Title: Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962
Author: Kalyani Ramnath
Publisher: Westland/Context
The legal frameworks established during the period from 1942 to 1962 in South and Southeast Asia played a crucial role in shaping migration patterns and influencing decolonisation processes. This era witnessed significant changes as countries in these regions sought to redefine their legal systems in the wake of colonial rule, which in turn affected the movement of people across borders.
Migration patterns were influenced by various factors, including the aftermath of World War II, the struggle for independence, and the establishment of new national identities. Additionally, the decolonisation processes during this time were marked by the emergence of new legal frameworks that aimed to address the complexities of post-colonial governance and the rights of migrants. Understanding the interplay between these legal frameworks, migration trends, and decolonisation efforts provides valuable insights into the socio-political landscape of South and Southeast Asia during this transformative period.
Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 authored by Kalyani Ramnath is a thoroughly researched work. This book is part of the series South Asia in Motion and was originally published by Stanford University. Ramnath serves as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Georgia and has conducted extensive research on migration.
Says the blurb: “For more than a century before World War II, traders, merchants, financiers, and laborers steadily moved between places on the Indian Ocean, trading goods, supplying credit, and seeking work. This all changed with the war and as India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya wrested independence from the British empire.”
This captivating book is set against the backdrop of the tumultuous post-war period. It delves deeply into the legal struggles encountered by migrants who are determined to maintain their traditional ways of life and cultural practices. The narrative highlights their experiences with citizenship and the broader process of decolonisation. Even as new frameworks of citizenship emerged and the political landscapes of decolonisation created complexities that often obscured the migrations between South and Southeast Asia, these migrants consistently shared their cross-border histories during their engagements with the legal system.
These narratives, often obscured by both domestic and global political developments, contest the notion that stable national identities and loyalties emerged fully formed and free from the influences of migration histories after the fall of empires.
In her book, Kalyani Ramnath draws on archival materials from India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore to illustrate how former migrants faced legal challenges in their efforts to reinstate the prewar movement of credit, capital, and labour. The book is set against the backdrop of a climate marked by rising ethno-nationalism, which scapegoated migrants for taking away jobs from citizens and monopolising land.
Ramnath fundamentally illustrates in the book that the process of decolonisation was marked not just by the remnants of collapsed empires and the establishment of nation-states emerging from the debris of imperial breakdown. It also encompasses the often-ignored stories of wartime displacements, the unexpected consequences that arose from these events, and the lasting impacts they have had on societies.
This perspective highlights the complex and multifaceted process of decolonisation, demonstrating how it was shaped not only by significant political transformations but also by the personal narratives and experiences of individuals who faced the challenges of conflict and displacement.
An excellent book to read! .
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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of Cyclones in Odisha: Landfall, Wreckage and Resilience, Unbiased, No Strings Attached: Writings on Odisha and Biju Patnaik – A Political Biography. He lives in Bhubaneswar and writes bilingually. Besides writing for newspapers, he also reviews books on various media platforms.
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Offerings during Qing Ming Jie, a festival honouring ancestorsSongkran(Thai New Year) CelebrationsFestivals in April: From Public Domain
April is a month full of celebrations around the world. Asia hosts a spray of New Year festivities. Then there are festivals like Qing Ming Jie, Good Friday and Easter. All these are in a way reminders of our past. And yet, we critique things as old fashioned! So, where does tradition end and ‘outdated’ or ‘outmoded’ start? Meanwhile we continue to celebrate these festivals with joy but what happens to those who have lost their home, family and their living due to war or climate disasters? Can they too join in with the joie de vivre? Can we take our celebrations to them to give solace in some way?
In our April issue, we have stories from climate and conflict-ridden parts of the world. From Bangkok, Amy Sawitta Lefevre gives an eyewitness account of the March 28th Earthquake that originated in Myanmar. While in her city, the disaster was managed, she writes: “I’m also thinking of all the children in Myanmar who are sleeping in the open, who lost loved ones, who are feeling scared and alone, with no one to reassure them.” As news reels tell us, in Myanmar there have been thousands of casualties from the earthquake as well as shootings by the army.
From another troubled region, Pakistan, Zeeshan Nasir gives a heartrending narrative about climate change, which also dwells on the human suffering, including increase in underage marriages.
Human suffering can be generated by rituals and customs too. For instance, if festivals dwell on exclusivity, they can hurt those who are left out of the celebrations. Odbayar Dorje muses along those lines on Mongolian traditions and calls for inclusivity and the need to change norms. On the other hand, Devraj Singh Kalsi hums with humour as he reflects on social norms and niceties and hints at the need for change in a light-hearted manner. Farouk Gulsara makes us laugh with the antics of his spoilt pet cat. And Suzanne Kamata dwells on her animal sightings in Kruger National Park with her words and camera while Meredith Stephens takes us sailing on stormy seas… that too at night.
Art is brought into focus by Ratnottama Sengupta who introduces artist Haren Thakur with his adaptation of tribal styles that has been compared to that of Paul Klee (1879-1940). She also converses with filmmaker Leslie Carvalho, known for his film The Outhouse, and his new novel, Smoke on the Backwaters. Both of these have a focus on the Anglo-Indian community in India. Also writing on Indian film trends of the 1970s is Tamara Raza. Bhaskar Parichha pays tribute to the late Ramakanta Rath (1934-2025), whose powerful and touching poetry, translated from Odia by the poet himself, can be found in our translations section.
We have an excerpt from Professor Fakrul Alam’s unpublished translation of Tagore’sRed Oleanders. It’s a long play and truly relevant for our times. Somdatta Mandal shares with us her translation of Tagore’s essay called ‘The Classification in Society’, an essay where the writer dwells on the need for change in mindsets of individuals that make up a community to move forward. A transcreation of a poem by Tagore for his birthday in 1935 reflects the darkness he overcame in his own life. Two poems expressive of longings by Jibananada Das have been translated from Bengali by Professor Alam aswell. From Balochistan, we have an excerpt from the first Balochi novel, Nazuk, written by the late Syad Zahoor Shah Hashmi and rendered into English by Fazal Baloch. Among contemporaries, we have a short story by Bitan Chakraborty translated from Bengali by Kiriti Sengupta, a poignant story that reflects on gaps in our society. And a Korean poem by Ihlwha Choi rendered to English by the poet himself.
This issue has been made possible because of support from all of you. Huge thanks to the team, all our contributors and readers. Thanks to Sohana Manzoor for her fabulous artwork. Do pause by our contents page as all the content could not be covered here.
Perhaps, world events leave a sense of pensiveness in all of us and an aura of insecurity. But, as Scarlett O’ Hara of Gone with the Wind[2] fame says, “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
Looking forward to a new day with hope, let’s dream of happier times filled with sunshine and change.
Amy Sawitta Lefevrefrom Bangkok writes an eyewitness account of the March 28, 2025, earthquake with it’s epicentre in Myanmar.
I had just finished an errand and was about to head home from downtown Bangkok. At the last minute, I decided that I needed lunch. I had barely sat down at a restaurant on the ground floor of a skyscraper when suddenly I felt dizzy, and almost about to black out. It felt as though a magnet were pulling down my head and my body.
Just then someone in the restaurant shouted: “Earthquake!”
Next thing, we were all running out of the building which was swaying. It felt like an apocalypse. The stuff out of Hollywood movies. People were pouring outside, and many started pointing upward at something with horrified eyes. As I turned my eyes in that direction, I was stunned at what I saw: the rooftop pool of the hotel in the skyscraper near us was splashing down like a mountain cataract.
Water spilling out of the pool. From Public Domain
A chill passed through me as I thought: “This building is about to collapse on us!”
Luckily for us, it did not. But we soon learnt that many others had not been so fortunate, as a 7.7 magnitude earthquake had just ripped through Mandalay in Myanmar, with shock waves in parts of Bangkok.
I tried to stand steady but felt as if I was on the deck of a ship on a stormy sea. I thought in a daze about the ferocious power of natural disasters. Incredible how something seemingly so far away could wreak havoc here. I’ve lived in Bangkok for more than a decade and nothing like this had ever happened.
My first thought was for my children. I tried calling the school, but everyone was using their phones, and I couldn’t get through. Eventually I saw a message pop up from the school saying the children had been evacuated. My next thought was to rush home and embrace my children.
I’m a former journalist and now a humanitarian, and I’ve been through many crises in my professional career, but nothing quite prepares you for having to live through a disaster, which for the first time, you realise could impact your own children. And it was a disaster in the sense that Thailand and Myanmar both declared states of emergency.
That day it took me 4-5 hours to walk from downtown Bangkok to my home in the north of Bangkok. The sky train was not working. The traffic on the downtown street was chaotic. My legs just kept moving because all I wanted to do was to get home to my children.
Along the way I met many people whose faces bore the same expression: kind Thai faces, or kind tourist faces, but all of them shell-shocked. Yet, despite everything, people tried to collect themselves in an orderly fashion and helped each other.
I met many angels: one man offered to buy me a cold sugarcane juice seeing the pallor of my blood drained face; a woman gave me her shopping bag to carry my bag as it’s handle had broken when I rushed out of the building.
As I kept walking down streets where the soundtrack was of wailing sirens, the rubber soles of the flimsy leopard print ballet shoes I had slipped on that morning were almost worn out. At one point, I couldn’t continue walking. I was dizzy and nauseated, and flopped onto the sidewalk to catch my breath beside a couple on holiday from Peru. We crouched on the floor together, trying to rest before continuing our journey. All around us people were spilling out of buildings, hugging each other, trying to phone loved ones, and in endearingly typical Thai fashion, smelling herbal inhalers!
Around 6 pm, I finally staggered home and embraced with relief and gratitude my two children and our nanny. We stood at the threshold just holding each other in a warm group hug. My husband was away from Thailand on work, and he called frantically, as did my mother from the suburbs of Bangkok, both relieved to hear our voices. Family and friends messaged with concern and prayers.
