“Contrary to common perceptions, Lhasa is not forbidden to outsiders” – M.A.Aldrich
Old Lhasa: A Biography, (a revised edition published in 2025 for the South Asian market of a book originally published in 2023), is a voluminous 615-page book that combines historical research, travel writing, religion, and culture to offer a comprehensive account of Lhasa, the capital city of Tibet. The author, M. A. Aldrich, is a lawyer who has lived and worked in Asia since the 1990s and had earlier published books on cities like Peking and Ulaanbaatar. Written on the basis of his multiple trips to Lhasa and its surroundings (the last one as late as September 2024), he is happy to discover that Old Lhasa has stood the test of time and still accurately captures the sight, sounds, and feelings of the city and foreigners can wander about freely without a minder so long as their papers are in order. As this book slowly emerged, it grew into both a portrait of the history and culture of that city as well as a serviceable guidebook for readers who are able to go to Tibet when political and regulatory circumstances permit.
Aldrich paints an intricate portrait of Lhasa, a storied city and its history, by giving us the evolution of how the Tibetan script came to be, with inspiration from ancient India and at the same time livens up the narrative with humorous anecdotes, interesting legends and charming fables that makes this book blend many genres into one. Divided into 49 chapters and enriched with several maps and black and white photographs, the chronological narration rightfully begins with the first chapter titled ‘Prelude to Lhasa’ where we are told that with Lhasa as the geographical focal point of their faith, Tibetans believe the dharma[1] has always been connected to their country. He begins the journey in the seventh century during the final moments of the life of Buddha, mentions specific Buddhist virtues such as compassion, wisdom, and benevolent power, among other essential qualities for the path to awakening. For Tibetan followers of the dharma, the history of Tibet is the history of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, which is simultaneously woven into the story of Lhasa.
In the 1920s, when Tibet enjoyed its greatest freedom from outside interference in the modern era, Lhasa had a population of only around twenty-five thousand. It was divided into two districts: one that is now the Old Town, with its seventh-century Jokhang Temple (or, more simply, the “Jokhang,” meaning the “House of the Lord”) at its centre; and the other being Shol Village, which is at the foot of Marpo Ri (Red Mountain). These administrative districts were divided by a north-south boundary that ran through the Turquoise Bridge, another structure dating to the seventh century. The Old Town was not much larger than two- or three-square kilometers, while Shol was even tinier. The residents of Lhasa at that time took immense pride in the religious heritage of their city. Nearly every luminary in Tibetan history had come to Lhasa because of the importance of the Jokhang as the focal point from which Tibetan civilization evolved and expanded. No other city could rival it.
Lhasa grew organically outward in concentric circles. Around 1160, a monk built the Nangkhor, a pilgrim’s circuit (korlam) directly adjacent to the inner sanctum of the Jokhang, so that devotees could practice the religious ritual of circumambulation. It is from this kernel that the boundaries of Old Lhasa came into existence. By the 14th century, Lhasa was enclosed within the Barkhor, a kilometre-long korlam circling the temple and a monastery among other buildings. By the 1650s, Lhasa’s outer limits had been expanded to the Lingkhor, a ten-kilometre pilgrimage route. And so, the boundaries of the city remained until recently.
Lhasa’s significance also drew heavily upon the nearby presence of government buildings and monastic sects of learning. The Potala Palace, with its superb representation of Tibetan architecture, is a massive and dazzlingly beautiful fortress-like monastery that had been the residence of the Dalai Lama and the seat of the Tibetan government since 1648. Three monasteries outside the city were centres of the so-called Yellow Hat or Gelukpa School of Tibetan Buddhism, preserving a venerable tradition of scholasticism and monastic training that had been imported to Tibet from the universities at Nalanda, Odantapuri and Vikramshila in Northern India. Daily life in early 20th century Lhasa was mostly grounded in religion for both the laity as well as the clergy. The Lhasa calendar year revolved around a sequence of religious festivals that tracked the flow of one month into another in a never-ending cycle of faith and devotion. Though religion permeated society, Lhasa was not an “other-worldly” place. In 1951, when the People’s Liberation Army marched into Lhasa behind portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Liu Shaoqi, the days of the city with its self-administered culture were numbered. During the 1959 Tibetan Uprising, the Chinese Communist Party reacted to the civil unrest as if Tibet should be taught a lesson. The Party continues to do so despite brief intermittent periods of slightly relaxed policies. Though Chinese modernity has been imported wholesale into Lhasa, the author opines that Old Lhasa is still there in its people who maintain their centuries-old faith and customs. One just needs to know where and how to look.
In the Prologue, Aldrich had confessed that this is not a “serious book” about Lhasa as the term is understood within the narrow confines of modern academia, since its objective is only to share what he had learned about Lhasa with simpaticos. His audience is the general reader or armchair traveller with a basic understanding of the tenets of Buddhism and the broad outlines of Asian history. He does not go into great depth on religious theory, and he hopes his views might also be of interest to Tibetans who have come of age in the diaspora and are curious about what a non-Tibetan thinks of this fabled city. He attempts to avoid the excessive solemnity and despair that attends much writing about Tibet. It is not that he is ignorant of ongoing atrocities and the appallingly cruel policies of the Party, but he has no doubt Tibet will have a renaissance. He opines Tibetans will overcome the current dark cycle just as they have overcome other bleak phases in their history.
In conclusion, it can be said that even after reading it thoroughly and enjoying it, this book as the author rightly states, “will nudge readers to learn more about Tibet and Tibetan culture.” Also, as Dr. Lobsong Sangay, former head of the Tibetan Government in Exile, rightfully mentions in the ‘Foreword’
, “Though the story of Tibet is an ongoing tale of tragedy, it also is a tale of the human spirit and the resilience of the Tibetan people. …this book is a window for seeking genuine access that will help you make meaningful discoveries of your own, whether you are physically travelling through the streets of Lhasa or traveling through the pages of this book far away from Lhasa.”
Title: From Rasa to Lhasa: TheSacred Center of the Mandala
Author: M.A.Aldrich
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
In 1904 at the behest of a suspicious imperial government in India, a British expeditionary force under Colonel Francis Younghusband occupied Lhasa in a fruitless search for evidence of Russian meddling in Tibetan politics. Prior to this bellicose assignment Younghusband had spent years exploring the remote, blank spaces of late nineteenth century Central Asian maps and acquiring an unusually sensitive insight into Asian religion for someone in his position. After visiting the Jokhang Temple, Tibet’s most sacred shrine, he penned a description that still resonates today.
