A Different Kind of Freedom Read online

  I had heard a warning earlier in the journey that the toughest checkpoint between Markam and Lhasa blocked the road just after Bamda. The former Lhasa policeman said that after the famous “72-Bends,” a descent of seventy-two switchbacks, there would be a tunnel through solid rock guarded by a Chinese soldier with a large gun. He said that at this place most foreigners who were headed toward Lhasa were turned back. After the exhilarating two-hour descent down to the river, Andrew and I spotted the guard’s living quarters just before a bridge that crossed the water where the road continued into a tunnel through solid beige colored rock. The river ran far too wide and deep to get across. We both knew that the bridge represented the only way across.

  We decided to take our chances, and just try to ride across the bridge. Another building blocked our view of the guard post. Not until we were right on top of the guard did he spot us. About ten feet [3 meters] before the guard post we came into his line of sight. It was all just like I had been told, a soldier with a big gun guarded the bridge with a tunnel that went into solid rock. A heavy belt of extra bullets and other assorted weaponry hung around his thin waist. He held an solid black automatic weapon across his chest. By this point in the trip I possessed reasonable comprehension of Chinese. When the guard yelled, “ni qu nar?” (where are you going?) I knew exactly what he said. I just chose to ignore him. I waved my hand to indicate that we planned to head straight ahead, and kept on riding. He yelled again, “ni qu nar?” We rode on. Thoughts of bullets in the back of my skull raced through my mind. In another fifteen seconds we rode into the tunnel on the far side of the bridge. My mind moved to thoughts of an army jeep coming after us. I listened for the sounds of a jeep engine and kept pedaling hard. Nothing, no trucks, no jeeps, no gun shots, nothing, no one followed us. I kept riding at a strong pace. After another two hours passed I knew that they had no intention of chasing after us. During the next few hours we climbed up a small rocky canyon, regaining the altitude that we lost during the speedy ride down the “72-Bends.”

  As part of my research for the trip, I compiled a list of all the main towns on my route. Next to each town I wrote notes as to if the police were rumored to be difficult or not, the remaining mileage to Lhasa or Kashgar, the availability of food. For Eastern Tibet most of my information had come from a friend who had walked the entire length of road from Southwestern China to Lhasa and then down to Kathmandu, Nepal. I had met Robert in the popular Yak Hotel of Lhasa in 1992. He was in the middle of a walking trip across Asia. A few years before, he had spent two and a half years walking from the southern tip of South America to Texas. He lived two and a half years of waking up every morning and walking all day long, then going to sleep and waking up the next day to push on northward. When I met him, I was headed to Kathmandu on a mountain bike and he was headed there on foot. We had a bit of an informal race to Kathmandu. He won, I never said I cycled quickly.

  Robert had told me that problems may arise if I spent too much time in the next couple towns. All of these towns only have one main street. I would roll into town, buy some food, and whatever else I needed. Then I would push on as fast as possible. I knew that it would take an hour or so before the police got word of my presence. As long as I kept moving on, things went well.

  Andrew had been on the road a long time by the time I met him. I could tell from the way he interacted with the local people that the traveling had worn him down. He was mentally tired of being hassled, and tired of being in a place where he did not always understand what was going on around him. Not speaking Chinese or Tibetan made things even more difficult for him.

  Andrew and I had descended from a 14,250-foot [4344 meter] pass to the town of Rawu which sat at the edge of an enormous half frozen lake. On the far side of the lake rose mighty 19,000- and 20,000-foot [5792 and 6097 meter] peaks covered with glaciers and snow fields. Small wooden homes with flagpoles thirty feet [10 meters] high flying prayer flags dotted the fields before us. We both stopped on the side of the road to take in the beauty of this place. When I heard some words in English yelled in my direction, I looked up to see a group of well-dressed Tibetans sitting off to the side of the dusty road. I rolled my bike over to them and exchanged a few words. This Tibetan family had lived in refugee camps in South India for years. The father was a well-educated man who spoke English with an Indian accent. They were some of the few Tibetans who acquired special permission from the Chinese government to enter Tibet legally and visit the family that they had left behind. Decades before, they had fled the invading Chinese army, crossing the Himalaya on foot to settle in refugee camps in India. The entire family was proud of their daughter who had been selected for the special group of 1500 Tibetans that the US Congress had recently allowed to enter the USA as political refugees. She had just moved to New Mexico a few months before. With her clean blue jeans and purple and pink LA Gear jogging shoes, this young Tibetan woman stood out almost as much as I did. The tiredness and hunger wore thin on Andrew. When he yelled that he wanted to head into town I bid the friendly family farewell.