The weekend was a blur. We soon learned that the damage and death toll in Myanmar was significant. I spent Saturday in my role as a humanitarian media manager writing a press release, taking media interviews and coordinating interviews for others, while still processing what had just happened the day before.
Collapsed building in Bangkok. From Public Domain
On the Sunday, the children and I were on a highway when we drove past the rubble of a building under construction, near the well-known Chatuchak Market. It had collapsed, trapping dozens of unfortunate workers under it. All I could think of was how massive the pile of rubble was, and how eerily quiet it was. Now I can’t bear to look at the photos or videos of anxious relatives of those construction workers who are waiting to hear news of their loved ones.
In Myanmar more than 3,000 people have died and more than 3,000 are injured but that figure will likely go up as rescue operations continue. In the light of such a massive emergency, my natural instinct was to sideline my own needs and to first respond to the call of duty. But by the fifth day after the earthquake, I had to see a specialist at the hospital because my balance felt completely off since that day.
Even though the doctor gave me the all-clear with some medicines and has advised me to rest, to practice focusing my eyes on still images, and to take walks and deep breaths, I feel as though my entire body has shifted to one side or is cracked, just like some of those buildings in central Bangkok. My city and I, both shaken to the core, trying to recover.
We’re told that another earthquake could happen in the next 30 days again and it fills me with dread. My children, six and eight, ask me what we would do if another one hits. They are scared and want answers. As do we adults. The earth is our home, and the health and well-being of its environment influences our own. If seismic activities are linked to climate change, maybe, by treating our planet with more kindness and respect we might mitigate future eruptions.
In the meantime, my children have me and my husband to talk to them and reassure them. But I’m also thinking of all the children in Myanmar who are sleeping in the open, who lost loved ones, who are feeling scared and alone, with no one to reassure them. Let us be there for them and other victims of natural disasters, in whatever ways we can, in solidarity with our common and vulnerable humanity.
My prayers for those for whom the ground shifted not just for a day, but whose entire lives may have turned upside down.
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Amy Sawitta Lefevre is a former journalist and currently works at an international NGO. She has been based in Thailand for over a decade.
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Storytelling is central to the life and work of Malaysian author, editor and teacher, Daphne Lee. Keith Lyons finds out what keeps her up at night.
When I1 first met Daphne Lee in person, in a Chinese Buddhist cafe in Christchurch, New Zealand, on a summery day. I was struck by her curiosity. And I came away impressed, not just by how she delights in hearing ghost stories, myths, supernatural tales, and folklore but how she makes connections to the universality of storytelling, and what lies beneath.
Daphne Lee
As well as being a collector and curator of stories, she’s a writer, a creative writing teacher, and an editor—since 2009 she’s been consulting editor at Scholastic Asia. She’s been active in supporting the work of writers and illustrators of children’s and young adult literature with Asian content. Daphne curated and edited Malaysian Tales: Retold & Remixed (ZI Publications) in 2011 and Remang: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales (Terrer Books) in 2018, while Bright Landscapes, Daphne’s first collection of short stories, was published in 2019. She’s working on a new short story collection, and her first novel, which she is currently revising while in New Zealand on a writing retreat, far from the streets of Kuala Lumpur and her Roman Catholic school upbringing.You can find out more about the multi-talented Daphne at her website https://daphnelee.org/.
Interview with Keith Lyons
What inspired you to create Remang: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales?
Malaysians love ghost stories. We would rather any misfortune or unusual occurrence be caused by a spirit or other supernatural phenomena than try to figure out a logical reason. Having said that, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do enjoy ghost stories. I thought it would be fun to edit a collection of these, but I was wrong …
How do you approach writing and curating ghost stories? What elements do you feel make a truly eerie and memorable tale?
I prefer a story to suggest a mood and to be atmospherically or suggestively spooky than to be full of gory and blood-curdling details. I like the sort of ghost stories that are frightening only if you read between the lines or that seem unremarkable at first, but months later, you suddenly realise what it all means.
Your work often draws from Asian folklore and supernatural beliefs. Are there any particular myths or legends that have influenced your storytelling?
Nothing in particular, but I have heard the same stories all my life and with surprisingly few variations and differences. I enjoy retelling the old tales or building on elements in them. Hopefully, I make a completely new story, but with recognisable features because I like reading stories in which there are some familiar details.
Do you have a personal ghost story or supernatural experience that shaped your interest in this genre?
My family lived in a haunted house in my hometown (Segamat in Johor, the peninsula’s southern-most state) and we experienced things like lights going on and off, footsteps, odd, unexplained sounds, and so on. I can’t remember much, but I don’t think any of us ever felt threatened during the eight years we lived there. If there were spirits, they were not malevolent. My interest in the supernatural was probably more shaped by the films I watched as a child, including The Exorcist and the Hammer House of Horror — Dracula films starring Christopher Lee.
As an editor, what do you look for in a compelling ghost story?
The problem with the ghost stories we tell one another is that they are usually just anecdotal fragments. I look for fully-formed stories with well-developed characters—the ghostly element might even seem merely incidental to the plot yet be significant enough to make an impression. It should haunt you a long time after you’ve stopped reading.
How do you balance creative freedom with maintaining a strong thematic or narrative structure in an anthology?
I’ve curated two anthologies—one of ghost stories and the other of retellings of folktales, myths and legends. For both the brief was quite open and I welcomed a variety of styles and voices.
What are some of the challenges you face when working with authors, particularly in speculative fiction and folklore-based stories?
I find that when it’s an open call, it can be challenging to gather enough suitable stories for an anthology. Once you’ve made the selection, the editing process is usually long and laborious, with more back and forth than the deadline allows. It’s a much more straightforward process when experienced authors are invited to contribute to an anthology. With the authors published by my day-job (at Scholastic Asia), the major challenge is when the author is too precious about what they’ve created and is adamant about retaining something that doesn’t work or refuses to/is unable to develop a half-formed idea. Fortunately, that has rarely been the case. It’s imperative that authors trust their editors and, thankfully, I’ve had a good relationship with most of the writers with whom I’ve worked.
You’ve been deeply involved in the Malaysian publishing scene. How has the landscape for local horror and supernatural fiction evolved over the years?
I’m not directly involved in the scene as most of my work as an editor is with an American publishing house, albeit its Asian imprint. However, I am a reader of locally published books and do read some supernatural fiction written in the Malay language. When I was a teenager, I was a fan of a series of books with the series title Bercakap Dengan Jin (Talking with a Jinn)—they were dark tales that featured a witch doctor, set in rural Malaysia, with lurid covers and badly designed interior pages. The production value of horror fiction has improved, but the stories that are most popular are still the ones we are familiar with, especially about the ghosts that haunt every school and hospital in the country. They are hastily written and barely edited, with high print runs—horror sells, second only to romance novels.
How important is it for Malaysian and Asian supernatural stories to be represented in the broader literary world?
The world needs to realise that there is more to Asia than just what the West is showing it. Right now, a handful of houses controls what most of us are exposed to and end up reading. Even if Asian fiction is getting on the shelves, it’s only what these publishing houses have decided is worthy. In Asia, especially those countries that were colonised, readers are still stuck with the idea that books out of the UK and the US are better than those published locally. In Malaysia, we have some authors who have ‘made it’ in the West—people like Tan Twan Eng, Tash Aw, Preeta Samarasan and Zen Cho. They are excellent writers, but I don’t know if many Malaysians would pay attention to their work if they were published by Malaysian houses. Unfortunately, we don’t appear to be very discerning readers. Penguin Random House SEA, which runs out of Singapore and is riding on the Penguin brand, fails to offer sufficient editorial support to its authors and seems to be prioritising marketability and quantity over quality. Readers buy the books because Penguin is supposed to equal quality. Writers sign contracts with the house because they recognise PRH as a popular brand with a great reputation. They complain about the poor editing but choose to stay with the company. This is a kind of horror story too!
Do you think traditional ghost stories still resonate with modern readers? How do you adapt them to contemporary audiences?
I think so. I think part of the attraction of ghost stories is that people like to be scared as long as they can also feel safe while feeling terrified. Traditional ghost stories are the perfect comfort reads. They are thrilling yet familiar. You know what’s coming—all the scary bits, but there’s usually a happy ending too, when the ghosts are put to rest and the humans go back to their boring lives.
Many Western readers are familiar with ghosts like the vengeful spirit or the haunted house trope. What uniquely Malaysian or Asian ghostly elements do you wish more people knew about?
The Asian ghosts most familiar to Western readers are probably the Japanese yokai. Once again, there is a degree of gatekeeping going on. A Malaysian author I know was looking for a lit agent and was told that although her writing was good, her stories were ‘too South-east Asian’. What does that even mean? Western publishers and agents underestimate the ability of readers to relate to subjects unfamiliar, especially when they originate in South-east Asia. Often you hear that a publisher or agent already has a South-east Asian on their list and does not have room for more. Yet, there are officially eleven countries that make up the region. They are not interchangeable, and do not share a common language, history or culture. Malaysia has many types of ghosts and they each reflect the various beliefs and attitudes Malaysians have towards life and all its big and petty questions. To know these spirits is to know the fears and anxieties of the common Malaysian.
You’re planning an online archive of Malaysian folktales. Could you share more about this project and why it’s important to preserve these stories?
I was recently on a panel about folktales with two other Malaysian authors who write books that draw on folktales for inspiration and one of them said that the folktales that stick around are the ones that mean something to the community. This may have been true in the past when folktales were shared orally. These days, the ones that survive are those that get included in collections or are retold and reimagined into films etc. The same ones get recycled time and time again, probably because they are the most dramatic or sentimental. Collecting as many folktales as possible and storing them online gives them all a fair chance of surviving. What may be insignificant to one generation, may resonate for another. The main thing is to let each generation decide, and for the stories to be available and accessible.
Bright Landscapes was your first personal collection of short stories. How did that experience differ from curating Remang?