Here it was that I found the true inner spirit of the people. The Tibetans from their mountain homes seemed here to draw on some hidden source of power. And when from the far recesses of the temple came the profound booming of great drums, the chanting of the monks in deep reverential rhythm, the blare of trumpets, the crash of cymbals, and the long rolling of lighter drums, I seemed to catch a glimpse of the source from which they drew. Music is a proverbially fitter means than speech for expressing the eternal realities; and in the deep rhythmic droning of the chants, the muffled rumbling of the drums, the loud clang and blaring of cymbals and trumpets, I realized this sombre people touching their inherent spirit, and in the way most fitted to them, giving vent to its mighty surgings panting for expression.
For Tibetans, the Jokhang Temple is at the heart of a mandala, a circular geometric design that serves as a symbol of the universe as well as a visual guide to complex and esoteric Buddhist principles. The devotional ritual of circumambulation around the temple reinforces its status as the sacred center or a “life-pole.” It is the geometric center of Lhasa’s three imaginary concentric circuits: the three korlam that are pathways for pilgrims to practice the dharma by circumambulating the Jokhang.
Eight protective shrines were built around the Jokhang. There are other nearby sites tied to the legendary account of the construction of the temple in the seventh century. Some of these sites are still used for worship, while others have become shops or residences; sadly, some have disappeared into the ether over time. The sacred and the secular were not separated in the streets of Lhasa, just as the normal and supernormal were entwined indivisibly. To expect otherwise would have come as a shock to the residents of old Lhasa and sounded downright silly to them.
For nearly all of its existence, the Jokhang Temple was Lhasa in the minds of Tibetans. Ninth-century Tang dynasty chronicles suggest Lhasa might have consisted of nothing more than mobile encampments for nobles, soldiers, and nomads, with only two permanent buildings constructed in stone (the Jokhang and its sister temple, Ramoche); but Chinese chroniclers did not always examine the ways of barbarians with much care. Lhasa did not come into being as a modest-sized city until the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, the Jokhang was felt to be synonymous with Lhasa, the “Place of the Gods.” Even in recent times the city’s bus drivers cried out “Lhasa” to their passengers to announce arrival at stops near the Jokhang Temple.
Tibetans reaffirm their view of religion as permeating all elements of the phenomenal world by perceiving them in the form of a mandala. Indeed, the mandala model applies equally to the universe as a whole, to the country, … to each city, to each temple and shrine, and, tantrically, to the worshipper’s own body. The realization of one’s own identity with these larger designs is the attainment of salvation.
ABOUT THE BOOK
A sweeping, magnificent biography—which combines historical research, travel-writing and discussion of religion and everyday culture—Old Lhasa is the most comprehensive account of the fabled city ever written in English. It is a portrait not only of a city but also an entire people—both those who still live in occupied Tibet, and those who are in exile.
‘[This book] brings you closer to the real spirit of Lhasa.’—Lobsang Sangay, former head of the Tibetan Government in Exile
‘This remarkable history should be compulsory reading for travellers, academics and armchair historians. Experts will find that Aldrich has shaken the kaleidoscope of the history and geography of Lhasa and Tibet into new and illuminating patterns. Immersing himself in the place and its past, he unravels the colourful threads that make Lhasa and Tibet so fascinating… This splendid book is a compendium of knowledge about the city and its place in Tibetan history and culture—including, of course, religion.’—Alan Babington-Smith, President of the Royal Asiatic Society, Beijing
‘Aldrich has provided in these pages a whole simulacrum of a country and its wonders. What shines in the book and gives it life is not only his amazing knowledge and understanding of Lhasa and Tibet but also his passion, enormous humour and, above all, love for its people.’—Adam Williams, author of The Palace of Heavenly Pleasure
‘Aldrich has produced an outstanding narrative focused on one of the most interesting cultural capitals in Asia… [A] fascinating history that will continue to attract readers for a long time to come.’—Jonathan S. Addleton, author of The Dust of Kandahar
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.A. Aldrich is a lawyer and author who has lived and worked in Asia since the 1990s. Besides Old Lhasa: A Biography, he is the author of The Search for a Vanishing Beijing: A Guide to China’s Capital Through the Ages,The Perfumed Palace: Islam’s Journey from Mecca to Peking and Ulaanbaatar—Beyond Water and Grass: A Guide to the Capital of Mongolia.
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Blank faces welcome me in Phnom Penh. That the people smile at all is a miracle; years of haggard living, tortured upbringing, and painful deprivations have reduced this golden city of Indochina to one filled with figurative corpses. What America could not achieve, Pol Pot did in a flash and years of oppression turned into that of a blood-filled regime that the Mekong did not even try to wash away. For all its salubriousness, this river, among the greatest in the world, stood by and watched its children be consumed by an ephemeral fire that could only be extinguished in 1979.
Then the Vietnamese intervened, returning only after being loathed by almost everyone in Cambodia. The former, among other benedictions, took apart whatever little credibility the Democratic Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge) government had amassed in three and a half years in power. Pol Pot’s name, quite naturally, does not feature on the political billboards and hoardings that seem to have made themselves inconspicuous in Phnom Penh today. The national dish, Amok, made of fish or several vegan accoutrements to serve the European traveller, takes up the spot left by those of the beggars in the parking spot north of the royal palace.
As I sip my umpteenth sugarcane juice, fortified with cubes of ice that may have once come out of Tibet, I wonder whether the king curls his lips in distaste seeing the beggars and rag-pickers waiting outside the golden gates of his palace. But the official line in Cambodia is that Sihamoni is a staunch Buddhist who likes the occasional bit of Czech opera, and all my thoughts of irreverence — born out of weeks of living in Indochina — flush down the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap while looking past Sisowath Quay to the east.
This river, the lifeblood of Indochina, had once emerged as a trickle in Tibet, and I am perplexed by the lack of cohesion it shows while merging with the Tonle Sap, which also shares its name with a large freshwater lake in Siem Reap. During the monsoon season, the Mekong forces the Tonle Sap to reverse its water with such gushing force that the latter is left with no choice but to flood itself with fish.
It doesn’t rain in Phnom Penh; I had heard this phrase before but am accosted with it with painful lucidity for the first time when visiting the Tuol Sleng primary school that served, for years, as a torture centre for the Khmer Rouge. Had it rained on the frangipani-filled lush gardens of the school — belittling the despair and agony that went on inside — I would not have noticed. I envy the frangipani blooms and their ability to distance themselves from such emotions as those that afflict men. Outside, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge years sells his story for a few pennies; recognition from the foreigner seems more validating to him than acceptance from his countrymen, who have long forgotten his ordeals. I am told that a McDonald’s might soon open across the street.