  We rolled into town, a small bar stood on one side of the road with saddled horses tied to the hitching post out front and a truck-stop hotel sat on the adjacent side. Word rapidly spread that “inji” (Tibetan for English people) had arrived in town. A group of ten or fifteen dirty kids encircled us. Short pieces of string held their shoes on, only a couple possessed the luxury of real shoelaces. To them we must have looked like creatures from outer space. They carefully checked out our bikes, and our gear, they wanting to press every button and flip every lever. I quickly tracked down the hotel attendant and found us a room in the corner of the courtyard. We ducked our heads under the ever-present low door frame and unpacked a few things. I washed some of the only clothing that I was not already wearing, two pairs of socks. On my way back to the room two older Tibetan men greeted me, I replied with a friendly “Tashi Delag” (Tibetan for “Hello”). We chatted for a bit. When I did not know the correct Tibetan word I would fill in a Chinese word, a little confusing, but everyone seemed to understand. The conversation soon turned to politics, in particular the Chinese oppression in Tibet. Even though I could not understand every word that was uttered, they made it very clear that some major problems existed. The Chinese police often injured or killed Tibetans. My heart went out to these two Tibetan men. I had heard the same stories so many times before, and knew that it would not be the last time because I was headed toward Lhasa and the political and religious oppression is always the worst in the capital. I have never really understood all of my attraction to Tibet and her people, but I do know that much of it has to do with how the Tibetan people deal with adversity in their lives.

  When I started to walk back into the hotel room, my two new Tibetan friends followed. They showed some curiosity about the bikes, and started to inspect them. When Andrew spotted these guys in the room he became upset. He yelled, “Get out of the room,” and informed me that if I wanted to talk to the locals not to bring them back into the room. At that moment I knew that I could not continue the rest of my journey with Andrew. We had ridden together for two days. It had been fun talking and riding with him, but he did not share the same vision that I had when it came to interacting with Tibetan people. I certainly had my times when I got fed up with people trying to rip me off and people hassling me, but the important thing was that I had a lot of times laughing and joking with snotty-nosed kids and sharing meals with old nomad women. I also had some language skills that helped me to create these wonderful experiences.

  Not until I returned from my first trip to Tibet did I start to truly understand the European takeover of North America. The situation that Native Americans faced when the Europeans started to arrive in North America is extremely similar to the situation that Tibetans currently face with the Chinese. It is one thing to read about genocide as a disinterested high school student, but it is completely different to live in an environment in which the culture and people are being actively destroye
d around you. During the 1800s the American government encouraged new European settlers to move farther and farther west offering ownership of land previously inhabited by Native American Indians. Over the course of a relatively short period of time, the Indians were herded on to smaller and smaller remnants of their original lands. Today the Chinese government is executing the exact same plan in China and Tibet, a policy of population transfer, as the Dalai Lama refers to it. Xizang Province is the Wild West of China. It is a land of economic opportunities, harsh environments and hostile natives.

  Andrew and I had been eating dinner in the small restaurant in the front of the courtyard. While we waited for dinner I talked with the couple who ran the place. When the big round fellow with the gun sat down next to us, I shut up quickly. He demanded “pass! pass!”, my language skills quickly faded and I pretended to not understand his single spoke word of English. I just replied with “bu zhidao,” (Chinese for ‘I do not understand’). His one word of English came out of his mouth in an intelligible fashion. I just did not want to hand over my passport. The policeman did not seem like a particularly hostile man, but I just could not risk someone confiscating my passport. After about fifteen minutes of him asking and me replying with, “I do not understand,” he walked out. He had had enough of this pointless and idiotic conversation. When he left everyone relayed to me that he was the “Big Policeman,” I remained a bit nervous about the whole encounter throughout the evening.