For Bright Landscapes I had only myself with whom to argue and disagree. My editor and I were, fortunately, on the same wavelength, but she really helped me improve on the quality of the stories. I wouldn’t undertake another project like Remang unless more time and more resources were available.
Can you share any details about your upcoming novel? What themes or ideas are you exploring?
During the pandemic I completed a novel but on reading it, I realised how rubbish it was. It’s very close to my heart, but I think it’s not quite the right time for a rewrite. It needs to ‘cook’ more, in my subconscious. That novel is set in a world where gods and humans live side-by-side, during a time of religious reform. The protagonists are a priest and a deity, and the story deals with questions of friendship, integrity, religious belief, and faith. I have a second novel that I am currently working on—a coming-of-age story set in a convent school in a small Malaysian town in the 1980s. It also explores questions of friendship and faith. I attended two Convent schools from age five to seventeen, and I was raised Roman Catholic. I did think of becoming a nun when I was in my early teens, like the protagonist of my novel, but I have been an atheist since my early twenties, although I am now probably more agnostic than anything. Religious belief and faith are subjects fascinating to me.
As a creative writing teacher, what advice would you give to aspiring writers interested in supernatural fiction?
The same advice I would give any aspiring writer: Read widely and voraciously. And write every day, about anything and everything.
If you could collaborate with any author—living or deceased—on a ghost story, who would it be and why?
I don’t want to collaborate with anyone, but I would like to have a conversation with Elizabeth Bowen about the handful of ghost stories she published. They are my favourites—quiet, mysterious, melancholy, sardonic. I have questions about them that still keep me up at night, decades after I first read them.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless Journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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The summit of the hill was crowned with a grove of lofty trees. They had stood thus for centuries, opposing their columned strength against wind and storms, against the onslaught of tropical rainfall, even in spite of earth tremors that made them shiver with apprehension. Their crowns were interlaced, so that they must stand or fall together; it was an effective alliance against the forces of nature, which no single tree could hope to withstand.
Within the grove, where the buttressed trunks rose suddenly from the soft earth, stood an ancient shrine, a hermit’s cell with rough stone walls, and a little temple in whose dim recesses might be seen vaguely some symbol of a demon or god, unknown perhaps to the outside world, but appealing to the hearts of the jungle folk, who, suffering patiently as the animals suffer, like them also blindly sought relief. That rugged track, which led from the hill-top into the depth of the forest below, had been marked out by the feet of the notaries of the shrine, who each, as he left after supplication, cast a stone on the slowly growing mounds at the entrance to the grove.
From the hill-top the forest spread on all sides as far as the eye could reach, and it lost itself in the distant horizon where the purple outline of the hills faded into the azure of the evening sky. There was wave upon wave of hills covered with trees, so that the earth lay hidden, and down in the valleys one saw nothing but the crowns of trees forming an impenetrable carpet of foliage; only along the ridges the light filtered in vertical streaks through the closed-up ranks of tree trunks. If there were villages they were hidden in masses of trees; the forest engulfed them and reigned supreme in this lonely corner of the earth.
The sun sank, and the brilliant light of day was followed by the soft illumination of the stars. The forest became dim and indefinite amid an intense and motionless silence. There was no sound of wind, or of animal life; the dew had not begun to drip from the foliage, and each leaf was still as if arrested in its task. Yet there was no sense of fear or oppression: rather the atmosphere was charged with the vitality of countless millions of plants rejoicing in their growth, struggling against the competition of their neighbours, and seizing every chance which offered to reach towards the life-giving light.
At such a time there came upon any human being dwelling in the forest, first, a conviction of nature’s absolute indifference to his proceedings, and next, the peace conferred by personal irresponsibility, to which, if a man succumbs, he joins the vast army of hermits, religious mendicants, and other parasites; while, if he resists, he is left to work out a strenuous existence in conflict with the wild beasts and against the pressure of overwhelming vegetation.
As night drew on, the cooler air became charged with moisture and wrapped itself in mist. The leaves of the forest trees were weighted with the dampness they exuded; it no longer passed away in invisible vapour, but trickled earthwards in heavy splashes, like the sullen sound of mindless rain. From hundreds of miles of forest came the sound of dripping water in a ceaseless murmur, which increased the weirdness of the scene, and even served to make any other sound more distinct. Thus it was that a movement became audible in the distance, at first so slight as to be indistinguishable; it was as if foliage was being quietly brushed aside, as if the dew-laden grass was being crushed by a gentle yet irresistible force. Standing on the summit pf the hill, one looked down on a pass between the mountains, a curved saddle that invited to an easier passage from valley to valley. Over this low pass the waves of mist eddied to and fro, just as if each valley in turn filled with cloud and overflowed into the next.
From the depths below a herd of elephants were ascending the pass in single file and in silence. The leader, an old female, first appeared in sight, walking quickly along the narrow trail. Her trunk hung limply from her broad forehead, touching the earth lightly alternately to right and to left, and with instant precision the fore-foot was placed on the spot which had been tested, and the oval print of the hind-foot immediately overlapped the rounder track. She passed through the eddies of fog, which at times seemed to swallow her up, at others allowed but the glistening outline of her back to become visible; or again hid all but the ponderous legs which moved with regularity through the dim air.
Following, came others who seemed careless of danger through confidence in their leader. Each set foot in the trail of its predecessor, so that soon there was but one track sunk deep in the soft earth, as if some old-time mammoth of enormous size had passed that way. Females, young calves, youthful tuskers, all passed in succession, each rising into sight and disappearing over the narrow pass, plunged into obscurity on the further side. There was silence in the ranks, for the animals were on the march, intent on changing their quarters ere dawn should break. They might have been so travelling for hours, and might continue their resistless way for many more ere they halted thirty or forty miles from their starting point.
Some hours later there was promise of daylight in the sky. The mist now lay thicker over the forest, it had sunk into impenetrable strata which rested heavily on the land. Above its sharp upper line the tops of hills stood out like islands in a sea of white; along the ridges the crowns of trees appeared as if floating in the waves, their stems were hidden in the fog. Again a movement was heard, and from below a single elephant approached, carelessly following in the trail of the herd.
About the Book
In the wild jungles of India, a tusker is born. Maula Bux—as he is later named—grows up loved and adored amongst his herd, learning all that a young calf must to become a majestic elephant. However, an unfortunate encounter with humans leads to his capture and he is sold. His mahout, Kareem, instantly takes a liking towards the tusker and considers him almost to be a brother. Maula Bux is courageous, agile and magnificent, and he and Kareem have many adventures together—from hauling timber deep in the forest to adrenaline-charged tiger chases. At his advancing age, Maula Bux is even appointed to carry an Indian Prince in procession!
Having spent much of his life in the jungles of India and Burma (now Myanmar) S. Eardley-Wilmot was a keen observer of wildlife and spoke out about the necessity to conserve India’s wild spaces and the mighty beings in them. The Life of an Elephant is a must-read for young and older readers alike—for it is not just an insightful story of one of nature’s noblest beings but also an important text about conservation, empathy, and the treatment of animals.
About the Author
S. Eardley-Wilmot (1852–1929) was a British civil servant, forestry officer and conservationist who worked primarily in India and Burma (now Myanmar) and served as Inspector-General of Forests. He joined the Indian Forest Service in 1873 and was appointed to the old North-West Provinces and Oudh region of colonial India. In recognition of his conservation-lead method and unorthodox approach to forestry in India and Burma, Eardley- Wilmot became a Knight Commander of Order of the Indian Empire in 1911.
Eardley-Wilmot’s published books include—Forest Life and Sports in India (1910), Leaves from Indian Forests (1930), and The Life of a Tiger and The Life of an Elephant (1933).
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Lya Badgley’s life reads like an exotic adventure book you can’t put down, but she writes plot-driven suspense about women overcoming life-changing odds, against a backdrop of global conflict. In this interview, she shares her views about creativity, courage, persistence and resilience.
You’ve had an interesting life – how often do people say that to you? How do you tell the story of your life in a short elevator pitch?
I’ve been very lucky to have had choices – many do not. That said, being born in Myanmar to Montana parents, was a good start. From Seattle’s arts scene to documenting war crimes in Cambodia and opening a restaurant in Yangon, my life experiences fuel my creativity. I’ve been a mother, a former city council member, and an environmental activist and now write novels drawing deeply from my lived experiences.
So, you were born in Yangon, Myanmar. How did your parents from the Rocky Mountains come to be in Burma? What are your first memories from there?
My parents discovered the wider world when my father was stationed in northern Japan during the Korean War. They fell in love with Asia, and he went on to dedicate his life to academia, earning a doctorate in political science. They first arrived in Burma (Myanmar) in the late 1950s. One of my earliest memories is coming home from kindergarten in up-country Burma and telling my mother that all the children spoke English in class. Astonished, she accompanied me to school the next day, only to find that the children were speaking Burmese. I had simply assumed it was English. To this day, I love languages.
What kind of environment did your parents create which encouraged your creativity?
My mother was a true artist, always encouraging me to find beauty in everything around me. My father sparked a deep curiosity about the world, especially about the lives of everyday people. Our dinner table conversations were always lively, full of challenges and excitement, fueling my imagination and intellect. I was never allowed to leave the table without sharing something interesting and eating all my vegetables.
In 1987 what changed your life? How does Multiple Sclerosis affect you today?
In 1987, I developed a persistent headache that wouldn’t go away. Within two weeks, I lost vision in one eye. The diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis came swiftly. I’ll never forget the mix of terror and wonder as I looked at the pointillistic MRI image of my brain, and the doctor casually said, “Yep, see those spots? That’s definitely MS,” as if he were ordering lunch. Strangely, that diagnosis liberated me—after all, what’s the worst that could happen? Now, as I age, the disease may slow my body, but it hasn’t dimmed my spark.
In what ways has being a musician/poet/writer/artist been a struggle and challenge? Do you think that is part of process and it in turn fosters innovation?