When encountering the fabled ‘baby-killing tree’ in the ignominious Killing Fields in Cheoung Ek outside Phnom Penh, there is a numbing sensation which I have scarcely felt before. The tears fall heavier than the unseasonal rains I would have wished to encounter in Phnom Penh; it was not too long ago when I could have claimed that I had not cried in ten years. That this tree is also a Pipal, a cousin of the one under which Sakyamuni attained enlightenment, seems a cruel joke to me. That there is still some sign of life on it, populated by the innumerable butterflies and twittering sparrows, exacerbates this feeling all the more.
Angkor
Angkor[1], a few days later, seems resplendent at dawn, but I am unable to escape the reality that the men who built this monument had also given birth to the reality that the Khmer Rouge would later become. Indeed, Pol Pot was known for his selective readings of the classics of the Khmer kingdom of Angkor — if building this city was possible, anything was, even his vastly unerudite idea of returning the country to a year ‘zero’, doing away with the market economy, abolishing money and persecuting intellectuals for wearing spectacles.
The rain that evades me in Phnom Penh finally catches up with me in Angkor Wat; unable to make a visit early one morning on a bicycle in a thunderstorm through the black jungle, I remain rooted to my guesthouse and eventually fall asleep.
On my first visit to Angkor Wat, I am stunned by the intricacies and details that seem to have permeated every angle of Khmer design. The frescoes on the walls and the images on the gates of the large temple complex depict wars fought and construction projects undertaken; for all its virility in eventually losing its grasp over modern-day Cambodia, the Hindu-Buddhist Khmer kingdom — of whose ilk Jayavarman VII had been, and whose predecessor Suryavarman II had ordered this temple made in 1150, at first as a tribute to Vishnu, and eventually, a mausoleum for himself — was remarkable in its aesthetic sensibilities.
Ta Prohm
The several other temples in the area, including the great Bayon, Ta Phrom and Prasat Preah Khan — not to mention the gigantic meadows located in the heart of the old city of Angkor Thom — attract and drive my senses even as I struggle to cycle on flat roads in the deadening midday heat. The meadows, which feature statues of elephants attired in regal resplendence, remind me of a time simpler than this, when a thousand parasols could be had for cheap and held over the head of the king. The climate of Indochina, I surmise, may not have been too different from what it is now; I look yonder for concrete jungles mimicking the ones that seem to have sprung up choc-a-bloc in west Hyderabad, but encounter only lush blackness.
Angkor Thom
In effect, understanding Khmer society or the part of it which is shown to the visitor, is a challenging affair unless one undertakes a voyage of the heart that infrequently involves short-changing between lives of a different kind. The Mekong, which makes no appearance in Siem Reap, slithers away from the intemperate nature one finds in Angkor.
When I walk past Sisowath Quay one night under a moonless sky, I am reminded of my own idea of happiness, which seems to have been torn to shreds on this journey; a group of middle-aged Khmer men, devoid of languor in this dark hour and well-fortified with Angkor, the brew and not the temple, beckon me over to join in their game of sai[2]. It is then that I know it is time to put the killing tree to bed. For now.
[2] Played with the foot with a shuttlecock-like structure
Mohul Bhowmick is a national-level cricketer, poet, sports journalist, essayist and travel writer from Hyderabad, India. He has published four collections of poems and one travelogue so far. More of his work can be discovered on his website: www.mohulbhowmick.com.
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Titles: Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet and Tibetan Suitcase
Author: Tsering Namgyal Khortsa
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
Following the forced escape of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in March 1959, thousands of Tibetans were forced to flee Tibet, and it was these refugees who formed the early exiled community. The refugee community now stands at a figure of around 130,000, with Tibetans spread across numerous settlements in India, Nepal and Bhutan, and thousands more displaced all around the world. The Tibetan government in exile is based in Dharamsala, India. It is called the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and was founded in 1959 by the 14th Dalai Lama. In the 1980s, a second wave of Tibetans fled due to political repression. The CTA advocates for human rights, self-determination, and the preservation of religion and culture for Tibetans. The CTA has a parliament, judiciary, and executive branch and its principles include truth, non-violence, and genuine democracy. The Dalai Lama has said that the exile administration would be dissolved as soon as freedom is restored in Tibet.
After over seventy years of being in exile, a whole generation of Tibetans have come of age in a land far from home. With the Dalai Lama and other great masters as their spiritual guides, they have grown up cut off from their homeland. Their experiences have been unique, as they have, despite globalization, kept alive their religion and culture. In Little Lhasa: Reflections in Exiled Tibet, Tsering Namgyal Khortsa writes comprehensively about the different aspects of their life today. Comprising of ten essays and six interviews, this volume becomes an eye-opener on the multifarious aspects of the present situation of Tibetans at large. Beginning with different writers writing about Tibet and exile in the very first essay titled ‘Little Lhasa’, the next one ‘Shangrila Online’ tells us about the role of social media, internet cafes and how technology in remote Dharamsala often enables one to participate in other people’s experiences in real time. The writer describes in detail how such lifestyle changes in contemporary times have enabled the creation of a “virtual Tibet”. In the next essay ‘Buddha’s Children’, Khortsa describes the young generation of exiled children in India and how their religious identity has triumphed over all other identities. We are also told about the different kinds of foreigners who come to India to take religious courses, and the writer wonders whether they go home feeling merely inspired by their visit to India and their meetings with Tibetan masters or whether such exposure and experience actually triggers a paradigm shift in the way they view the world.
In the next essay we are told how Tibetans lead demonstrations in Dharamsala and other parts of India every year, especially the one held on March 10th that commemorates the anniversary of the failed uprising against Chinese invasion. ‘Movies and Meditation’ mentions a film festival in Dharamsala which reveals how recent Tibetan films highlight a growing and vibrant filmmaking community within the Tibetan diaspora, but Khortsa laments the paucity of full-length films about Tibetans in exile and the issues they confront, namely patriotism, individualism, and reconciliation of personal fulfilment with the Tibetan cause. The titles of the three following essays, ‘Dharma Talk’, ‘The Lure of India’ and ‘The Monk at Manali’ are self-explanatory. The last essay of this section ‘Nation of Stories’ tells us about writers who write and publish in the English language, and though diverse in terms of their education, upbringing, background and geographical location, one common condition that they all share is the collective trauma of the Chinese occupation of Tibet, which is invariably a leitmotif in Tibetan literature.