  We both would have liked to rest up in beautiful Rawu, but we knew that we could not risk another run in with the police. I awoke to the sound of rain hitting the metal roof of our dingy room. We slowly rode out of town in a cold mix of rain and snow at dawn. It sure would have been a treat to just lie in bed for the morning. An hour down the road, I told Andrew that I wanted to finish the ride to Lhasa by myself, he understood somewhat but I knew that loneliness tugged at his heart. Five months had passed since he had anyone to ride with. He rode on alone, while I sat by the lake for a few hours. I watched the misty clouds break up and the sun shine down on the pristine lake shoreline.

  I always tried to have an idea of what might lie ahead, for at least the next few days. From Rawu things looked wonderful. The road followed the river for the next 150 miles. My altimeter read 12,500 feet [3810 meters] above sea level and I knew that I would drop all the way down to 6,500 feet [1981 meters] in the town of Tangmai. I had not descended that low since the beginning of the trip.

  Jungle in Tibet?

  For fifty miles I rode past spectacular ice-covered jaggy peaks that my map indicated rose over 19,000 feet [5792 meters] high. The maps also showed that the remote Assam tribal region of Northeast India lay just on the other side of these mountains. In Rawu I had resided in an alpine region. At one point during the day I watched the rapid change in the surrounding vegetation and found myself in a temperate region. By the end of the day I was happy and hungry. When I saw two Chinese army soldiers standing on the road in front of their camp, I asked them where I could buy some food. They directed me to their army camp. Everyone I asked reiterated that the camp possessed plenty of food but no one could pinpoint a time or place where I could find it. Finally, a soldier took me to the commanding officer. He was obviously unsure about my presence in his camp but my bicycle journey impressed him. He arranged for me to eat in the mess hall when all of the soldiers ate but he made it clear that I could not spend the night. I had an hour before dinner so I decided to just hang out in the center of the compound where all the men played Ping-Pong and basketball. Without much of a wait one of the soldiers asked me to join him in a game of Ping-Pong on the only table. Like most all Chinese soldiers in Tibet boredom filled these guys’ lives. Most of them were from Beijing or Shanghai, and had attended some of the better schools in China. They considered being stationed in Tibet something like being sent to Siberia. Most of them also thought that Tibetan people were not much smarter than dogs or monkeys. My ability to speak some Chinese pleased the soldiers. They wanted to know everything about America. They all had seen Michael Jordan perform his extraordinary basketball skills on TV. I disappointed them when I informed them that I could not play basketball. After a couple of games against my first Ping-Pong opponent, they realized that I could play a half decent game. Everyone wanted to play against me to try to beat the American at Ping-Pong. I enjoyed playing and joking with these guys. When the call for dinner came, one of the officers directed me to the back to the kitchen. The commander allowed me to eat in the back with the kitchen staff and the officer that was assigned to watch over me. They fed me well, rice, chicken, pork and vegetables. By the time I walked out of the kitchen my belly was totally stuffed with wonderful Chinese food.

  At the lowest point on this section of the road lies Tangmai-a place covered with dense tropical jungle. This was not the Tibet that I knew. Monkeys filled the trees and smashed snakes dotted the road. I stopped in the only place to eat in Tangmai. When I sat down at the table to wait for my food, visions of India came back to me, the heat, the sweat, the hoards of flies everywhere. From Tangmai the river turned south into a tribal area that remained almost unexplored. It is only accessible by foot trails that follow the river down through deep gorges. Most Tibetans do not know how to live in this kind of environment. They do not know how to survive the heat or how to treat tropical diseases with Tibetan medicine. I made a mental note and left the gorges for another trip. I turned west and started up one of the last passes that separated me from Lhasa.

