KHAM—THE WILD WEST OF TIBET…
The thunderstorm raged all night. The wind blasts caused such vibrations that occasionally everything was shaking like during an earthquake. This, of course, reminded us that only four months earlier Sichuan was struck by a monstrous tremor. Many roads were cut off, especially the ones leading to the mountainous western part of the province that Elena and I were now off to. I was turning over in bed listening to the impetuous clatter of the rain and wondered if it would be nature this time that might prevent us from crossing the mountain and entering the easternmost part of Tibet, a region called Kham. Until yesterday we feared that the Chinese authorities would refuse us access to this area, because the unrests that swept over Tibet and the adjoining territories with Tibetan population ahead of the Olympic Games in Beijing were rather uncontrollable and quite massive. As a result of this, Kham was officially closed for foreigners. Then it turned out that the ban was most probably lifted. However, nobody could say with certainty if this was true. We had to go and check on the spot.
In the total boundlessness of the Tibetan plateau Kham is just a small island, but in terms of history and culture it is quite remarkable. Being a peculiar buffer between the Subcelestial Empire and Tibet, the region has always had a turbulent fate. When we add the hot blood of its inhabitants, the mixture becomes explosive. During the heyday of the Tibetan state in the Middle Ages, the local feudal lords staunchly defended their independence and refused to fully bow down to the centralized power of the Dalai Lama. They relied on their fearless soldiers, who excelled considerably against the pacifistically reared Tibetan soldiers of Lhasa. However, despite their political disobedience, the Khampa—as the people of Kham are known—maintain close spiritual and cultural relations with Tibet. A few of the adherents of Tsongkhapa, who reformed the Tibetan Buddhism in the 15th century, were born in Kham. The monastery in Dege won recognition as the best xylographic printing house for religious text in the whole of Tibet. The painting school was also held in high repute and the thangkas of Kham (the Buddhist equivalent of the Christian icons) are sought after everywhere.
However, the reason why Khampa people came under the spotlight and the world heard of them is their role in the newest history of Tibet. After the suppression of the anti-China uprising in 1959 and the final occupation of all Tibetan lands by Mao’s Red Army, only Khampa didn’t accept the Dalai Lama’s strategy of passive resistance and rose up in arms. Their fearless raids against the Chinese war machine continued until the end of the 1960s, showing at least that the invaders weren’t welcomed in Tibet as bearers of prosperity, as the communist propaganda claimed. Because of all this, the regions with Tibetan population in Sichuan remained closed for foreign tourists right up until 1999. True to their freedom-loving temperament, Khampa—even today–don’t miss any opportunity to protest against the Chinese presence in their lands, so the access to Kham is still difficult.
I knew from my previous clashes with Chinese xenophobia regarding foreigners not travelling in groups in Tibet that the first and main problem of individual travellers was how to buy a ticket for a vehicle that would take them to the forbidden land. The authority’s instructions are simple: tickets are not sold to people who don’t have oblique eyes! However, the bus station in Chengdu was so crowded that in the terrible jostle at the ticket-office nobody paid attention to me. In a minute I came out of the crowd happily waving two tickets to Kangding—or Dardo, as its Tibetan name is. The town is the administrative center of the Sichuan part of Kham, located 400 kilometers away to the west at the foot of Ta-sue Shan massif. Its name translates into English as Mountain of the Great Snow. We got on a bus—somehow battered but solid looking, in a socialist way—and left.
In the traces of the bygone storm the day seemed colourless and still. The fumes, impenetrable as milk, pressed down upon the drenched vegetation. It didn’t matter that it was autumn, as the latitude here is the same as in Egypt and the greenery never fades. In the beginning the road connecting Sichuan with Tibet was a two-lane highway, but soon we left the foggy rice-fields and started climbing a narrow roadway winding parallel to the meanders of a swift river. Finished in 1954 in order to secure the Red Army’s motorized invasion of the Tibetan plateau that was inaccessible for motor vehicles, this thoroughfare tops a number of ridges over 5000 meters high and is considered a masterpiece of road construction. After four hours we reached a several-kilometer long tunnel dug in the belly of a high mountain ridge. At this point the road was cut off due to the earthquake and we were told in Chengdu that rockslides close it time and again even up to now. However, we were lucky and crawled out without a problem at the other side of the mountain.
Not only was the weather different on the other side. Azure had broken through the clouds, and the light was focused and sharp—mountainous air. The villages around were no longer straggling but compact, surrounded by terraced barley fields. The wooden structures were replaced by stone buildings. The houses had a rectangular form with small windows and inner courtyards typical for the Tibetan region. The first Buddhist sign also appeared—a freshly whitewashed chorten that was rising at the confluence of two rivers. On huge billboards along the road were depicted girls in Tibetan national costumes and soldiers in the uniform of the Chinese army, jointly directing their eyes to the bright future.
We arrived in Kangding at nightfall. We expected to land in a real Tibetan town, but it turned out that we were at least twenty years late. Strategically situated in a narrow gorge, the town was one of the strongholds of independent Kham in the not too distant past and has the atmosphere of a border settlement where trade flourishes. Khampa offered their Chinese neighbors yak butter and medicinal herbs from the high plateaus and bought from them green tea and rice. Trade continues today, however the goods are a lot more different. The town now has a completely Chinese appearance as the number of settlers from the lowlands exceeds considerably the number of the autochthon Tibetan population. Nevertheless two Buddhist monasteries are still preserved, grotesquely squeezed between two pre-fabricated blocks of flats.