Part Two consists of six interviews, each one different in perspective than the other, and they must be mentioned here to understand the kaleidoscopic nature of the people involved in the Tibetan cause. Thus, we have conversations with Lisa Gray as ‘A Western Buddhist’, Ananda Nand Agnihotri as ‘An Indian Tibetan Buddhist,’ Ngawang Woeber, ‘An Ex-Political Prisoner’, Nyima Dhondup, ‘A Swiss Tibetan’, Tenzing Sonam, ‘A Tibetan Writer and Filmmaker’ and Tenphun, ‘The Tibetan Poet’. All in all, Little Lhasa becomes a valuable record of the life of a people who refuse to bow down or forget, and even while adapting to a rapidly changing world, continue to nurture their roots.
II
After the non-fiction, Tsering Namgyal Khortsa comes up with a brilliant piece of fiction and read together, each text complements the other beautifully. In the ‘Editor’s Note’ at the very beginning of the novel Tibetan Suitcase, Tsering Namgyal Khortsa tells us that while he was working as a business journalist in Hong Kong he once ran into Dawa Tashi, an old acquaintance and an aspiring novelist from Dharamsala, India who was working as a meditation teacher and was quite busy with his job. He had a suitcase full of letters and documents and wanted him to turn the contents of the suitcase into a book. After going through the collection, Khortsa discovered that the contents of the suitcase, if organized with care and discipline, could indeed make for an epistolary novel. So, he declares that except for correcting a few typos here and there and add note and datelines to the letters, he had not done anything. He also categorically states, “None of the letters are mine, except some entries that I wrote, making the book partly fictionalized.” He also wanted to leave room for readers to imagine (or ‘feel’ for themselves) what is not mentioned in the book, in deference to the Tibetan culture of reticence and taciturnity, rather than turning himself into an all-knowing chatterbox.
Tibetan Suitcase is a remarkable novel about the peripatetic Tibetan community in exile. It is divided into six parts, beginning roughly from 1995 to 2000. It opens in Hong Kong where a tycoon Peter Wong opens a meditation centre and employs Dawa Tashi, our protagonist as a meditation teacher and a guru, though he is not really trained to be a lama. Dawa Tashi is an India-born Tibetan. His parents fled Tibet when the Chinese invaded, and Dawa has grown up in the quiet, verdant Indian Himalayas. When Dawa applies to a well-known university in America (Appleton University in Wisconsin) to pursue a course in creative writing, his hitherto ordinary life changes dramatically. At the university he befriends, and falls in love with, Iris Pennington, an unusual American student who is studying Buddhist literature. He also comes in contact with Khenchen Sangpo, a renowned scholar of Buddhism and a reincarnated Rinpoche himself. Circumstances lead Dawa back to India too soon, but the connections he makes take his life into many new directions. Some, with Iris and Khenchen, take him deeper into the mystical and mysterious world of Buddhist scholarship. Other journeys take him back to his roots, making him question his life’s directions.
Apart from the interesting incidents and characters we meet in the first four parts of the novel, Part Five is an exceptionally engrossing to read. Beginning with the reportage in the Fall Issue of the journal Meridian, which is edited by Brent Rinehart, we are told that on his seventy-ninth birthday Khenchen decided that he had to go back to Tibet to see his native land. Having gained a quick residency status in the United States, and possessing an American passport, Khenchen still had many relatives in Tibet, some of them quite alive and well, despite the Chinese occupation. He travels to Lhasa in 1996 and goes for a trip to Lake Manasarovar but things take a different turn when he is arrested by the Chinese authority because he was apparently “endangering national security”. What follows are different press releases from the US Statement Department, reports from the International Association of Tibetan Studies in London, address by the President of Appleton University and as Iris writes to Dawa, she never expected herself to be so politically involved and “did not realize Tibet was such a political subject”. It was ironic that one of the world’s most spiritual places was one of its most burning political issues. Tibet might be a small place, but it has a reasonably big space in the collective consciousness of the world. Of course, Khenchen Sangpo is ultimately released and without disclosing the actual ending of the novel, which in a circular fashion ends in Hong Kong from where it began, many loose ends are tied up and life came to a full circle for everybody, especially for Iris Pennington who finally managed to find her roots.
Both the non-fiction and the fiction book by Tsering Namgyal Khortsa prove to be eye-openers for all readers who have very little knowledge about the sorrow and plight of the uprooted Tibetans who live in exile and many of whom do not even have a country to call their own. Based in Dehradun, India at present, Khortsa’s narratives are so powerful that it has aptly prompted Speaking Tiger Books to reprint the updated versions of both the books in 2024 and one can call it a yeoman service to readers both serious and casual. A must read.
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Somdatta Mandal, critic and translator, is a former Professor of English at Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, India.
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TWO HUNDRED YEARS ago mountains were regarded as useless and terrible masses of inert matter where dragons had their lairs and the spirits of the damned lay in wait to claim the unwary. But as man emerged from the superstitions and materialisms of the Middle Ages he began to realise that mountains were beautiful and their summits worthy of attainment. The nineteenth century saw the conquest of the Alps. Unknown difficulties and dangers had to be faced by the pioneers of mountaineering. Disasters occurred, lives were lost, and mountaineering thrown into disrepute. The mountaineer was not dismayed. He knew that beauty was his for the seeking; he rejoiced in a newfound comradeship and in the acquirement and exercise of a new craft.
The great alpine summits fell one by one; traditions were established; a technique was evolved; a literature was born. The ripples of alpine mountaineering radiated outwards, bearing with them mountaineers to other ranges: the Caucasus, the Rockies, the Andes, the New Zealand Alps. On their highest peaks the skill acquired in the Alps was sufficient to ensure success. But there remained one great range that defied invasion of its strongholds – the Himalaya. There, the technique acquired in the Alps was not sufficient. Height alone was a physical deterrent, and coupled to height was steepness and danger. Expeditions had to be organised to reach even the foot of the great peaks; time and money had to be found. Yet, despite these disadvantages, Himalayan mountaineering and exploration progressed steadily. Pioneers such as the Schlagintweit Brothers, Sir Joseph Hooker, The Duke of the Abruzzi, Mr W.W. Graham, Lord Conway, Sir Francis Younghusband, Mr D.W. Freshfield, Doctor T.G. Longstaff, Doctor A.M. Kellas, General Bruce, Mr C.F. Meade, Doctor and Mrs Bullock Workman, Messrs. Rubenson and Monrad Aas, and many other pre-war pioneers opened up a region unsurpassed for its beauty and grandeur, and by their experiences pointed the way to the highest summits.