The struggles of being an artist—whether overcoming rejection, creative blocks, or balancing art with daily life—are definitely part of the journey. But there’s also magic in that process. There’s something almost alchemical about wrestling with a challenge and, through that tension, creating something entirely new. It’s in those moments of uncertainty that the most unexpected ideas emerge, as if they’re waiting for the right spark. The struggle doesn’t just foster creativity—it transforms it, turning obstacles into opportunities. And the joy comes from watching that magic unfold, as your vision takes on a life of its own.
When did you return to Southeast Asia, and how did you come to work as a videographer on a clandestine expedition interviewing Burmese insurgents, and later helping document the genocide cases in Cambodia?
The short answer is — a boyfriend! In the early ’90s, I returned to Southeast Asia, driven by a deep connection to the region and feeling uncertain about what to do next after a failed marriage. Through a friend I met during Burmese language studies, I stumbled upon an unexpected opportunity to work as a videographer on a covert mission, documenting interviews with Burmese insurgents. That intense experience then led to my role in Cambodia, where I worked with Cornell University’s Archival Project. There, I helped microfilm documents from the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide, preserving crucial evidence that would later hold war criminals accountable. Both experiences were life-changing and cemented my passion for telling these vital stories.
You were among the few foreigners to open businesses in Burma in the 1990s. What hurdles were there to opening the 50th Street Bar & Grill Restaurant in Yangon, Myanmar? How was Burma at that time?
Opening the 50th Street Bar & Grill in Yangon in the mid ’90s was a real adventure, and I take great pride in being part of the first foreign-owned project of its kind at that time. Myanmar was just emerging from decades of isolation, with very few foreigners and even fewer foreign businesses. Navigating the bureaucracy was incredibly challenging — layers of red tape, and we often had to rely on outdated laws from the British colonial era just to get things moving. It took persistence, creative problem-solving, and a lot of patience. I had the advantage of understanding the culture and speaking a bit of the language, and I never worked through a proxy. I handled even the most mundane tasks myself—like sitting for hours in a stifling hot bank, waiting to meet the manager, who was hiding in the bathroom to avoid me!
Basic infrastructure issues like inconsistent electricity and unreliable suppliers were ongoing challenges. But despite all the hurdles, Yangon had a special energy then. The people were incredibly warm and resilient, and there was a palpable sense that the country was on the cusp of major change, even though it remained under military rule. Looking back, I’m proud to have been part of something so groundbreaking during such a unique moment in Myanmar’s history. It’s heartbreaking to see the return of darker times.
When did you first start writing and what has kept you writing?
In the ’80s, I began writing song lyrics for my music, which eventually evolved into poetry. It turned out I had more to say, and my word count steadily grew from there. I write because I have no choice; it’s an essential part of who I am.
Your first novel, The Foreigner’s Confession, out in 2022, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, weaves together one person’s story and a country’s painful history. How do you integrate in the legacy of the past, a personal journey, a war-torn country and the themes of loss and regret?
In The Foreigner’s Confession, I explore the interconnectedness of personal stories and a nation’s history. I like using conflict zones as backdrops for my protagonist’s inner turmoil. These settings highlight the psychological landscape shaped by war and trauma, reflecting the chaos within the character. I’m fascinated by the notion that evil exists in each of us, and under the right circumstances, we’re all capable of bad things. This theme resonates throughout the narrative, as the characters grapple with their moral choices amidst the turmoil surrounding them. As Tom Waits[1] beautifully puts it, “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things” — that juxtaposition is central to my writing, illustrating how beauty and darkness can coexist and inform our understanding of the human experience.
When it comes to writing are you a planner or a pantser? What’s your process for writing, particularly when you want to bring in the setting, the history of a place, and authenticity?
I’m a pantser all the way! Just saying the word “spreadsheet” makes me break into a sweat. I wish I could create meticulous diagrams and beautiful whiteboards filled with colorful, fluttering sticky notes, but that just isn’t my style. For me, the story unfolds as I write. I refer to myself as a discovery writer. It’s a slow and sometimes tedious process but discovering what I didn’t know was going to happen is truly amazing. I draw from my personal experiences to provide authenticity.
Does writing suspense/mystery help make a novel more compelling because it has to be well-crafted and cleverly constructed?
I write the story buzzing in my brain and then try to determine the genre.
What do you think about the power and potential of a novel to reach readers in a different way, for example as a vehicle to give insight into the situation in Cambodia or Myanmar, the wider/deeper issues (like geopolitics/colonialism), and the present reflecting a troubled past?
Yes, yes, yes! Novels have the potential to foster empathy and understanding, challenging readers to confront uncomfortable truths. Can we humans please stop being so stupid? It’s doubtful, but we can only hope.
Last year your second novel, The Worth of a Ruby, was launched, and you’ve recently been in Myanmar. What’s been your impression of the place in 2024, still suffering under the coup and with not such good prospects as in the 2010s? Could you ever go back there to live?
Sitting in the Inya Lake Hotel in Yangon as I write this, I can see that the people here carry a veil over their eyes that I don’t recall from my previous visits. Nevertheless, the cyclical nature of oppression has persisted here for a long time. My husband and I would move back in a heartbeat if there were opportunities and adequate healthcare for my situation. This country remains a part of my identity, and I dream of a future where I can return to help contribute to its recovery.
Your current/recent visit to SE Asia has taken you to what places? What have been the most memorable experiences?
I’m in Yangon until mid-October and will then spend a few days in Singapore, slogging my books to the shops there. As always, the most memorable experiences are renewing the deep connections with the people I care about.
Both your books feature people/countries having to confront their past/dark side. How do you think a novel can help navigate through the complexities and nuances of situations, or at least show that nothing is as black and white as first thought?
That’s a complex question, and any answer can only touch the surface. Both of my novels explore people and countries grappling with their pasts and confronting their darker sides, but the truth is, no single story can fully capture the complexity of these situations. What a novel can do, however, is open a window into the nuances and shades of gray that exist beneath the surface. By diving into characters’ personal struggles and the layered histories of their countries, readers can begin to see that nothing is as black and white as it might seem. A novel helps illuminate the hidden motivations, moral ambiguities, and emotional complexities that are often overlooked, offering a more profound understanding of the tangled web of human experience.
Your work-in-progress novel is set in Bosnia. What themes will that explore?
The themes in my work-in-progress novel set in Bosnia will continue to explore the complexities of personal and national histories, much like my previous work. However, this time I’m weaving in elements of magic realism, drawing inspiration from the Sarajevo Haggadah and Balkan folktales. These mystical elements will add a new layer to the narrative, deepening the exploration of identity, memory, and the ways in which the past haunts the present. The use of folklore will allow me to delve into the region’s rich cultural traditions while keeping the focus on the enduring human themes of loss, resilience, and transformation.
Where is ‘home’ for you now? How do you think living in other countries has influenced your outlook and personality?
I am wildly curious, and home is the room I’m sitting in. Though we pay a mortgage on our condo in Snohomish, home has always been more about where I am in the moment than a fixed place. Living in different countries has profoundly shaped my outlook and personality. It’s given me a deep appreciation for diverse perspectives and a sense of adaptability. I’ve learned that people’s values and struggles can be both uniquely local and universally human. Experiencing different cultures has also sparked my curiosity and influenced the way I approach storytelling, allowing me to blend personal and global themes into my work.
What do you think are your points of difference/advantages that you bring to your writing?
One of the key differences I bring to my writing is my unique upbringing. Growing up in Myanmar with parents who encouraged both critical thinking and creativity gave me an early appreciation for the complexities of the world. I’ve lived in many countries and experienced firsthand the way cultures can both clash and blend, and that depth of perspective is something I try to infuse into my stories. Navigating a chronic disease like multiple sclerosis has also shaped my writing. It’s taught me resilience, patience, and how to find beauty in challenging situations. I think these experiences allow me to write characters and narratives that explore the shades of gray in life—the areas where pain, perseverance, and hope intersect.
Why do you think that a high proportion of expats/students/backpackers/digital nomads are from the Pacific Northwest and find themselves living and working in Southeast Asia? (I know three people from Snohomish who live in Asia).
It’s an interesting phenomenon, and I think the Pacific Northwest has some unique qualities that make it a breeding ground for wanderers. Growing up on the edge of the continent, facing west, there’s always been a sense of curiosity about what’s beyond the horizon. The region’s creative spirit—fueled by its music scene, constant rain, endless coffee, and a long history of innovation with computers and tech—fosters a mindset that’s open to exploration and new ideas. People from the PNW are used to thinking outside the box, and there’s a certain resilience that comes from enduring gray skies. This drive for adventure and discovery seems to naturally extend to places like Southeast Asia, where expats, students, backpackers, and digital nomads can experience a different pace of life while still tapping into their creative or entrepreneurial sides. Though, it blows my mind that you know three people from my little town of Snohomish living in Asia!
For aspiring writers and creatives, and for readers of Borderless, what’s your advice?
My advice for aspiring writers, creatives, and readers of Borderless is simple: always take the step, go through the door you don’t know. The unknown is where growth, creativity, and discovery happen. Don’t be afraid to embrace uncertainty and take risks in your work and life. Whether it’s starting a new project, exploring a different idea, or venturing into unfamiliar territory, those leaps often lead to the most rewarding experiences. Stay curious, keep pushing boundaries, and trust that the act of creating—no matter how daunting—will always teach you something new.
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
We live on a huge planet, a watery world, which is a small cosmos in itself.Keith Lyons discovers humanity in his local swimming pool.
In recent years, I’ve increasingly sought an elixir of life. Even though I know this magical potion won’t grant me eternal life — not even eternal youth. The elixir doesn’t even promise to cure all diseases, though it seems a lot of other people are taking this tonic as treatment for every kind of ailment.
