, “He’s trying to change the price on us.”

“Are you serious?” Sebastian leaned forward, trying to clarify the issue as politely as possible. “Five hundred rupees for the whole car.”