Many people refer to the Himalaya as though their limitations in scenery and climate were similar to those of the Alps. The tourist who gazes upon Kangchenjunga, 28,226 feet, from Darjeeling returns home saying that he has seen the Himalaya. So he has, but how much of two thousand miles of mountains stretching from the Pamirs to the borders of Indo-China, and beyond these limits, in terms of mountains? A lifetime might be spent wandering about the Himalaya, yet the knowledge acquired would embrace but an infinitesimal portion of that vast labyrinth of peaks, valleys and plateaux scrawled across the map of Asia.
In climate alone there is an extraordinary variety. From hot steamy tropical valleys, filled with luxuriant vegetation, it is but a few horizontal miles to zero temperatures and the highest snows in the world. Between these two extremes is an immense range of climate, the common despot of which is a fierce sun. Added to the complexities of climate due to height alone is the added complexity of seasonal weather fluctuations, due directly or indirectly to the influence of the monsoons and weather conditions emanating from the plateaux of Central Asia.
Racial characteristics are as diversified as the climate. From the people of Hunza and Chitral to the Sherpas and Bhotias of Northern Nepal, the almost extinct Lepchas of Sikkim and the wild races of Bhutan, the Himalaya can show many different types, for they form a natural frontier between India and Tibet, and a pudding-bowl wherein is stirred a mixture of Mongolian and Indian blood.
Politically, only a comparatively small portion of the Himalaya is accessible to the mountaineer and explorer. Democracy is unknown in Tibet and Nepal, and both these countries have closed their frontiers to Europeans and resolutely set themselves against infiltration of European thought and ideas. Some of the finest peaks of the Himalaya lie within the borders of Nepal, including the southern side of Everest, 29,140 feet, Dhaulagiri, 26,795 feet, Gosainthan (Shisha Pangma), 26,305 feet, and many other great peaks. In addition there are other districts where the mountaineer is not always welcomed, owing to political and other objections. The three most interesting districts accessible to mountaineers and explorers are the Karakorams, the Kumaun and Garhwal Himalaya and the Sikkim Himalaya, including the eastern side of Kangchenjunga, and it is in these three districts that the most notable mountaineering expeditions have been carried out, with the exception of Everest (now barred politically) and the northern side of Nanga Parba (forbidden territory to expeditions at present). Each of these districts is magnificent in its own way. In the Karakoram there is no glacier to rival in grandeur the Baltoro, and no peaks surpassing in ferocity the terrific ice- armoured spires dominated by K2 (Mount Godwin Austin), 28,187 feet. From the Kumaun Himalaya rises Nanda Devi, 25,645 feet; the highest peak entirely within the confines of the British Empire, a mountain so difficult to approach that no one has yet succeeded in treading the glaciers at the foot of it, whilst Kamet, 25,447 feet, dominates the ranges of Northern Garhwal. In Sikkim, Kangchenjunga boasts the most wonderful snow and ice scenery in the Himalaya, owing to its exposure to the moisture-laden airs of the monsoon. It has defeated three determined attempts to climb it, in 1929, 1930 and 1931 by mountaineers well versed in the technique of high-altitude mountaineering. The highest point reached was 26,000 feet, by the gallant Bavarian expedition in 1931 and that only after incredible difficulty.*
Geologically, the Himalaya are a young mountain range, due to an uplift of the ancient seabed covering Central Asia. This uplift took place so slowly that rivers such as the Indus and the Brahmaputra, which have their sources to the north of the Himalaya, have been able to carve their way through the range as it rose. This is the only explanation that can account for the deep valleys cutting through from Tibet to India.
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(Extracted from The Great Himalayan Ascents by Frank S. Smythe. Published by Speaking Tiger Books, 2025.)
About the Book
Frank S. Smythe (1900-1949) was one of the greatest mountaineers of the twentieth century, and a celebrated memoirist and adventure writer. This collection brings together three accounts of Smythe’s most thrilling ascents in the Himalayas—The Kangchenjunga Adventure, Kamet Conquered and Camp Six.
The Kangchenjunga Adventure narrates in detail the 1930 expedition to climb the third-highest mountain in the world: how Smythe, as part of an international team of mountaineers, attempts to reach the summit of Kangchenjunga, before a deadly avalanche—which kills one of the Sherpas— forces them to change course and scale the Jonsong Peak instead. In Kamet Conquered, Smythe makes a successful bid at ascending Mount Kamet in 1931, which was at that time still unscaled. On their way back, Smythe and his team chance upon the spectacular and colourful Bhyundar Valley, which they christen the ‘Valley of Flowers’, and which is now a National Park. Camp Six recounts a gripping adventure on the world’s highest mountain—the 1933 Everest Expedition, in which Smythe, climbing alone, ascends to a point higher than any human had reached before. Made without ropes or oxygen to support him, and in terrible snow conditions, the climb is regarded as one of the greatest endeavours in the history of mountaineering.
This majestic omnibus edition offers a fascinating window into early mountain climbing and Himalayan exploration. It is also a rare treat for every lover of fine, entertaining writing.
About the Author
Frank Sydney Smythe was a British mountaineer, botanist and adventurer. Smythe, who began his mountaineering career in the Alps, joined the international Kangchenjunga expedition of 1930 which ended in failure. In 1936, he led the expedition which successfully ascended Mount Kamet, then the highest peak ever to have been climbed. Subsequently, in the 1930s, Smythe was thrice part of teams which attempted to climb Mount Everest. An accomplished photographer and a prolific writer, Smythe wrote twenty-seven books in all, the best known among which are The Kangchenjunga Adventure, Kamet Conquered and Adventures of a Mountaineer. Smythe died in 1949.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Title: The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia
Author: Derek Waller
Publisher: Speaking TigerBooks
The British exploration of Tibet and Central Asia began in the 19th century as part of the Great Game, a geopolitical rivalry between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. These British explorers, known as “pundits“, were tasked with gathering intelligence on the region’s geography, culture, and politics to inform British strategic interests in the area. The pundits traveled undercover, disguised as locals, and used their linguistic and navigational skills to map out uncharted territories and report back to British authorities. Their expeditions were instrumental in shaping British policy towards Tibet and Central Asia, and their findings laid the groundwork for future British involvement in the region.
The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia by Derek Waller is a fascinating book for its rich details and shedding light on the frontier policies of the British Empire. Derek J. Waller served as professor emeritus of political science at Vanderbilt University, where he taught from 1969 until his passing in 2009. He was instrumental in establishing the examination system for the Chinese government at Vanderbilt and played a key role in founding the university’s International Studies Programme in London. Additionally, he held the position of director of Vanderbilt-in-England. Waller is best known for his publication, The Government and Politics of the People’s Republic of China, which was released in 1981.
