Our preparation for the nearly 4,000 meter Wheeler Peak in Nevada was not nearly as detailed as many people, including us, do for Borneo’s Mt Kinabalu. This was mostly because Mt Kinabalu is a high volume tourist machine, and Wheeler is happily remote and undeveloped, so you’re not forced to stay at a hostel overnight and make your summit push at 2am. You just wake up and climb it. This probably explains why I was so puffed on the last push to Wheeler’s summit. That, and the 15 kg child on my shoulders.
“To be tramping under the stars toward a great mountain is always an adventure; now we were adventuring for the first time in a new mountain country which still held in store for us all its surprises and almost all its beauties.”*
George Leigh-Mallory wrote that in 1922 after his first reconnaissance of Mt Everest. He would die on its high and unforgiving peak two years later, just below the summit, to lie there frozen and unfound until the famous expedition of 1999 discovered his corpse, pale as alabaster, somewhere below 8,200 meters.
I wasn’t thinking of this as we climbed the considerably lower rock slopes of Borneo’s Mount Kinabalu – I just happened on that passage reading Leigh-Mallory’s book on the plane to Kota Kinabalu. But his words describe perfectly the feeling we had that morning, at 3,900 meters and still short of the summit, with a big moon directly overhead and the Southern Cross low on our left side. Pale clouds filled the sky below us, surrounding our little rocky island in the night sky.
In 2006, westerners could travel into the Tibetan regions of Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces relatively freely. For one shining moment in early 2007, it looked like the group-tour-only restrictions on Tibet Autonomous Province itself would be lifted. It was a Golden Age, the time when China boosters found most evidence for their prediction that the country would continue to liberalize and ultimately democratize. The Olympics changed all that. Riots and protests brought unprecedented clampdowns in western regions. The internet was simply switched off in sensitive areas and politics nationally took a new, harder-line direction from which it’s never really diverted. Since then, troops are often on the ground in sensitive towns, and for a few years there was a spate of self-immolations. Foreigners are often thrown off buses at Kangding and other towns, long before they get anywhere near the western reaches of Tibet. Cynicism and uncertainty grows on the eastern seaboard, though you don’t notice it unless you pay attention. But out west, by most accounts, well, it’s quite, quite different to how it was when we visited.
In amongst all that, the Litang Horse Festival, a longstanding fixture on the Tibetan cultural calendar and the backpacker loop, was cancelled, and stayed that way until very recently.
On our own journey of exploration in the summer of 2006, we saw one of the last Horse Festivals before the big crackdown.
From Horiol’s very first friendly greeting as we opened the gate of his tiny hotel in equally tiny Putre, Chile, we knew we were in for a good time. This was a welcome omen, even more so once we discovered we’d been robbed in the Chilean frontier town of Arica. Boo! But it was our fault – a real beginner’s mistake. And it was just cash, and not too much, and Horiol’s big smile washed away the memory very quickly.
Unlike Sheeta, Yonnie didn’t fall magically from a dirigible to meet me. And there weren’t evil sky-pirates out to capture us. But in many other ways, our 2010 trek to the high, lonely, lost Incan city of Choquequirao reminded me of Laputa of the Miyazaki film “Castle in the Sky”, with its dignified ruins and green lawns hidden in the soaring peaks of the Andes. It was a very special place.
Someone bangs a saucepan and yells “Good Morning Base Camp!” I feel well rested. It’s not too cold, and I put on my clothes and go into the homestay tent. Thankfully it doesn’t smell too badly of cheap fuel. Breakfast is porridge and there’s honey and I drink some tea. We’re given a packed lunch, too, all wrapped in foil. The others seem tired and they reveal they didn’t get much sleep. Poor Tom is suffering from a churning belly. Of all the mornings!
I stand on top of the mountain, arms thrust high, holding my ice axe. All around me, far below, the world spreads out. Valleys, ridges, some of them obscured by cloud. I breathe the thin air as deep as I can.
And then I stop daydreaming, snap the laptop shut, and get ready for the office. All this visualising success, all this planning; I just want it to end so I can get to India and try to climb Stok Kangri.
Summer 2014: Momentarily lost in the tiny village of Hemis Shupachan, I turned down a stone alley and bumped into an old local. He greeted me warmly and asked where I was from.
“Australia? Which city? Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra?”
“Wow, you know your cities. Have you been to Australia?”
“No! But Ricky Ponting is my friend!”
Tall green trees wave in the wind, blue sky behind them. The call to prayer rises, wafts in through the open window, alluring and mysterious. We lie on the bed, staring out that window, listening to the singing float on that cool wind. Later, as the sun sets over a huge white Buddhist stupa, we sip a fresh lime soda and stare at the Kangri Range. Stok Kangri’s summit, a grey wedge of rock streaked with snow, reaches up 6,137 meters above the range. It catches the last of the yellow evening light. We are in Leh, a mountain town in northern India, and after just one day we already love it. A happy, peaceful mix of local Ladakhis, Tibetan Buddhists, Kashmiri Muslims and a sprinkling Indians from down south, this place seems to us to show that people can just get along. It’s stark but beautiful, its people practical, hardy, but above all peaceful, friendly and refreshingly warm.
If you like hiking and you have a child, well, the good news is you can keep hiking. I did a lot of research online before our kid arrived about the best heavy duty child carrier. I wanted something that could conceivably support an overnight camping hike. The Osprey Poco gets a lot of love online, and deservedly so.
This thing transformed my life, because it showed me you can take your kid anywhere.