My pursuit of this higher realm means that most days, if I am able, I take a break from work, life and the busy-ness of it all to replenish, relax, and rejuvenate. My woo-woo astrological friend reckons that because my star sign is Cancer (one of the three water signs along with Pisces and Scorpio), I am drawn to water. But then, we all need water. Water is Life. It keeps all life going – for without water, life cannot exist. As the saying goes, “No Blue – No Green.” We need water to survive, to thrive, for our hygiene, for our wellbeing, and for the ice cubes in our virgin piña colada cocktails.
When I heard about the prospect of a new swimming pool opening up nearby my home, in the dark days of the Covid-pandemic, I was doubly happy and expectant. I even turned up to the new venue before it had actually opened, when they were still finishing the build and checking all the systems worked. The local government funded facility offered not only a swimming pool, but also a point of contact for interactions with the council, and the pool was twinned with a modern library. In my mind, I imagined that it might be possible to go swimming, then to glide over to a cafe or bar to get a drink, and then to select a book to read while reclining on an in-water lounger. Could it possible? I know I had stayed at a fancy hotel with a wet bar in Macau, where the bartender served cocktails to me and a photographer as we lived our best lives — until the next morning when we didn’t feel so flash.
Water, as you may know, makes up over 70% of the Earth’s surface. Up to 60% of the human body is actually water — depending on how much fluids you’ve drunk. A cucumber is made up of around 96% water. I recall these facts from a high school science project as I push the button of the water dispenser and a half circle of cool water arcs up for me to catch as much as I can in my mouth. I’m thirsty and know I need to drink lots of fluids, as I’ve just spent the last 80 minutes exercising and soaking in warm water. And I feel like I’m dehydrated from all the exertion.
Ever since a new indoor swimming pool opened in my neighbourhood, I’ve been making the effort to go as often as I can, to move and stretch in the warm hydrotherapy pool and then relax in the even-hotter spa. It has become something of a pilgrimage for me, even on the coldest, rainy days of winter. My route there from my house goes along a new cycleway, through a park (where a dog recently tried to attack me on my bike) cuts through a local ‘secret shortcut’ beside offices and a new church, then tracks along an industrial area of factories, warehouses, and commercial premises. After 6pm, the road to the pool has little traffic, just the occasional truck and security vehicle. If road conditions, traffic and winds are favourable, I can be door-to-door in under 10 minutes. But once I enter the new complex, change into my swimming gear, and walk down the ramp of the hydrotherapy pool, time becomes less important. I change from the demands of a busy world to more me-time.
But there’s more than devoting an hour to honour and exercise one’s physical body. Moving in water offers benefits beyond the physical realm, whether one’s aim is to help the heart, the waistline or the body’s strength. Because water is a lot denser than air, water provides more resistance — around 12-14% — compared to doing the same exercises on land. That resistance assists cardio and strength training. There’s another factor for water-based activities: buoyancy. The feeling of being lighter or weightless when submerged in water means you take the pressure off bones, joints and muscles. It is the closest thing you or I might get to being in space. You don’t even need one of those NASA t-shirts with the iconic blue, red and white logo of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
The 1.4-metre-deep hydrotherapy pool, which is kept at 33-36C, sits alongside the traditional 25-metre swimming pool, which is kept at 26-28C. The therapeutic pool’s inclusion in the new community complex was the result of lobbying by locals, who previously had to drive across to the opposite side of the city to access a suitably warm pool.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
It has only been a few months since the pool opened, but already many come to the waters, from when it opens at 5.30am each weekday (7am weekends) to when the last are forced to leave at 9.30pm (8pm in weekends). I’m more of an afternoon and evening swimmer, preferring to go to the pool after work or at the end of the day. Some attend the twice-a-week gentle exercise class, where the average age is 65+. Others visit almost every day at nearly the same time.
Some arrive in wheelchairs, pushing walking frames, or hobbling on crutches. Others walk from the changing rooms to the water smiling expectantly as they pace towards the transformative pool. At mid-morning, with the light from the wall-to-ceiling windows slanting across the pool, it could easily be a scene from the 1985 movie, Cocoon, where the retirement home pool helped them rediscover their youth (it was full of aliens). If you had to paint the scene, there would be a lot of blue hues, along with off-white and grey tones, with silvery reflections off the water.
While some exercise by themselves, focusing on their routines, the set prescribed by their physiotherapist, or whatever takes their fancy, for many it is also a social time, as they aqua jog up and down the lengths, or stand at the sides doing calisthenics. If you listen carefully over the music soundtrack of upbeat, positive songs playing over the public speakers, you can hear the water gushing and flowing. It bubbles up from the floor of the pool. Jets roll in from the sides of the hydrotherapy pool. In the spa pool, there’s a force field strategically placed around the pool. Modern water treatment means there’s no smell of chlorine.
The pool is a very tactile, sensual in-body experience. It is also somewhat humbling. Patrons must change into suitable bathing costumes, which can be as skimpy and revealing as bikinis and togs, though some prefer full body covering for modesty or self-perceptions. The water in the hydrotherapy pool is so warm that there’s never any hesitation on entering. People are only limited by the speed at which they can move from the air environment to the watery world of buoyancy and drag.
My local swimming pool is a microcosm of the wider community, and the big wide world. As where I live has experienced significant migration in recent decades, it is certainly a diverse multi-national cross-section of the community. Chinese are the largest group, with a swim school, coached sometimes in Mandarin, operating most weeknights. There are also families from the Philippines, a group of learn-to-swimmers from Nepal, and occasionally a non-swimmer from India who needs to be rescued from the deep end of the main pool by lifeguards. On one afternoon and evening, the whole pool becomes ‘women-only’, with the blinds drawn so women can use the pools without the glare of men. With more refugees from other countries now making up our neighbourhood, there are often people from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Kurdistan, Ethiopia, Somalia and Bhutan venturing into the pools for the first time.
Is the swimming pool I go to special? Can such a multi-sensory, multi-cultural, relaxing-yet-reviving experience only be found in my swimming pool? Nope. Seek out a public swimming pool in your area and discover another world.
Photo Courtesy: Keith Lyons
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Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’sEditorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
American film-maker Morgan Spurlock, best known for ‘Super Size Me’ didn’t want to be remembered as just the guy who ate burgers for a month. He had other plans, as Keith Lyons discovered…
Photo from Public Domain
It was almost 20 years ago I first met the film-maker Morgan Spurlock. As part of a global tour promoting his newly released participatory documentary Super Size Me he was in New Zealand’s capital Wellington. While he told me about how he hatched the ‘really great, bad idea’ of the movie, I too came up with the crazy plan to get him into a nearby McDonald’s for a suitable photo for the magazine I was writing for.
Morgan’s film idea came after a Thanksgiving dinner at his parent’s place. While lying on a couch having eaten his fill, he was watching TV when there was a story about two people who had sued McDonald’s, claiming that the fast-food chain had misled them about the nutritional value of its burgers, fries and sodas, causing them health problems as well as a to gain significant weight. As part of the story, a spokesman for McDonald’s came on, saying there was no link between their obesity and the food at McDonald’s which was healthy and nutritious. Morgan figured that if he ate McDonald’s every day, there shouldn’t be a problem.
For 30 days, he ate nothing but McDonald’s food and drink, trying everything on the menu at least once, and accepting any super-size portions when offered. He gained weight and got sick. At the end of the month, he appeared puffy faced. His liver function was impaired, and he was depressed. The doctors monitoring his state advised him not to continue damaging his health (later, he confided to me that it took him more than a year to get back to his original weight — with help from his girlfriend Alexandra Jamison — also known as Healthy Chef Alex).
The film about the promotion of fast foods and American eating habits went on to win the best directing prize at Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. It capitulated the docu-prankster into being a household name.
A few years after the movie came out, he had married Alexandra (his second of three marriages which ended in divorce), who came up with the book, The Great American Detox Diet. Morgan told me about his other projects he’d been working on. After Super Size Me, he developed an unscripted documentary-style series. His 30 Days was based on putting a person in a different environment from their upbringing, beliefs, religion or profession for a month to see how exposure to opposite worldviews altered prejudice. “Yeah, I spent 25 days in a jail in Virginia,” he once emailed me casually, when he had become the person embedded in a community very different from his own. “Just so I could experience life as an inmate.” He wanted the reality TV series to explore how people might challenge their now stereotypes, so had a devout Christian living with a Muslim family, and a homophobe staying with a homosexual.
From the Public Domain
Morgan, who had been likened to a budding Michael Moore ‘for a Jackass generation’[1], went on to direct and produce more movies, including about terrorism and the fight against it in Where in the World is Osama bin Laden (2008), What Would Jesus Buy (2007), and even One Direction: This is Us (2013), and The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special – In 3-D! On Ice! His interests were eclectic, making a documentary about comic book convention fans as well as one on men’s grooming, and another on product placement. His long-awaited Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!, where he looked at how the fast food industry had changed, came out in 2019, but by then his career had waned, following an admission of sexual misconduct which included being unfaithful to every wife and girlfriend he ever had, and also a long term problem with alcohol.
I lost contact with Morgan a few years ago, but still have memories of the time we walked up the stairs into McDonald’s in central Wellington. No security guards came to stop us from taking photos. No manager yelled at us. He stood smiling with that broad goofy smile of his and his trademark handlebar moustache as I snapped away taking pictures of him with the backdrop of the McDonald’s counter and menu board. He had been worried that we wouldn’t be allowed inside McDonald’s, or to take any photos. In the US, he told me, security alerts meant he couldn’t step into any Golden Arches without being challenged.
I was saddened to hear that Morgan recently died, of complications from cancer, aged 53. Many newspapers headline the news: ‘Documentarian who ate McDonald’s for 30 days and changed fast food industry’. His brother Craig said Morgan “gave so much through his art, ideas and generosity. The world has lost a true creative and a special man”.
In the late-2000s, after the success of Super Size Me, Morgan told me of his ambitions, and reminded me that he didn’t want to be typecast for just Super Size Me. “I hope I am remembered for more than just as the guy who ate hamburgers for a month.”
