Tibetan Roads Not Travelled (Bobanory)

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Our seven day jeep trip from Lhasa in Tibet to Kathmandu in Nepal started badly, and the first day was to get steadily worse. We had turned one corner and were heading down the main street in only light traffic when our driver clipped the back wheel of a cyclist, sending her toppling to the floor. I was sitting in the front and saw it all very clearly. I was expecting the driver to swerve at the last minute to the right, just the centimetres that were necessary to avoid the collision, but he ploughed straight on. This caused immediate commotion. The driver stopped in the middle of the busiest road in Lhasa and got out of the car to check the situation. Nele, our Belgian travelling friend and qualified doctor got out of the car at once to see of she could help. Nwang, our guide, crammed in the back of the jeep amongst all our luggage joined the action along with Coen, Nele's boyfriend. Sarah and I decided to stay with the car and guard our entire belongings. Oncoming cars were tooting loudly, upset at the stationary car in the middle of the road. It was even a while before the jeep driver returned to the vehicle to put on the hazard light, so at least other road users could see we were actually stationary in the middle of the road before themselves swerving round to avoid us. Fortunately these other drivers were more alert than our own, and nobody hit us. The cyclist managed to hobble with Nele's assistance to the kerb, people were gathering. The driver looked upset and shaken. All this at 8.30 in the morning, five minutes into our marathon journey across the Himalayas.

Forty tense minutes or so passed before the driver got back in the jeep and erratically drove us round a corner, did a horrendous three (more like seven) point turn in a side street before heading back in the same direction from whence we had come. He found somewhere out of the way to park and then disappeared, abandoning us and Nwang to wait for further news. The information we had been given was limited, but we learned that by Chinese law we had to wait while the driver accompanied the cyclist to the hospital to see whether the accident was serious. While all this took place the vehicle was not allowed to leave the vicinity of the city and we were grounded. The travel agency responded well. The agency bosses had turned up pretty quickly, and they were dealing with the authorities and shielding us form any unnecessary involvement. This had the side-effect of us witnessing a lot of heated exchanges (in Tibetan!) between our guide and the agency bosses, and repeated phone calls to unknown sources. Wondering what the hell was going on, there was a lot of standing around and whispered conversations between us four Westerners as to what might be happening, with no conclusions drawn.

Within an hour or so another jeep had been scrambled and we were ready to leave at last. The bosses asked if everything was ok. We were ok but the jeep was not. Coen knew his jeeps (he owned one in Belgium and drove it to Italy every winter for the ski season) and closely inspected our new vehicle. The tread on three of the tyres was virtually non-existent, and the spare was no better. Coen refused to get into the jeep on the grounds that we were going above an altitude of 5,000 metres and the chance of snow was just a little bit possible. All kinds of off-road driving would be necessary on the trip due to unexpected landslides, uncompleted roads, purely for the fun of it, and so on. He had a point lets face it, and we all backed him up. There was a slight mis-communication in that Coen used the word 'flat' to mean 'tread', leading myself and the Tibetans to interpret this as a flat tyre rather than a worn tread, leading us to repeately kick the tyres and wonder what was wrong. When we all finally got the message it was obvious to all that the tyres were no good and the agency boss made yet more unfathomable phonecalls. The agency did itself credit again by scrambling a third jeep, which turned up an hour later. I guess they didn't want to upset the Westerners, who had after all paid an outrageous close-on four hundred quid for the trip and were still a couple of minutes from their starting point of the trip and three hours in. At around 11.30 we finally left Lhasa, three jeeps down, and took to the open road. Our brush with authority over, we were set for exhilarating drives through outstanding mountain scenery. Unfortunately this turned out to be our tamest of further brushes with authority as the events of the day unfolded, with everything compounded by the initial delay.

The young driver seemed ok, fast when he could be but no rash overtaking. The jeep was good and the cheesy dance music tape he was playing was entertaining. Things were looking up, as we started to climb high to reach a pass with stunning views of Yamdrok-Tso lake below, turquoise in colour and vast, stretching to the west out of eyesight. After a quick lunch stop and the obligatory choice between fried rice and noodles which was to form our principal diet for the next few days, we proceeded on our way. A few minutes down the road we came to a line of rope strung across the road attached to two concrete poles. A gruff looking man appeared from outside a tent and engaged in another heated exchange with the driver. The driver offered the gruff man a cigarette, to which the gruff man took to be a bribe (that probably was the intention) and waved him off, increasing the level of his gruffness. The guide got involved and they all disappeared inside a tent by the roadside to negotiate while we once again could only shift about uncomfortably and theorise as to the delays.

