Thinking back from Deqin

Where do i start after so long?
Not at the beginning that's for sure.
So many thoughts and experiences have emerged, grown huge and overblown, and then faded into the undergrowth as more and more events and imaginings have sprung up. I've tried to snip at things with words - on scraps of paper, the insides of book covers and emails - but I haven't been quick or tidy or diligent enough. The trouble is that all these thoughts when left to their own devices - unrecorded, unprocessed and unused - don't just vanish, but instead, clog up my unconscious so that when I come to make something of it all, I'm faced with a vast chaos of clamouring voices.

Excuses, excuses...

I'll start with now, dear reader, (there should only be 3, at most 4 of you) and then range all over the place, leaping abruptly between a muddle of starting and ending points, tipping my hat to Pete's recent comments on the illusion of linear time.

When I think about my month long trip, which peaked in Lhasa and then came to a semi halt when we crawled into Deqin (a Tibetan town a few hours into a Tibet autonymous prefecture in Yunnan) at about 2am, I think of plaintive, yet energetic and melodic Tibetan singing. And while writing this in a Deqin guesthouse, as if on cue, a man in the next room starts. It's not a tune I could easily pick up, as I often can with Western popular songs. The notes move in unfamiliar directions and span greater range.

My Chinese friend, Bing, who has placed his bedding on the floor as a makeshift orthopedic measure, is still shell-shocked from the Lhasa-Deqin sleeper bus. But then, he never really got over the previous bus-ride from Geermu (Golmud). He's travelled that road many times before, but the other times were in trucks, where it was possible to sit up straight, and once on a bicycle. In the sleeper bus, whenever we hit a bump (seriously often) a collective whimper would resound down the aisles as we were each and every one of us flung against the ceiling or the bunk above.

We had tried to get on a truck in Geermu after the bus drivers had rejected me, but the truckies too, just looked at me and shook their heads, muttering about permits, fines and 'waiguoren' (foreigners). At last, just when we were ready to give up and go somewhere less mystical and a lot cheaper, a bunch of Muslims standing around their bus agreed on a permit-free price and gave us one hour before departure at midday.

So we scoot back to Bing's friend's bicycle club basement, park the bikes, grab our stuff, race back to the bus in a taxi, and we're off! yay!... round the corner to a workshop, in a particularly godforsaken region of the town where tired, greasy men work on the front left wheel for 3 and 1/2 hours. Then back on the bus! yay!... down the road to where, 10 minutes later it stops again. The two foreigners - me, plus a cool Japanese dude - and 8 Tibetans who are taking the bus over it's legal capacity, are ordered frantically off the bus and squashed into a mini van. Bing comes along for the ride. People are sitting on other people's knees, steaming up the windows and chattering excitedly. No one seems to know what's happening. We are driven about 45 minutes out of town and then dropped at an abandoned petrol station. Bing (following instructions from the driver, he says) officiously directs me and the jap to hide behind an ancient tractor until the bus appears within the hour. There's much cheering and congratulations as it draws to a halt and we jump back on.

And finally, at 4.30 pm, we really are off. Into the mountains. The bus is full of enthusiastic Tibetans. Chants of Lhasa, Lhasa, Lhasa, break out at every stupor, and at other times for no particular reason. They wave to peasants and herders in the fields. And they sing. I clap, sway and hum. The hills and pristine colours are stunning. It's early days. People have made a long bed of the aisles. Bags hang from every protrusion.

At 10 pm we stop. I slither down from my top bunk and gingerly place my first foot on something below, then duck under bags and scuttle over shifting bodies to the door. It's cool; snow on the nearby mountains; still and starry. The men stand, legs apart pissing down the bank beside the bus. The women walk further up the road and squat over the opposite bank. Then we wander into a muslim truck stop and are served piping hot noodles in clay pots from young girls wearing headscarves.

We lurch, sway and crawl onward. I'm in a middle bunk which has no sides so am unable to relax into sleep. I push my feet against the bed end, and grip the bar at my head to stay on. The driver's white fez is intermittently illuminated by the distant, silent sheet lightning. The singing and laughing continues, punctuated by droning prayers.

The next morning the stormy weather reaches us. Clouds film the mountains and wind buffets the bus. The rain starts to come in thru the sun-roof above Bing's bed. He has maintained an enigmatic silence for the course of the trip behind his beard, dark glasses and cap, nursing altitude sickness and back pain. Conversely, I think I must have what is termed 'high altitude genes'. The jap and I had earlier succumbed to the wishes of the mob and both sang a song indicative of our mother lands. I'd chosen a maori chant. But Bing would not be persuaded. He had remained curled shly in as much of a foetal position as possible in our coffin sized bunks while they whispered speculations as to whether he might be Korean or Japanese.

Now all and sundry scramble to staunch the flow of water onto his bed. Toilet paper and food wrappers are stuffed in gaps, and when this fails, a plastic bag is awquardly held under the leak by no less than 3 people until tied in place. For the rest of the trip long after the sun has come out again, it swings, forgotten, precariously full of water, in motion with the vehicle. Occasionally I look up at this orange hernia and wonder apathetically if it will burst.

The bus is now filled with rubbish, food scraps and dirt tramped in. All this time, the new and technologically ground breaking train whizzes back and forth over it's unique, elevated track, rubbing in how painstakingly slow and inadequate our progress is. I imagine its passengers languishing, clean, fed and toileted in pressurised carriages. It's hot and I'm dehydrated as a result of being afraid to drink in case I need to piss which would require crawling to the front of the bus and asking the stony faced driver to stop.

Finally, well into the next day at 1 pm, we limp into the flow of traffic of a seemingly typical Chinese town. I see Chinese signs, Chinese flags and lots of ugly tiled buildings. There is no more singing or chanting. Where are we? I ask Bing. Lhasa, he replies.