Keith Lyons (keithlyons.net) is an award-winning writer and creative writing mentor originally from New Zealand who has spent a quarter of his existence living and working in Asia including southwest China, Myanmar and Bali. His Venn diagram of happiness features the aroma of freshly-roasted coffee, the negative ions of the natural world including moving water, and connecting with others in meaningful ways. A Contributing Editor on Borderless journal’s Editorial Board, his work has appeared in Borderless since its early days, and his writing featured in the anthology Monalisa No Longer Smiles.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
A brief overview of Once Around the Sun : From Cambodia to Tibet (Hembury Books) by Jessica Mudditt and a conversation with the author
Jessica Mudditt
Jessica Mudditt’s Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is not just a backpacker’s diary but also her need to relate to humanity, to find friendships and even love, as she does with Kris, a photographer named after Krishna, the Hindu god, because his parents while visiting India fell in love with the divinity!
The Burmese translation of Our Home in Myanmar was published recently.
Hurtling through Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Tibet, young Mudditt concludes her narrative just at the brink of exploring Nepal, India and Pakistan in her next book… leaving the reader looking forward to her next adventure. For this memoir is an adventure that explores humanity at different levels. Before this, Mudditt had authored Our Home in Myanmar – Four years in Yangon, a narrative that led up to the Myanmar attack on Rohingyas and takeover by the military junta. Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is the first part of a prequel to her earlier book, Our Home in Myanmar, both published by her own publishing firm, Hembury Books.
What makes her narrative unique is her candid descriptions of life on a daily basis — that could include drunken revelry or bouts of diarrhoea — while weaving in bits of history and her very humane responses. Her trip to Angkor Wat yields observations which brings into perspective the disparities that exist in our world:
“I was gazing out at an empire that was once the most powerful and sophisticated in the world. In 1400, when London had a middling population of 50,000, the kingdom of Angkor had more than a million inhabitants and a territory that stretched from Vietnam to Brunei. It had flourished for six hundred years, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.
“But somehow Cambodia had become one of the world’s poorest countries, and surely the most traumatised too, following a recent war and genocide. I knew that when we came back down to the ground, there would be a collection of ragtag street kids and downtrodden beggars desperately hoping for our spare change. It was difficult to reconcile the grandeur of Cambodia’s past with its heart-breaking present in the twenty-first century. How did a country’s fortunes change so dramatically? Could the situation ever be turned around?”
How indeed?
Then, she writes of Vientaine in Vietnam:
“I was struck by the fact that sex work seemed to be the consequence for countless young women living in poverty. It made me angry, but mostly sad.”
In these countries broken into fragments by intrusions from superpowers in the last century, judged by the standards of the “developed countries” and declared “underdeveloped”, an iron rice bowl becomes more important to survive than adventure, discovering other parts of the world or backpacking to self-discovery. Travel really is the privilege of that part of the world which draws sustenance from those who cannot afford to travel.
Jessica showcases mindsets from that part of the Western world and from the mini-expat world in Hong Kong, which continue alienated from the local cultures that they profess to have set out to explore or help develop. One of the things that never ceases to surprise is that while the ‘developed’ continue to judge the ‘third world’, these countries destroyed by imposed boundaries, foreign values, continue to justify themselves to those who oppress them and also judge themselves by the standards of the oppressors.
Some of these ‘developing’ countries continue to pander to needs of tourism and tourists for the wealth they bring in, as Jessica shows in her narrative. She brings out the sharp differences between the locals from Asia and the budgeted backpackers, who look for cheap alternatives to experience more of the cultures they don’t understand by indulging in explorations that can involve intoxicants and sex, their confidence backed by the assurance that they can return to an abled world.
Backpackers from affluent countries always have their families to fall back on — opulent, abled and reliable. Mudditt with her candid narrative explores that aspect too as she talks of her mother’s response to her being sick and budgeting herself. Her mother urges her to cut short her trip. But she continues, despite the ‘adversities’, with an open mind. That she has a home where she can return if she is in any kind of trouble begs a question — what kind of ‘civilisation’ do we as humans have that she from an abled background has a safe retreat where there are those for whom the reality of their existence is pegged to what she is urged to leave behind for her own well-being? And why — as part of the same species — do we accept this divide that creates ravines and borders too deep to fathom?
Mudditt with her narrative does create a bridge between those who have plenty and those who still look for and need an iron rice bowl. She mingles with people from all walks and writes about her experiences. Hers is a narrative about all of us –- common humanity. Her style is free flowing and easy to read — quite journalistic for she spent ten years working as one in London, Bangladesh and Myanmar, before returning to her home in Australia in 2016. Her articles have been published by Forbes, BBC, GQ and Marie Claire, among others. This conversation takes us to the stories around and beyond her book.
What led you to embark on your backpacking adventure? Was it just wanderlust or were you running away from something?
It was primarily from wanderlust, but I also didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. After six years at university, I was still yet to have any particular calling. However, I was also glad I didn’t know. It meant that I was free to go and explore the world, because I wasn’t putting my career on hold. I had no career.
I also had a broken heart when I set off for Cambodia – but the trip was planned before that relationship had even begun. But again, part of me was glad that my boyfriend had called it quits, because my plan was to be away for a very long time (and it ended being a decade away).
What made you think of putting down your adventures in writing? As you say, this is a prequel to your first book.
It was the pandemic that made me realise that backpacking was really special. There was a period in 2020 when it looked like travel may never be so unrestricted again, so it motivated me to document my year of complete freedom. It was also before social media was even a thing. When I was lost, I was really lost, and I had to use my problem-solving skills.
Prior to the pandemic, I sort of thought that backpacking itself was too fun to write about. I hadn’t actually lived in any of the countries I visited – I was just passing through. But that is also a valid experience, and one that many people can fondly relate to. There were also some really confronting and difficult moments.
You have written of people you met. How have they responded to your candid portrayals? Or did you change their names and descriptions to convey the essence but kept your characters incognito?
While I was writing the book, I got back in touch with the people I travelled with – I can thank Facebook for still being in touch with most people mentioned. They helped me to remember past anecdotes and I got some of the back story of their own trips. I have only used first names to protect their privacy, although there are some photos in the book too. Thankfully the world is so big that the odds are small that anyone would recognise, say, an Irish guy from Adam in Vietnam in 2006! Clem from Shanghai has just sent me a photo of her with my book, and Romi from Vietnam actually came to my book launch, which was awesome.
What was your favourite episode in this book — as a backpacker and as a writer? Tell us about it.
I think it was crossing into China and meeting ‘the man.’ I felt so alive with every step I took into China after crossing over on foot from Vietnam. To be chaperoned in the way I was – without being able to communicate a single word – was unusual. His kindness left me speechless, so the anecdote has a nice story arc.
In your travels through China, you faced a language handicap and yet found people kind and helpful. Can you tell us a bit about it?
I foolishly underestimated the language barrier. It was profound. In Southeast Asia, there was always at least a sprinkling of English, and I sort of just assumed that I’d be fine. I entered China from Vietnam, so my first port of call was Nanning, where there is not even really an expat population. I couldn’t do the most basic things, from finding the toilet or an internet cafe or something to eat! I used sign language and memorised the Chinese character for ‘female’ to make sure I went into the right toilet! In a restaurant, I just pointed at whatever someone else was eating in the hope that they would bring me a bowl of whatever it was. There were times when I was seriously lost and lonely, but I ended up staying in China for two months and saw the comedic side. I was bumbling around like Mr Bean (who is hugely popular in China).
I met a lot of people who were really kind to me, and I was just so grateful to them. I didn’t have Wi-Fi on my phone back then, so getting lost in a massive city in China was a bit scary. I met a student called Mei-Xing who ‘adopted’ me for a few days in Guilin. We had a really nice time together and it was so great to hang out with a local.
What is/are the biggest takeaway/s you had from your backpacking in this part of the world? Tell us about it.
I think it’s something quite simple: the world can be a very beautiful place, and a very polluted place. Tourism can do a great deal of damage when there are too many people clambering over one area. There is also an incredible level of disparity in a material sense on our planet. Some humans are travelling into space on rockets. Others are pulling rickshaws, as though they are draught horses. It is profoundly inequitable.
Having travelled to large tracts of Asia, what would you think would be the biggest challenge to creating a more equitable world, a more accepting world? Do you think an exposure to culture and history could resolve some of the issues?
I think that democracy is key. It slows us down and forces us to act in the interest of the majority, not the top-level cronies. That is definitely also something I witnessed in Myanmar. When a few people hold all the power, the population is deprived of things that ought to be a human right.
I think that travel definitely alters your perspective and broadens your mind, and it is something I’d recommend to anyone. Realising that the way that things are done in your home country is not the only way of doing things is a valuable thing to learn.
Mostly, you met people off the street. In which country did you find the warmest reception? Why and how?
In Pakistan. The hospitality and friendliness was unparalleled. I think it was in part due to not having many tourists there. Nothing felt transactional. I met some fascinating people in Pakistan who would have a profound impact on my own life. I am still in touch with several people I met there.
At a point you wondered if the poverty you saw could be reversed back to affluence in the context of the Angkor kingdom. Do you have any suggestions on actually restoring the lost glory?
I believe that it is beginning to be restored. Pundits have called this the “Asian Century.” I am convinced that the United States and the UK are in decline, and this process will only speed up. India, to me, holds the most promise as the next superpower, because it is a democracy (albeit flawed – like all of them), English- speaking, enormous, beautiful, fascinating and its soft power is unmatched. China is facing headwinds. I blame that on making people sad by removing their agency.
How long were you backpacking in this part of the world? Was it longer than you had intended? What made you extend your stay and why?
My trip was exactly 365 days long. I planned it that way from the beginning. I wanted to travel for no less than a year (more than a year and I might stay feeling guilty for being so indulgent!). That is also why the book is called Once Around the Sun – my time backpacking was the equivalent of one rotation of the Earth. I set off on 1 June 2006 – the first day of winter in Australia – and I arrived on 1 June 2007 in London, on the first day of the British summer. I love the sunshine.
