P O S T C A R D F R O M T I B E T

At the end of the day the bus stopped at a military camp. After entering our names in the ledger and paying for our room and board, we gathered in the mess for dinner. As we waited on tiny stools we could see into the kitchen, like the stage set for a Grimm's fairy tale. A waist-high cauldron seethed with cooking rice. The chef, in black rags, moved like a frantic spider between two woks over burners on the dirt floor. His gangling assistant applied a bellows to the fire, raising a cloud of ash. Everything in the kitchen was blackened. An elderly Englishwoman who had the fortitude to make it this far stood on the sidelines exclaiming "simply appalling" over and over. I suppose as the hardships added up she wished she could turn back down the road to Kathmandu. But that was impossible now.
We shared a platter of grey fat and wood fungus with a French couple and two Tibetan monks. The monks carefully ate all the gobs of fat we were avoiding. We noticed our bus crew, having stopped here before, all supped from cans of spammish meat and mandarin oranges they'd bought at the store, now a day's drive back.
After dinner there was just enough time to admire the distant peaks in the orange glazed sky. Tibetan youngsters played basketball on a court at 13,000 ft., while at the side of the building a nomad couple did rhythmic dances to the sound of a one-stringed violin. Two toddlers were with them, dressed head to ankle in fleece-in skins. They looked as though they'd been sewn in and would stay in until they grew big enough to shed.

(After being posted on the web for about 5 years, part of this essay was discovered and published in Traveller's Tales: Tibet edited by James O'Reilly and Larry Habegger, Travellers Tales: San Francisco. Now if I'd just get around to posting the other 20 pages . . . )

HOME That's all for now!