Says the blurb: “On a September day in 1863, Abdul Hamid entered the Central Asian city of Yarkand. Disguised as a merchant, Hamid was in fact an employee of the Survey of India, carrying concealed instruments to enable him to map the geography of the area. Hamid did not live to provide a first-hand account of his travels. But he was the advance guard of an elite group of Indian trans-Himalayan explorers—recruited, trained, and directed by the officers of the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India—who were to traverse much of Tibet and Central Asia during the next thirty years.”
Waller presents the history of these intrepid explorers—Nain, Mani, Kalian and Kishen Singh, Mirza Shuja, Hyder Shah, Ata Mahomed, Abdul Subhan, Mukhtar Shah, Hari Ram, Rinzing Namgyal, Ugyen Gyatso, Nem Singh, Lala and Kintup—who came to be called ‘native explorers’ or ‘pundits’ in the public documents of the Survey of India. In the closed files of the government of British India, however, they were given their true designation as spies. As they moved northward within the Indian subcontinent, the British demanded precise frontiers and sought orderly political and economic relationships with their neighbours. They were also becoming increasingly aware of and concerned with their ignorance of the geographical, political, and military complexion of the territories beyond the mountain frontiers of the Indian empire. This was particularly true of Tibet.
Despite the fact that the use of pundits was discontinued in the 1890s in favour of exclusively British expeditions, they amassed a vast amount of information on the topography of the region, the customs of its inhabitants, and the nature of its government and military resources. They were able to journey to places where hardly any European could go and did so under conditions of extreme deprivation and great danger. They are credited with documenting an area of over one million square miles, most of which was completely unknown territory to the West.
The Pundits, one of the earliest books to be written about them, is an exceptional piece of scholarly work.
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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of 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.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
There was a time when humans walked the Earth crossing unnamed landmasses to find homes in newer terrains. They migrated without restrictions. Over a period of time, kingdoms evolved, and travellers like Marco Polo talked of needing permissions to cross borders in certain parts of the world. The need for a permit to travel was first mentioned in the Bible, around 450BCE. A safe conduct permit appeared in England in 1414CE. Around the twentieth century, passports and visas came into full force. And yet, humanity had existed hundreds of thousand years ago… Some put the date at 300,000!
While climate contingencies, wars and violence are geared to add to migrants called ‘refugees’, there is always that bit of humanity which regards them as a burden. They forget that at some point, their ancestors too would have migrated from where they evolved. In South Africa, close to Johannesburg is Maropeng with its ‘Cradle of Humanity’, an intense network of caves where our ancestors paved the way to our evolution. The guide welcomes visitors by saying — “Welcome home!” It fills one’s heart to see the acceptance that drips through the whole experience. Does this mean our ancestors all stepped out of Africa many eons ago and that we all belonged originally to the same land?
And yet there are many restrictions that have come upon us creating boxes which do not allow intermingling easily, even if we travel. Overriding these barriers is a discussion with Jessica Mudditt about Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet, her book about her backpacking through Asia. Documenting a migration more than a hundred years ago from Jullundur to Malaya, when borders were different and more mobile, we have a conversation with eminent scholar and writer from Singapore, Kirpal Singh. Telling the story of another eminent migrant, a Persian who became a queen in the Mughal Court is a lyric by Nazrul, Nur Jahan, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam from Bangla. Ihlwha Choi has self-translated his own poem from Korean, a poem bridging divides with love. Fazal Baloch has brought to us some exquisite Balochi poems by Munir Momin. Tagore’s poem, Okale or Out of Sync, has been translated from Bengali to reflect the strange uniqueness of each human action which despite departing from the norm, continue to be part of the flow.
We have a tongue in cheek piece from Devraj Singh Kalsi on traveling in a train with a politician. Uday Deshwal writes with a soupçon of humour as he talks of applying for jobs. Snigdha Agrawal brings to us flavours of Bengal from her past while Ratnottama Sengupta muses on the ongoing wars and violence as acts of terror in the same region and looks back at such an incident in the past which resulted in a powerful Bengali poem by Tarik Sujat. Kiriti Sengupta has written of a well-known artist, Jatin Das, a strange encounter where the artist asks them to empty fully even a glass of water! Ravi Shankar weaves in his love for books into our non-fiction section. Recounting her mother’s migration story which leads us to perceive the whole world as home is a narrative by Renee Melchert Thorpe. Urmi Chakravorty takes us to the last Indian village on the borders of Tibet. Taking us to a Dinosaur Museum in Japan is our migrant columnist, Suzanne Kamata. Her latest multicultural novel, Cinnamon Beach, has found its way to our book excerpts as has Flanagan’s poetry collection, These Many Cold Winters of the Heart.
In reviews, Somdatta Mandal has written about an anthology, Maya Nagari: Bombay-Mumbai A City in Storiesedited by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto. Rakhi Dalal has discussed a translation from Konkani by Jerry Pinto of award-winning writer Damodar Mauzo’sBoy, Unloved. Basudhara Roy has reviewed Trailokyanath Mukhopadhyay’s Tales of Early Magic Realism in Bengali, translated by Sucheta Dasgupta. Bhaskar Parichha has introduced us toThe Dilemma of an Indian Liberal by Gurcharan Das, a book that is truly relevant in the current times in context of the whole world for what he states is a truth: “In the current polarised climate, the liberal perspective is often marginalised or dismissed as being indecisive or weak.” And it is the truth for the whole world now.
Our short stories reflect the colours of the world. A fantasy set in America but crossing borders of time and place byRonald V. Micci, a story critiquing social norms that hurt by Swatee Miittal and Paul Mirabile’s ghost story shuttling from the Irish potato famine (1845-52) to the present day – all address different themes across borders, reflecting the vibrancy of thoughts and cultures. That we all exist in the same place and have the commonality of ideas and felt emotions is reflected in each of these narratives.
We have more which adds to the lustre of the content. So, do pause by our content’s page and enjoy the reads!
I would like to thank all our team without who this journal would be incomplete, especially, Sohana Manzoor, for her fabulous artwork. Huge thanks to all our contributors who bring vibrancy to our pages and our wonderful readers, without who the journal would remain just part of an electronic cloud… We welcome you all to enjoy our June issue.
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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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
It’s been five years since the American cyclist ‘Hutch’ died, yet his message of peace remains, as Keith Lyons remembers the global citizen who challenges us all to live life to its fullest
In early 2019, having not heard from an old friend ‘Hutch’ for a few weeks, I learnt that the American I’d first met in China has died of natural causes at his new humble home in the mountains of Greece. He was almost 80 years old.