After having travelled around the large tracts of Asia and in more parts of the world, could you call the whole world your home or is it still Australia? Is your sense of wellbeing defined by political boundaries or by something else?
Home for me is Sydney. I absolutely love it. I get to feel as though I am still travelling, because my home city is Melbourne. I go down a new road every other day and I love that feeling. The harbour is beautiful, and the sun is shining most days. It’s very multicultural too.
My kids are three and five, so I haven’t travelled overseas for years. My plan is to travel with them as much as possible when they are a bit older. I hope they love it as much as me. I cannot wait to return to Asia one day. I am also desperate to visit New York City.
What are your future plans for both your books and your publishing venture?
The second part of Once Around the Sun will come out in 2025. It’s called Kathmandu to the Khyber Pass, and it covers the seven months I spent Nepal, India and Pakistan.
My goal is to complete my fourth memoir by 2027. It will be called My Home in Bangladesh (it will be the prequel to Our Home in Myanmar!).
My fifth book will be about how to write a book. I am a book coach and in a few years I will have identified the most common challenges people face when writing a book, and finding their voice.
In the next twelve months, there will be at least 12 books coming out with Hembury Books, which is my hybrid publishing company. I love being a book coach and publisher and I hope to help as many people as possible to become authors.
Please visit the website and set up a discovery call with me if you plan on writing a nonfiction book, or have gotten stuck midway: https://hemburybooks.com.au/.
Photographs from Once Round the Sun, provided by Jessica Mudditt
(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)
Title: Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet
Author: Jessica Mudditt
Chapter 20 – In or out?
As I walked the streets of downtown Hohhot in search of a travel agency, I felt further than five hundred kilometres from Beijing. I was still in East Asia, but the capital city of Inner Mongolia had Central Asian influences too, such as the cumin seed flatbread I bought from a hawker with ruddy cheeks and a fur hat. I passed a Muslim restaurant with Arabic lettering on the front of its yellow-and-green facade, and many street signs and shops featured Mongolian script as well as Mandarin. With its loops, twirls and thick flourishes, Mongolian looked more similar to Arabic than Chinese. In actual fact, the top-down script is an adaptation of classical Uyghur, which is spoken in an area not far to the west.
The winds that blew in from the Russian border to the northeast were icy cold, so I was glad to soon be inside a travel agency. It was crammed with boxes of brochures and a thick film of dust covered the windowpanes. Hohhot is the main jumping-off point for tours of the grasslands, so I was able to get a ticket for a two-day tour that began the following morning.
I wasn’t enthusiastic about going on a tour because I preferred to move at my own pace, however there was no other way to access the grasslands. The upside was that I was guaranteed to sleep inside a ger, which is a circular tent insulated with felts. The Russian term of ‘yurt’ is better known. I had read that Inner Mongolia was a bit of a tourist trap for mainland Chinese tourists, but I was nonetheless excited to get a glimpse of the Land of the Weeping Camel.
I walked into a noodle shop and a customer almost dropped her chopsticks when she saw me. The girls at the cash register were giggling and covering their faces as I pointed at a flat noodle soup on a laminated menu affixed to the counter.
Foreign tourists must be thin on the ground in Hohhot, I thought as I carried my bowl over to a little table by the window.
Inner Mongolia was one of the few places that Lonely Planet almost discouraged people from visiting: ‘Just how much you can see of the Mongolian way of life in China is dubious.’ But I was still keen to see what I could.
I ate slowly, enjoying each fatty morsel of mutton. I was pretty good with chopsticks by that point – I’d never be a natural, but I didn’t drop any bits of mutton into the soup with a splash, as I used to in Vietnam.
Hohhot seemed a scruffy, rather bleak sort of city – or at least in the area where I was staying close to the train station. Street vendors stood cheek by jowl on one side of the road, calling out the prices of their wares. The opposite side was under construction and the one still in use was unpaved, which meant that two lanes of traffic had to navigate a narrow area of bumpy stones while avoiding massive potholes and piles of dirt. I saw a motorbike and a three-wheel truck almost collide.
I spent the next few hours wandering around the Inner Mongolia Museum, which has a staggering collection of 44,000 items. Some of the best fossils in the world have been discovered in Inner Mongolia because its frozen tundra preserves them so effectively. The standout exhibit for me was the mammoth. It had been discovered in a coal mine in 1984 and most of its skeleton was the original bones rather than replicas. I gazed up at the enormous creature and tried to imagine it roaming the earth over a million years ago. Mind-boggling.
I admired the black-and-white portraits of Mongolian tribesmen, and then took photos of a big bronze statue of Genghis Khan astride his galloping mount. The founding leader of the Mongol Empire was the arch-nemesis of China, and parts of the Great Wall had been built with the express purpose of keeping out his marauding armies. Genghis Khan must have rolled in his grave when China seized control of a large swathe of his territory in 1947.
What was once Mongolia proper became a Chinese province known as ‘Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’. This long-winded name is an example of Orwellian double-speak. So-called ‘Inner Mongolia’ is part of China, whereas the independent country to the north is by inference ‘Outer Mongolia’. Nor is the Chinese region autonomous. The Chinese state has forced Mongolians to assimilate. Their nomadic lifestyle and Buddhist beliefs had been pretty much eradicated, and although speaking Mongolian wasn’t outlawed, learning the state language of Mandarin was non-negotiable.
On top of this, the government provided tax breaks and other financial incentives to China’s majority ethnic group, the Han Chinese, if they relocated to Inner Mongolia. Mongolians now account for just one in five people among a total population of 24 million. The same policies of ethnic ‘dilution’ exist in China’s four other ‘autonomous regions’, which include Tibet and Xinjiang, the home of the Uyghurs.
Shortly before I left the museum, I came to a plaque that described the official version of history, which was at odds with everything I’d read in my Lonely Planet.
‘Since the founding of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region fifty years ago, a great change has happened on the grasslands, which is both a great victory of the minority policy and the result of the splendid leadership of the Communist Party of China. The people of all nationalities on the grassland will never forget the kind-hearted concerns of the revolutionary leaders of both the old and new generations.’
I rolled my eyes, snapped a photo of the plaque for posterity, and continued walking.
* * *
I didn’t venture far from my hotel for dinner because I planned on having an early night. I chose a bustling restaurant with lots of families inside and was waiting for a waiter to come and start trying to guess my order when a group of men at the next table caught my eye. They seemed to be waving me over.
Me? I asked by pointing at myself.
Yes, they were nodding. Shi de.
I happily joined the group and introduced myself by saying that I was from ‘Aodàlìyǎ’. I think they were Han Chinese, as they didn’t look Mongolian. I whipped out my phrasebook and tried to say I had come from Beijing, but I was fairly certain they didn’t understand me.
Anyhow, no matter. Ten shot glasses were filled from a huge bottle of baijiu, and I was soon laughing as if I was with old friends. One of the slightly older guys used a set of tongs to place wafer-thin slices of fatty pork into the bubbling hotpot on the table, followed by shiitake mushrooms and leafy greens. As the impromptu guest of honour, my bowl was filled first once it was cooked – by which time I’d already had three shots.
The hotpot was fantastic, and I had to remind myself not to finish everything in my bowl. Bethan had told me that Chinese etiquette requires a small amount of food not to be eaten at each meal. This indicates that it was so satisfying that it wasn’t necessary to eat every last bite. As a kid, it was ingrained in me to finish everything on my plate. I loved food and was generally in the habit of licking my bowl clean, so I had to exercise a certain amount of restraint.
I had just rested my chopsticks across the top of my bowl to signal I was finished when I was invited to go sit on the wives’ table, which was across from the men’s. The women were very sweet and a couple of them seemed to be around my age. I once again tried to communicate using my phrasebook, but I was hopelessly drunk by then. I could hardly string a sentence together in English, let alone Mandarin. I was also beginning to feel queasy from the baijiu, so I gratefully accepted a cup of green tea from the porcelain teapot that came my way on the lazy Susan. After taking some photos together, I bid the two groups ‘zaijian’ (goodnight). I tried to contribute some yuan for the meal, but they wouldn’t hear of it. I curtsied as a stupid sort of thank-you, and then I was on my way.
* * *
More hard liquor awaited me the following day. A striking woman in a red brocade gown with long sleeves handed me a small glass of baijiu as I stepped off the minibus a bit before noon.
‘It’s a tradition,’ she said with a smile, while holding a tray full of shots.
I downed the baijiu with my backpack on and grinned as the backpacker behind me did the same. There were four foreign tourists on the tour, and about eight domestic ones. The liquor gave me an instant buzz, which I needed. I hadn’t slept well and woke up feeling lousy, so I’d kept to myself during the two-hour journey. Even though I should have been excited, I got grumpier and grumpier as the reality of being on a tour began to sink in. Plus, the landscape was not the verdant green steppes I’d been expecting. At this time of year, it was bone dry and dusty. It hadn’t occurred to me to check whether my visit coincided with the low season.
I began chatting to the other tourists. The guy who had the baijiu after me was Lars from Holland. There was also a couple from Germany. I could immediately tell they were pretty straitlaced. Their clothes looked very clean and functional, and the girl refused the baijiu.
The woman in red introduced herself as Li, our tour guide. Then she led us along a path lined with spinifex to a dozen gers. They faced each other in a circle, and off to the right was a much larger ger with the evil eye painted on its roof and Tibetan prayer flags fluttering in the fierce winds. There were no other buildings in sight and no trees.
Li told us to meet inside the big ger in fifteen minutes after we’d put our stuff in the smaller gers she proceeded to assign us. Lars and I would be spending the night in a ger with ‘82’ painted on its rusted red door. There certainly weren’t eighty gers, so the logic behind the numbering system wasn’t clear – but no matter. The German couple took the ger to the right of ours.
These were not portable tents for nomads. Each ger was mounted on a concrete base and I think the actual structure was made of concrete too, and merely wrapped in grey tarpaulins. The door was made of metal and at the top was a sort of chimney structure – perhaps for ventilation. Like igloos, the only opening was the door, and it was pitch-black inside. I located a dangling light switch as I entered.
