This concentrates the eye on more intimate views: villages of brick and thatch houses and tiny plots of land, ploughed by hand, with nothing much to suggest anything has changed in the last few hundred years. Verdant, fertile country, but rural life is still on an intimate scale. At the bend of a river a mixed team of cows and donkeys is being turned in tight circles to thresh the freshly cut wheat. Milk churns are carried on bent backs.
The only significant modern intrusions are regular police checkpoints (not a purely Nepali phenomenon, we’ve learnt to expect men with guns everywhere in the Himalaya) and the bizarrely large number of whisky adverts on the side of the houses. Names like Matador, Pied Paper and Bond are so ubiquitous they give the impression that much of rural Nepal must be on the bottle.
The only other product that is so obviously trumpeted is education. They’re proud of their schools here and it’s common to see crocodiles of young children, in matching uniforms, ties and backpacks, emerging from establishments like The Golden Future High School or The Wisdom Academy.
After lunch at Barabhise in the valley of the fast-flowing Bhote Koshi (Tibet River), the countryside narrows into a deep, forested gorge. A bridge with a bungee jump incongruously attached rises high above us and a little further on we pass a heavily guarded hydroelectric power station. Just as everything seems to be getting steep and claustrophobic, the walls of the gorge widen, quite abruptly, to reveal, high above us across the end of the valley, the white-stacked rectangles of a mountain city. My first glimpse of Tibet.
Nepali immigration is in a large bare room decorated with three framed pictures of King Gyanendra, his queen and Ganesh, the elephant god. Having had our names laboriously entered on a Departure Record, we walk up a dirty muddy road towards the border crossing on Friendship Bridge.
As we have all our gear to transfer, we cautiously back our vehicles into the middle of the 200-foot bridge to the exact point where Nepal ends and China begins. I don’t think anyone’s ever done this before, and there is much shouting from both ends. In the mayhem we say our farewells to Wongchu and Nawang and Mingmar, the trio of Sherpas who have looked after us so magnificently, while at the same time keeping an eye out for our Chinese escort.
He turns out to be a slim, young man in a sky-blue fleece, holding some papers and looking extremely anxious. So preoccupied is he with this unorthodox crossing that he doesn’t introduce himself for another two hours. Only then do I learn he’s a Tibetan, by the name of Migmar.
Anything in the Himalaya with the word ‘friendship’ attached is bound to be Chinese, and, sure enough, they built Friendship Bridge across this gorge in 1985. It’s a grim and deeply confusing place to be and we are pretty soon ordered to stop filming. As Wongchu and Nawang wave one last time before disappearing into the crowd behind a ‘Welcome to the Kingdom of Nepal’ sign, I experience an emotion not dissimilar to that of seeing my mother wave goodbye to me on my first day at school.
We’re now in the hands of unsmiling Chinese border guards in uniforms that seem to have been specifically designed to be too big. With the SARS epidemic so recently over, I first have to fill in a Quarantine Form. I then take it to a booth where a man in a white coat checks it, produces a gun, points it right between my eyes and pulls the trigger. He then peers at the gun, notes down my temperature and motions me into China.
The disorientation continues. Not only does the traffic drive halfway across the bridge on the left (Nepal) and the other half on the right (China) but, because of time changes, one end of Friendship Bridge (China) is two hours and fifteen minutes ahead of the other (Nepal). Propelled suddenly from mid-afternoon to early evening, we load up and drive as fast as we can, which means extremely slowly, up the six miles of slippery, winding track between the bridge and the Chinese immigration and customs post. Across the valley I can see Kodari, the last town in Nepal, receding below us. The gorge is steep and very beautiful but scarred with piles of rubbish, regurgitated from the backs of the buildings and spilling down to form scummy, foaming pools at the water’s edge. In every country we’ve been so far private cleanliness and public squalor seem to quite happily co-exist and I’ve never really been able to work out why.
We arrive at Chinese immigration as it is about to close, and it’s only pressure from our local hosts that stops us having to spend the night in the vehicles. We’re allowed to take an overnight bag and walk up to the hotel, but everything else must be locked in the cars overnight.
Later: Room 505 of the Bai Ma Hotel, Xangmu. TV but no heating. Communal lavatory and bathroom down the passage. Single strip light, thin, inadequate curtains that are no match for the street lamps outside, and windows that seem specifically designed to funnel jets of cold air into the room.
This basic hotel, which we’re assured is the best in town, is saved by its small, warm and cheerful dining room. Over momos (traditional Tibetan shell-shaped dumplings), stir-fry and Budweiser brewed in Wuhan, we meet up with Nina Huang Fan, our Chinese production assistant from Beijing, Mr Yang, the man the Chinese have sent to keep an eye on us, and Migmar, the soft-spoken young Tibetan, who still seems traumatized by the events on Friendship Bridge.
We’re joined by Mr Tse Xiu, who is someone high up in the Foreign Relations Ministry of the Tibetan Autonomous Region. He speaks with quiet authority, but not in English, unfortunately. When his message is relayed to us it’s not exactly heartening. Everest Base Camp, which we are scheduled to reach in 48 hours, is presently suffering from strong winds and temperatures down to -25degC (-13degF) at night. He advises us to make the best of a hot shower tonight, as there will be no more creature comforts for a while.
Have showered in a trickle of tepid water and am writing this with a blanket around me and wondering just how much colder it’s going to get.
Partridge and mountain peaks. A romantic image of home comes to life in a truck painter’s yard in Peshawar.
PAKISTAN
At the Khyber Pass. The Grand Trunk Road (to the right) winds into Afghanistan.
Gunsmith, Darra, North-West Frontier.
Dental Alley, aka Qissa Khwani Bazaar, Peshawar. Abdul Wahid (bottom) thinks the whole head might have to come off.
Palatial hospitality at Chateau Fatehjang.
At Prince Malik’s travelling pavilion I meet an exjockey, on the left. The sport cost him an arm.
Bull-racing near Taxila.
At Rumbur. Kalash girls, barley field, dry-stone wall, traditional costume, modern foot.
Threading our way through the Hindu Kush. The rugged route out of the Kalash valleys.
Chitral.With Siraj Ul-Mulk at a madrassa (a religious school) in the mosque his grandfather built.
A boy recites the Koran, which he must learn by heart.
No lie-in when the band’s around. Early-morning music heralds the start of the Polo Festival at the Shandur Pass.