The next day we continued to the interior of Kham. We were told that we’d be allowed to travel for at least 200 to 300 kilometers more to the west, where there is strong military presence and we would hardly be permitted to proceed. We gave up the regular transport and got on a minibus crowded with local people. They looked at us mistrustfully because foreigners in Kangding are quite a rarity. Another reason is the spy phobia instilled by the authorities. They tried to pump us for information about where we were going. We feigned absent-mindedness and kept our fingers crossed just to get to the plateau, and then to face come what may.
Luckily nobody checked us on leaving the town and we quickly advanced to the gates of Kham, the Gye La ridge, which is 4290 meters above sea level. Here we crossed the mountain and the curtain lifted. The limitations of the horizon and—with them—our own existence seemed to melt in the boundless depth of the Tibetan plateau. It’s impossible for this horizontal abyss not to make the human heart throb, the emotional gravitation lighter–not to cause an almost atavistic call for freedom. Everything inspires a feeling of freedom: the soft rolling hills, the snow-covered peaks in the distance, the Nomadic tents, and the black mosaic of the scattered yak herds. We couldn’t stand any more the claustrophobia of the minibus and at the first opportunity, to the amazement of our fellow travellers, we got off. What could we be looking for in the middle of nowhere?
The roadside village consisted of five or six houses in classical Tibetan style with trapezoidal painted windows, flat roofs and massive wooden doors. The big dogs were not very friendly, in contrast to their masters who immediately offered tea and yoghurt to us. Wherever you looked, you could see grazing yaks and Nomadic tents made from black wool. This part of the plateau has a moderate height of about 4000 meters and is famous for its lush pasture. During the season Nomads from near and far gather here. Most of them still ride horses, and with their wide-brimmed felt hats they resemble cowboys from the American Wild West. Keeping abreast of the times, however, in front of many tents we saw not stallions but motorcycles, glittering in the sunshine. Why not, it’s easier to bring the herds together by them.
We were overtaken by the night in a large village, in fact a small town. It is located among three hills crowned by chortens and countless prayer flags. It is called Lagang like the nearby monastery of the same name, which is one of the most important in Kham. It was founded in the 9th century when the Tibetan king Songtsän Gampo—husband of a Chinese princess–built a chain of 108 temples leading to the east, towards the Subcelestial Empire.
Looking for a place to spend the night we passed by a monastery complex that looked irritatingly new. Obviously it wasn’t spared by the Cultural Revolution in China and had been completely renovated. A middle-aged woman with a beaming face and gentle eyes gave us shelter. After she showed us the guest room painted in a Tibetan way with bright decorative motifs and covered with beautiful motley rugs, we sat down together in the kitchen.
The furniture consisted of a low table with couches, a stove, a TV set and a home altar. Tsering Dolma proudly showed us a picture of her older son who had emmigrated to India and became a monk with the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. Then, unostentatiously, she took out her rosary and started whispering mantras while we were finishing our tea.
It rained during the night and the morning glistened, purified. But just for a short time, as a convoy of heavy military trucks came into view. The growling of diesel engines and the clouds of exhaust gases blanketed Lagang for a long time; however it didn’t prevent the local Khampa from doing their ritual morning clockwise tour of the monastery walls and from turning the 108 prayer drums in honour of Buddha and his teaching. Apparently they are accustomed to the rattle of weapons at their threshold at almost any time.
After the troops had gone, the usual bustle in the town’s main and only street resumed. Young men with long black braided hair defiantly shuttled up and down on their motorbikes. Pink-cheeked girls with heavy jewelry in their hair flirtatiously paraded on the sidewalk past stands and stray dogs.
Elderly monks, vacantly watching the vanity of the day, were sitting in the sun in front of grocer’s shops. Nomads with loaded horses were offering goods to merchants who condescendingly waved them away while talking on their mobile phones. Chinese tourists stopped their expensive jeeps in front of Lagang Gompa monastery taking out their cameras and photographing whatever appeared in front of their eyes. Curious children were darting about in the crowd looking for something interesting. The prayer flags on the slopes of the three sacred hills around the town fluttered gaily under the blue sky and the constantly swelling wind made them wave like a flowing mane. Next to them were grazing honorable yaks whose imperturbability could not be broken by anything.
We slowly climbed to a higher place marked by a chorten. In the east, next to the road, the bronzed roofs of a recently restored temple gleamed yellow. The pastoral boundlessness behind it was interrupted by a snow-covered mountain chain where the rain clouds from yesterday’s rainfall had taken shelter. In the pearly translucence of the mountainous day a pale rainbow appeared. Every minute the intensity of the spectrum increased until a monolithic coloured arch emerged above the white walls of the new building. We were climbing back down when all of a sudden about ten galloping horses crossed the road running towards the entrance of the rainbow. Behind them a Nomad with fluttering hair was galloping on his motorbike, swinging a wide-brimmed hat above his head instead of a lasso. They passed away and the light vision, as if it had waited just for that, vanished as well.