We were eventually told some fifteen minutes later that we were not allowed to pass due to construction work going on in the afternoon further up the road. Of course if we had not been delayed so long by the cyclist incident everything would have been fine, but because of this we were late in the day and passing was apparently impossible. In the meantime we had been informed that turning back would mean taking another six or seven hours (instead of one or two along the present road) to reach our first stop for the night. In addition, several vehicles containing locals only had drawn up to the temporary barrier and had been allowed to pass through. While they were inside the tent we pondered on whether they were just after a bribe, and whether we should just pay it so that we could get on our way. The usual traveller ethics of the 'too easily submitting westerners' against 'efficiency of passage for after all a small sum' discussion surfaced, but we resolved to wait a little longer to see what would happen. A good half hour into this particular hold-up, another person emerged out of the tent. We pleaded with him, in English, to let us through, and inexplicably he just smiled and waved us on! We were on our way again and no-one could figure why. My best interpretation was that they were holding out for a bribe, but they had got bored and just let us through.

A few miles up the road we did indeed hit upon the construction - the gruff barrier man had been telling the truth. A tarmac laying vehicle loomed ahead of us and we were ushered off the road. We would have to wait until the tarmac was laid, rolled (and rolled and rolled again) before we could pass. I got out of the jeep did some rolling of my own - a cigarette. This aroused the curiosity of the local road workers who were on a break, and crowded around me to watch the spectacle. It all got a bit claustrophobic as more and more people gathered and peered at my hands. I started to fear for my wallet, checking the zip on my fleece pocket every few seconds so as to ensure no intrusion was being made by the onlookers. Eventually the driver got angry with the crowd encroaching around his jeep and he ordered me to climb back in. I complied out of a desire to keep the peace, but the crowd did not disperse from around the jeep - us Westerners were starting to feel like zoo animals as they peered in at us, pointed and laughed. They were ordered back to work, and it transpired that we would have to wait for the road to be laid and sufficiently dry before we could move on - this was going to be a long pause in an already severely delayed day due to the cycle accident and the gruff man. I amused myself by thinking that this actual road had not been travelled in its new form, and we would be the first Westerners to do so. This road had not been travelled.

The wait seemed interminable, broken only by an invite into a local shop by an old Tibetan lady who furnished me with cup of hot water - delicious! We had run out of loo-roll however and so I did get the opportunity to conduct a trade using pointing and hand signals. The old Tibetan lady was clearly grateful for the business and many smiles were exchanged. It took almost the entire length of our stay to get a smile out of one of the local girls, aged about 7 or 8, who spent most of the time eye-ing us suspicously as if she suspected we had landed from another planet. When she did smile though it was beautiful and genuine, and eventually she was giggling as we made funny faces and poked our tongues out.

It must have been two hours later when eventually the occasional car started crossing the new road and it seemed at last that we could go. We pulled up to the road from our parking spot. To the left of us and in the direction we had come from the crew were working, furthering the road construction. To the right our brand spanking new road awaited. There was a queue of vehicles, headed by a green army truck about fifty metres up ahead of us. Again a couple of cars passed from both directions and we could not understand why we could not continue our journey. Nwang, our guide, kept muttering that we must be very very careful. I took this to mean that we had to be careful of the road as it was newly laid, and perhaps they had to test it with a few cars before okaying it for slightly heavier vehicles such as our jeep carrying six passengers and a whole heap of rucksacks. I found out later that Nwang meant we had to be very very careful of the army vehicle. Coen and Nele and Sarah and I begun to get impatient, saying between ourselves (rather than to the driver) things such as 'Just go!' and 'Let's get on with it'.

Finally and not after any signal or prompting, the driver pulled onto the road, turning right, and edged down the highway slowly. Almost immediately the driver of the green army vehicle got out, looking very angry and started yelling at us, gesturing for us to pull over in front of the their truck. Our driver did so immediately, while our guide muttered 'Shit, shit' repeatedly. As we came to a stop, the army man strode over to the drivers door. Our driver opened the door and started to get out. The army man hastened the proceedings by grabbing him by his coat collar and heaving him out of the jeep, yelling furiously. He then punched our driver in the chest, hard but with an open hand rather than clenched fist. Our driver recoiled back into his seat. The army man then reached inside the jeep and pulled the keys out of the ignition and retreated to his own truck with our keys. Nwang, who was stuck inside the boot of the jeep until someone could let him out did nothing except muttering 'shit' a few more times. Us Westerners also did nothing, except look on in horror at the ensuing spectacle. The driver regained his composure and got out of the jeep, clutching at his chest - he was clearly in some pain. He went to the drivers window and started talking with the army man, who had thrown the keys onto the dashboard, out of reach.