‘Ah – I love it!’ I exclaimed.
It was a simple set-up, with single beds lining the perimeter and a low table in the middle of the room. Patterned sheets were draped from the concave ceiling. I chose the bed with a framed portrait of Genghis Khan above it. Lars put his backpack next to a bed on the other side. I was happy enough to share a ger with him. He gave off zero sleazy vibes.
‘I might just take a couple of those extra blankets,’ I said to Lars as I piled on a few extra floral quilts from another bed. The wind had an extra iciness to it out on the steppes and I shuddered to think what the temperature would drop to overnight. We zipped our jackets back up and headed out.
I wandered over to the toilet block, which was quite a distance from the gers. I made a mental note to drink as little as possible before getting into bed to avoid having to go in the night. Once I got closer to the toilets, I was glad they were so far away. The stench was unbelievable.
In the female section were two concrete stalls without doors. In the middle of the floor in each was a rectangular gap. I almost gagged. Just a few centimetres away from the concrete was an enormous pile of shit. I could make out bits of used toilet paper and sanitary pads and there were loads of flies buzzing around. Without running water or pipes, the excrement just sat there, day after day, building up. I would have turned and walked straight back out but I was busting for a wee. I held my breath so I wasn’t inhaling the smells. I wanted to close my eyes too, but I was terrified of falling in, so I had to look at what I was doing. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
‘Oh my god, Lars – the drop toilets are totally disgusting,’ I said after I met up with him in the big ger. ‘It’s just a pit of shit without running water.’
‘I know an American girl who fell into a drop toilet in China last year,’ he said.
‘No way,’ I said with a shudder.
‘Yeah. She said it was terrible. She was in a really poor village somewhere in central China and she went to the toilet at night. She couldn’t see that some of the wooden planks had gaps in them – and then one of them broke and she fell in. She was up to her neck in shit. She was screaming for people to come help her. Apparently, it took them half an hour to fish her out, and all the while she could feel creatures writhing around her body. She cut her trip short and had to get counselling when she got home.’
‘I bet she did,’ I said. ‘That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard in my life. The poor girl.’
Just then Li appeared and said we were heading outside to watch horse racing and traditional wrestling after some sweet biscuits and tea. We assembled around a fenced area where there were about thirty ponies tethered to poles. Some were lying down while still saddled.
‘Horses usually sleep while standing up, so these ponies must be knackered – pardon the pun,’ I joked to Lars.
Notwithstanding, they looked to be in reasonably good condition, with shiny coats and no protruding ribs. There were chestnuts, bays and dapple greys.
I heard the sound of hoofbeats and looked behind me. A group of men on horseback came thundering across the steppes. It was a magnificent sight, and any lingering resentment I had about being on a tour melted away.
One of the men rode ahead of the rest. He was wearing a cobalt-blue brocaded tunic and his wavy black hair came down past his ears. He was really good-looking. He approached Li with a smile, said something to her and dismounted with the ease of someone who had probably started riding horses before he learned to walk. Li and the man exchanged a few words – I definitely saw her blush – and then he got back on.
‘Gah!’ he yelled as he dug his heels into his horse’s sides.
The other horsemen followed after him with whoops, leaving a trail of dust in their wake. These Mongolian ponies were only about twelve or thirteen hands, but they sure were fast and could turn on a dime. I loved watching them carve up the dry earth.
Next a group of men on motorcycles appeared along the track. There were quite a lot of them – at least twenty. We formed a big circle, and the traditional wrestling began. I wasn’t sure what the rules were, but it was fairly self-explanatory: one man got another in a headlock and thumped him to the ground. The next man came along and fought the winner, and so on and so forth. The spectators egged on the fighters with what I assumed were good natured cat calls. Everyone was grinning. By the time the wrestling matches were over, the fighters were absolutely covered in dust and the sun was beginning to set. I’m sure it was all staged for our benefit, but it was good fun.
With the seamless orchestration of a tour that has been done a thousand times before, we gravitated to the big ger. Dinner was bubbling away in a large clay pot and it smelled pretty good. There was also a big vat of noodles with black sauce and the ubiquitous Chinese vegetables of thinly sliced carrot, bok choy, baby corn and onion. There was a bottle of baijiu on each table.
We were serenaded with traditional music while we ate. One of the instruments reminded me of the didgeridoo and there was also a violin. I had read that strands of horse mane are used to make violin strings. The male singer had a deep voice that was almost a warble, and it was hauntingly beautiful.
Five men and women emerged from behind a red curtain and began to dance. They wore long-sleeved, billowing satin tunics that were cinched at the waist with embroidered belts. One of the women had a tall hat made of white beads that dangled down to her waist. It must have been heavy. It was a high-energy display of kicks and splits and parts of it were reminiscent of Irish dancing. They twirled their billowing skirts like sufis. The Chinese tourists started clapping in time with the music and then we all joined in. Sure, it was a bit cheesy, but I was really enjoying myself. At the end of the concert, we had photos with the performers as they were still trying to catch their breath.
We were given torches to light our way back to our gers. It was absolutely freezing, so I wore all my clothes to bed. I snuggled into my blankets and pulled them right up to my chin, feeling grateful for the warmth of Bethan’s jumper.
Mercifully, I slept right through until morning and avoided a late-night visit to the shit pit.
When I wandered out of the ger the next morning, breakfast was being prepared nearby. The carcass of a freshly slaughtered sheep was hanging from the back of a trailer. A man was skinning it while the blood drained out of its neck into a big metal bowl. Its head was in a second bowl, while squares of wool were laid out flat to dry on a tarp. A toddler in a puffy orange jacket was playing in the dust while his mother worked away at skinning parts of the wool. What distressed me more than butchery up close was the live sheep that was watching on from the back of the trailer. He presumably knew he was next.
After a breakfast of ‘sheep stomach stew with assorted tendons’ (as Li described it) we headed out for a ride on the steppes. I couldn’t wait to ride a horse again. I’d spent most of my childhood obsessed with horses, and I was lucky enough to have one for a few years, until I got older and became more interested in hockey and parties.
I rode a stocky bay with a trimmed mane that bobbed up and down as it trotted along the path. I looked over its perky little ears. The saddle had an uncomfortable pommel that kept jabbing me in the stomach, but I loved being under the wide open sky. It was a pale blue with just a few wispy clouds. Sheep grazed and crows rested on clumps of rocky outcrops.
I winced at the Chinese guy ahead of me, who was bouncing out of time to the rhythm of his horse’s gait and landing with a heavy bump in the saddle; his oversized suit flapping in the wind and his feet poking out straight in the stirrups. Much easier on the eye was the guide two horses ahead of him. He was every inch the Mongolian cowboy. Dressed from head to toe in black, he wore a leather jacket, cowboy hat and scuffed black cowboy boots. He never took off his wraparound sunglasses and he spoke little. He smouldered like the heartthrob actor, Patrick Swayze.
We’d travelled several kilometres when we came to a building block that was the same greyish brown as the earth. Inside it had a cottage feel. We sat around a table covered with a frilly tablecloth and drank yak milk. As we did, Lars told me about his day trip to North Korea. While in South Korea for a couple of weeks, he had visited the demilitarised zone (better known as the ‘DMZ’), where a ceasefire was negotiated between the two Koreas in 1953. In a military building is what is known as the ‘demarcation line’ – and Lars had one foot in North Korea and another in South Korea. I hung on his every word.
Our conversation got me thinking about how cool it would be to go to North Korea. I was actually quite close to the border. When I got back to the ger, I retrieved my Lonely Planet out of my bag and thumbed to the section titled ‘Getting there and away’, which had instructions for every country that borders China.
‘Visas are difficult to arrange to North Korea and at the time of writing, it was virtually impossible for US and South Korean citizens. Those interested in travelling to North Korea from Beijing should get in touch with Koryo Tours, who can get you there (and back).’
I was pretty sure the cost would be prohibitive for my budget and decided to stick with my existing plan of cutting south-west towards Tibet. Maybe one day I’d get the chance to visit North Korea, but it wouldn’t be on this trip.
Once back in Hohhot, I boarded a train bound for Pingyao. As I watched the apartment blocks pass by in a blur, I thought with satisfaction about the past twenty-four hours. Any visit to Inner Mongolia is problematic, but I couldn’t fault the Chinese tour company. They had made every effort to keep us entertained. Mongolian culture was so new to me that I couldn’t even tell whether something was authentic or staged, but I had seen and done all the things I hoped to during my visit. And, sure, my time there was really brief. But I’d be forever grateful to have seen a part of the world I thought I’d only ever get to see in a documentary.
Photo Courtesy: Jessica Muddit
About the Book: While nursing a broken heart at the age of 25, Jessica Mudditt sets off from Melbourne for a year of solo backpacking through Asia. Her willingness to try almost anything quickly lands her in a scrape in Cambodia. With the nation’s tragic history continuing to play out in the form of widespread poverty, Jessica looks for ways to make a positive impact. She crosses overland into a remote part of Laos, where friendships form fast and jungle adventures await.
Vietnam is an intoxicating sensory overload, and the hedonism of the backpacking scene reaches new heights. Jessica is awed by the scale and beauty of China, but she has underestimated the language barrier and begins her time there feeling lost and lonely. In circumstances that take her by surprise, Jessica finds herself hiking to Mount Everest base camp in Tibet.
From a monks’ dormitory in Laos to the steppes of Inner Mongolia, join Jessica as she travels thousands of kilometres across some of the most beautiful and fascinating parts of the planet.
About the Author: Jessica Mudditt was born in Melbourne, Australia, and currently lives in Sydney. She spent ten years working as a journalist in London, Bangladesh and Myanmar, before returning home in 2016. Her articles have been published by Forbes, BBC, GQ and Marie Claire, among others. Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is a prequel to her earlier book, Our Home in Myanmar.
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