There’s nothing extraordinary about living until your late 70s. Or relocating to live the last years of your life in a warmer place. But Hutch was not your ordinary septuagenarian retiree. Nor was he a typical American. Though when I first heard about him in 2009, it was when a German friend staying with me in southwest China had come across a sign on the wall of an Italian restaurant in Lijiang, Yunnan, seeking fellow cyclists for day trips around the area. The deal was, go on a ride with Hutch and other cyclists, and he would pay for lunch or dinner. “So how was he?” I asked my friend about the organiser, who had a website promoting world peace. “American, very American,” she replied. I was intrigued by this.
But it wasn’t till another month or so that our paths crossed, and I met him in a café with a gaggle of others: locals, Chinese youngsters who had moved to Yunnan province, and some foreigners.
Hutch was treating them all to drinks and pizza. I found out later, he bought bikes for some ride participants who became his friends. That’s the kind of person he was.
Hutch was not a tall man in stature, and the cycling obviously kept him very fit, I noted on first meeting him. He wore lycra cycling gear, a neck scarf and bandana, and had a gentle face, with a bright eyes and a benign smile. He was polite, and entertaining, and clearly enjoyed the carbo-loading pizza as much as the entourage, made up of English-speaking Chinese who ranged from their 20s to 40s.
He invited me to join them, as after pizza, there was going to be cake and dessert. He got up to shake my hand, and I noticed he was wearing cycling shorts, with spindly yet muscle-toned legs.
Having set up his new China base in the mountain town where I’d been living since the mid-200s, I got to know him over drinks, meals, outings and adventures. Mr F. A. Hutchinson (I never knew what those initials stood for) acquired names in each country where he stayed – Haqi in China, Nima (meaning ‘sun’) in Tibet, Hache in Bolivia. At one stage he was signing off his emails with ’The Magic Dragon’, his serpent name. ‘Or just call me a bum on a bike’, was tagged to the end of his signature. I just knew him as Hutch.
Generous and giving, sometimes overly generous, he also adopted adult children, accumulating a family of daughters and sons in China during his half decade living in Xining and Lijiang. While his trusted bike, Ms.Fetes, was loaded with pannier bags front and back, he didn’t carry much baggage from his past, which had seen him serve in Vietnam, work for decades in TV sports production in the US, and establish a talent development agency in China in 2007.
Over the couple of years I knew him in Lijiang I can only recall a few occasions when he was not sporting padded cycling shorts. More often than not he turned up to cafe, meeting and events on his bicycle, sometimes not bothering to take off his cycling helmet indoors.
That cycle helmet proved its value one day when we were out cycling in the hills to an alpine lake around 2,600 m above sea level not far from LIjiang. Hutch was a cyclist with remarkable stamina, and his slow and steady approach could burn off others 40 years his junior on hill climbs. While Hutch had cycled all over China for a number of years, without major incident or accident — a fact which impressed all who inquired about the safety and sanity of cycling in The Middle Kingdom — while out with me he broke that 100% safety record. Coming down a winding hill late one afternoon the wheels of his bike skidded on icy gravel and he ended up falling off his bike, a large truck behind him putting on its brakes just in time to avoid running him over. Worried he was requiring an ambulance or hospital treatment, I rushed over to Hutch to find him un-fazed by it all. He cycled back to where he was living, and tried to tend to his battered and bloody knees, elbows and hands himself, a wry smile over his beard-stubbled face.
One of Hutch’s most impressive achievements in China was to cycle from Lijiang across Tibet to Lhasa and onto Mt Kailas, a feat made more incredible by the challenges and dynamics of a group ride (participants from several countries included Elvis), and then the breakaway split by some cyclists which jeopardized the whole mission. I helped with some of the logistics during the year-long adventure, but am still in awe of anyone who can cycle for weeks at altitudes over 4,000 metres across the Tibetan plateau. The tale of the 70-year-old American who cycled across China to Tibet made newspaper headlines, and he featured on the front cover of cycling and outdoor magazines. We gave him a hero’s welcome when he returned to Lijiang, his story still told by expats and locals living in north-west Yunnan.
As well as his cycling pilgrimage to the holy mountain of Tibet, we worked on a housing project for small Tibetan-style eco-houses with wind and solar energy made for US$10,000. In Lijiang, he helped his friend Irlin set up a small eatery (possibly to ensure he had a reliable supply of Western food), and he was a regular visitor to my café, ‘Lijiang Millionaire’s Club’, and the crosstown cafe (and tango dance studio), ‘Over the Bridge’, run by fellow New Zealander, Stephen Dalley.
After Hutch’s years in China, he was ready for a change. Increasingly worried about the Chinese government’s clampdowns on freedom of speech, his frustrations spilled over from the anonymous government to the Chinese people. He often carried a green canvas shoulder bag with the words in Mandarin of Chairman Mao ‘Serve the People’ — and found occasion to show that to shopkeepers, bank clerks, ticket sellers or government officers — anyone who was stonewalling him or telling him ‘mei you’ (don’t have).
Perhaps inspired by the practical and easy-going nature of Kiwis, Hutch was looking forward to heading to New Zealand, where he already had a number of contacts. After Lijiang, he went to Australia, New Zealand, and then to South America, before moving to Europe a few years ago to live in Spain, Germany and Greece.
He was on a personal crusade, to promote peace and understanding, and wanted to get more people on bicycles, by holding inclusive, inexpensive cycle tours. “One of our slogans, Burn Fat, Not Oil,” he wrote.
One of Hutch’s key talents was to enlist others to join, and get them working together, even though he admitted he didn’t like groups. However, the laziness or greediness of others sometimes meant that his efforts floundered into anarchy and stagnation.
While often on the move, Hutch wasn’t a ‘rolling stone gathering no moss’ kind of person. Instead, he acquired more friends everywhere he went. I never saw him play the age card, but enjoyed hearing his wisdom acquired from a long and interesting life. He had some strong opinions on various subjects. Once you met Hutch and he got your contact details, it was like being on an email subscription list you could not get off. A few times I got fed up with the email exchanges, not so much from Hutch, but from some of his old American friends, and despite requests to opt out, found myself back on the list a few months later.
Taoist Hutch believed we needed to change the world, and to change ourselves. He quoted Mahatma Gandhi on his site: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
He rallied against capitalism, materialism, money and greed. He complained about how money was god, the world was going mad, and against the failures of democracy with widespread corruption of its leaders. One year his favourite slogan was, “We have met the enemy, and he/she is us.”