  The town of Dongzhou captured my interest. It is positioned between the jungle of Tangmai and the predominately high altitude Tibetan Plateau. The people of this town wear a style of dress that I had never witnessed before in Tibet. It consisted of a heavy brown wool poncho and an elf-like hat made of brown wool with a band of gold brocade around the edge. By Tibetan standards a luxury hotel operated in town. Fortunately, I got a room with clean sheets to myself. Most Chinese and Tibetan hotel rooms have four to six beds crammed into a single room with cold carpetless concrete floors and maybe a single window. Tibetans and Chinese never travel alone. It is normally the luck of the draw as to who else you share a hotel room with. The notion that Americans have of privacy does not really exist in China or most other parts of Asia. Being a foreigner, I would get a room to myself a fair amount of the time. There is still a practice of segregation when it comes to foreigners in this land.

  After a hearty dinner, I returned to my room to write and relax. I heard a knock at my door, I called and two young Tibetans in Western clothes came into my room. We talked for a bit. I learned that one of them worked at the TV station in Bayi, a big military town between Dongzhou and Lhasa. I did not realize it at first but the other one was the local police officer. He seemed like a decent guy so I started to ask him about the towns between Dongzhou and Lhasa. He told me that Bayi and Nyingchi would definitely be trouble spots for me. He warned me that the police there would certainly hassle me. When I asked him about Dongzhou he replied it was “closed to foreigners,” smiled, and then said that it was also “open a little.” When he asked to inspect my passport, I knew I could trust him. I showed it to him and explained all the different stamps from countries in South America, Central America and other parts of Asia.

  Since Tangmai my days consisted of continual climbing. After a day and half of uphill, many more miles lay ahead. By sundown I found a spot on the edge of the road to set up camp. With few level places around other travelers had obviously camped at this location. I could see a few patches of snow just up ahead, I knew that this was one of the last places to stop before the top of the pass. I started into my normal evening routine. I found three big rocks on which to balance my large metal mug and lit a wood fire under it to get the water boiling. I started to cook one of my standard dinners of ramen noodles with dried fish. Like most every day, I was starved, my belly ached for food. I could not wait to eat. In my hurry to get the food ready, I hit one of the rocks and spilled most of my dinner into the fire. Using my
bandanna to protect my hand I recovered a good part of the dinner from the hot coals of the fire, but it still left me hungry. Just as I started to fall asleep, two Tibetan men and three mules decided that my camp was also a suitable place to spend the night. All of their mules carried heavy loads of goods from Bayi. Without a doubt they had come from the other side of the pass. I was not in a good mood and I just wanted to get to sleep. I did not want these guys poking around all my stuff. I felt tired and hungry.

  I think they sensed my state of mind to some degree and started doing their own thing. The father found a few smoldering coals left from my fire and quickly rekindled a flame. Starting a fire at 13,000 feet [3963 meters] is never an easy job. At such a high altitude the air has little oxygen to keep a flame going, you have to almost continually blow on the coals for it to burn well. Meanwhile, the son collected more firewood and unpacked the mules so that they could freely graze during the night. When Tibetans travel usually the only thing they actually cook on the fire is a large pot of tea. The tea is then drunk and also used to mix with tsampa, toasted barley flour, to make a dough-like mixture that is eaten. Tsampa makes up one of the main staples of the Tibetan diet along with yak meat. Once their pot of tea started to boil, they called and asked if I wanted anything to eat. I crawled out of my sleeping bag, grabbed my thermarest mat and sat down by the warm fire. They instantly started to fill my cup with tea and gave me a couple of handfuls of tsampa. We exchanged few words, they spoke almost no Chinese and I had difficulties understanding their Tibetan, but as I sat around the fire with these men I felt I became part of an ancient circle that has gone on for thousands of years. These guys did not know me or probably anyone even from my country, but they went out of their way to make sure that I had hot tea to drink and food to eat. As I sat at the edge of the glowing fire and looked into their eyes I knew why I struggled through so many hardships on this trip, I knew that all the trials were worth it.