Negotiations went on for several minutes, and from our view ten metres or so down the road it appeared that the army man and his companion in the front passenger seat were clearly mocking him, enjoying their moment of power in a microcosmic re-statement of the domination of the Chinese might over their Tibetan hosts. Inside our jeep it was becoming tense and we wondered what we could do, which was of course nothing. We were afraid to even get out to let Nwang out of the back, which he claimed was not worth it anyway since he could not speak Chinese (whereas the driver could). Then our driver was ordered away and got back in the jeep without the keys, still clutching his chest - he was clearly in some pain. The army truck then started up and moved slowly towards us. Something was then shouted at our driver, who in turn shouted something at our guide, who then, as the army truck drew level with our jeep suddenly shouted 'One hundred Pay one hundred.' I hastily pulled out my wallet and fished out 100 Yuan (Chinese currency - about six pounds) and gave it to our driver. The army truck was almost beyond our jeep when our driver thrust the 100 Yuan towards the army trucks passenger seat occupant who then grinned slimily and threw the keys contemptuously at the driver. The army truck then pulled away and rode off. Their work was apparently done. We all breathed a sigh of relief. We were 100 Yuan down but we had our keys, and the driver pulled off with us all in silence and in shock as we digested what had just happened. Reports of the tormentuous nature of the Chinese police towards Tibetans and Westerners were oft repeated in conversations in traveller cafes and warnings written about in boxed texts of the Lonely Planet, but you never think it is going to happen to you. But it had happened and piled on the discomfort of a difficult day with hold-ups, delays and accidents - this was the culmination of an inauspicous day.

Or so we thought. A couple of miles down the road and we came across another part of road construction, except that this time there was no-one around. The road was not passable. Our driver cast about and then started reversing to a point at which he then pulled off the road and headed across the rough gravel towards a river. Our sighs of relief had been breathed prematurely. The jeep plunged into the river and crossed it slowly and turned right again in the direction we were heading. We could see the road ahead of us with a number of clearly unpassable sections, as the jeep ploughed on over the rough terrain, picking its way slowly and bumpily across the river valley. To say I was concerned would be an understatement, although I did resolve privately to myself that the driver did seem to know what he was doing, and after-all are these Toyota Landcruisers not built for this kind of terrrain? Sarah and myself had never experienced this kind of off-road before however and this increased the tension inside the vehicle. I was thankful at least that we had exchanged jeeps for one with a better tread. We once again crossed the river at a different point further ahead, whic this time was deeper and the current a little faster, white with turbulance and frothing like a rabid dog. The water was crashing up around us and the level had reached the doors. But we crossed again and pulled up the steep bank back onto something that vaguely resembled some kind of very rough path, or at least track other jeeps had made while passing through this area before.

Eventually Coen reacted to the concerned looks on mine and Sarah's faces and told us that the jeep is perfectly capable of this kind of terrain and we would even be safe in up to a metres depth in the river, which relieved the tension markedly. This off-road incident was something we were supposed to enjoy (and indeed we found out later that the other groups had thought it fantastic!). But with what had just been endured with the Chinese army, this little trip back and forth across the river until we finally reached a point where we could re-join the main road, just added to the catalogue of adventures that had made this first day very a bad day indeed.

But this was only day one, and days two to seven were a marked improvement on the first day. Our only brush with authority was the constant battle for who got to put the music on in the jeep. The entertaining pop became excruciating by day two when we realised this was the only tape the driver wanted to play. Even i got fed up with the endless repetitive beats, but the driver did not seem to appreciate Coen's Belgian hip-hop or our eclectic compilations. Aside from this and a few clashes with the driver over itneries and schedules and whether we could stop to take photos, the journey was smooth and certainly less dramatic in terms of problems, but more dramatic in terms of unfolding scenery and mountain vistas. This trip did take in Everset Base Camp after all. Take a look at Sarah's great blog 'Seven Layers in To Bed' for a more 'balanced' view of the events that took place over these seven days in Tibet.

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