Hutch urged ‘women of the world to unite’. He was impressed by former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern, often sending me links to news articles about her, but he was not so favourable about Myanmar’s leader Aung Sun Suu Kyi and her lack of response to ethnic cleansing, telling me, “I am starting to really dislike this woman.”
He called for urgent measures to address what he saw as the biggest and most unrecognised problem facing the human race: over-population. Each day he posted comments with news articles under the title ‘Pathology in America’, or with his take on issues, written in upper case: SLEAZE-BAG TRUMP’S AMERICA. He cursed wrongdoers, and hoped they would face the consequences. ‘WOE BE UNTO TRUMP FO ALL THIS! MAY ALL THE 7 DEPREDATIONS, FULL UPON HIM AND HIS CHILDREN’S CHILDREN, FOR 7 GENERATIONS’1, he penned recently after a second child died in government custody at the US border.
Sometimes his missives were written as poems or as cryptic riddles. Likewise, he was prepared to consider other views, new information or the different opinions of those better informed, and he would figuratively smoke the peace pipe.
Hutch did occasionally like to smoke a pipe, not with tobacco but with the ‘happy baccy’. (Indeed, today there’s an article in Scientific American suggesting THC in marijuana may boost rather than dull the elderly brain).
“As I get older, I seek peace and tranquillity,” he wrote in one of his emails to me. “What has been important to me is a different life, one seeking answers to the riddle of life.” In another he sent last year, he said he was getting closer. “Closer to what? The peace of mind of having overcome materialism.” In another email he wrote “at this age, we take life one day at a time”.
He wrote latterly that he had wanted to live in Meteora in Greece, having fantasised about it while in Germany, visiting his long-time friend and patron, Rucha. The rock formation in central Greece has a stunning hillside Eastern Orthodox monastery, second in importance only to Mount Athos. Almost prophetically, he said recently, “We never know when our time has come, so better to act Now!”
On Christmas Eve last year, after a good day out cycling around Meteora, the 78-year-old wrote a poem which started:
What a cycling day this has been, What a rare mood I’m in Being the Light Screaming Delight. . . .
It was in the small town of Kalampaka near Meteora where Hutch died, around 2 January 2019 — according to his close friend Xu Tan — after coming down with a bad cold a few days before. He was cremated at the base of the Meteora rocks.
“I’m not much big on ‘goodbyes’,” Hutch posted as he left Australia in late 2011 on his way to New Zealand. “I usually slip out the back, Jack . . . get a new plan, Stan — and basically get myself down the road.”
“There is no reason to be sad when someone dies and sheds their body,” he said. “In fact, we should celebrate such a transition.”
After learning of his death, many candles were lit in memory of Hutch, in China, Australia, New Zealand, South America, in Europe, in the USA — all around the world, a remembrance and celebration of that cranky, freewheeling legend, as he cycled over the hill into the sunset, and into a brand new dawn.
And five years later, we still remember the man and his message.
Photo provided by Keith Lyons
These are authorial comments retained for colour but do not reflect the stand of Borderless Journal ↩︎
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.
Title: Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet
Author: Scott Ezell
Publisher: Speaking TigerBooks
This is one of the rare travelogues written by a gifted writer. The topic Scott Ezell covers is equally intriguing- China and Tibet. In about two hundred eighty pages, he takes readers on a tour of the most contentious part of China. Journey to the End of the Empire: In China Along the Edge of Tibet is an essential read.
American musician and poet Scott Ezell has a background in Asia and indigenous cultures. Between 1992 and 2004, he lived in Taiwan and traveled extensively in China, India, and Japan. He has been working on a project since 2009 that documents the impacts of centralised state power, civil conflict, and destructive resource extraction in the China-Southeast Asia border region. A Far Corner is an account of his experiences living and working with an indigenous artist community in Taiwan over a period of three years.
Says the blurb: “On foot, by rattling truck and local bus, by jeep and motorcycle, American poet and musician Scott Ezell explores the Tibetan borderlands in the twenty-first century Chinese empire. The journey starts in Dali, in the foothills of the Himalaya in southwestern China, and extends north a thousand miles through towns and villages along the edge of Tibet, finally arriving at Kekexili, the highest plateau in the world, and crossing the Kunlun Mountains. Ezell takes us through landscapes of blond and gold barley fields, alpine meadows ablaze with wildflowers, silver-blue rivers beneath ‘clouds like burning aluminium’, and snow peaks ‘cracking and shattering into jagged resplendence against the sky’.”
Along the way, Ezell speaks Mandarin with farmers, shopkeepers, lamas, nomads, and police officers. Throughout Ezell’s account, there is also outrage, as he observes the rise of militarization, surveillance, destructive resource extraction, and the destruction of entire river ecosystems by massive dams over the course of many years and numerous trips.
Writes Ezell in the introduction: “In September 2004 I set out on a journey along the edge of Tibet. Starting from the foothills of the Himalayas in southwest China, I traveled north into further, higher landscapes by local bus, hitchhiking, and a motorcycle I bought along the way. I speak Mandarin, which allowed me to communicate all down the road with villagers, Buddhist lamas, nomads with chunks of bone braided in their hair, and police at security checkpoints. After six weeks and 1,200 miles, I reached Kekexili, a wilderness reserve 17,000 feet above sea level. From there I crossed the Kunlun Mountains and descended to Golmud, a city at the crossroads of Tibet, China proper, and Xinjiang. That journey is the basis for the narrative.
“Over the next fifteen years I returned a dozen times to Tibet and southwest China. I witnessed transformations so shocking that I felt I was taking blows to my own bones. Massive dam systems killed rivers and displaced communities, mountains were raked apart to provide gravel for construction projects, and the region was increasingly militarized and surveilled as China tilted toward its grim police state superpower status.”
Ezell strikes a sympathetic note when he says : “Today China holds one million Uyghurs in concentration camps in Xinjiang, democratic freedoms have been smashed in Hong Kong, human rights lawyers are held in black jails, and the government openly surveils its population. But the systematic oppressions of ‘empire’ are not unique to China. The seizure of land and genocide against indigenous peoples in the United States and elsewhere, the legacy of slavery and the present-day wage-slavery of the global economy, and the colonization of Tibet as a means of territorial expansion and resource extraction these are all variations of centralized authority exerting power over minority, marginalized, and disenfranchised peoples.”
The book evokes the majesty of Tibetan landscapes, the unique dignity of the Tibetan people, and the sensory extremity of navigating nearly pre-industrial communities at the edge of the map, while also encompassing the erosion of cultures and ecosystems. Journey to the End of the Empire is both a love song and a protest against environmental destruction, centralised national narratives and marginalised minorities.
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Bhaskar Parichha is a journalist and author of 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.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
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