Only Built 4 Tibetan Linx...

After being ejected from a monastery, even in very polite and Buddhist fashion, one might think there is a period of introspection that follows. "What have I done to offend? Or what have I not done to deserve remaining?" you might ask. Not I. Rarely tormented by notions such as the possibility that I may have done something wrong, the manically squawking ensemble of discordant practical voices in my head drowned out the lone chirping cricket of self-evaluation. I turned the full attentions of my mind to the question "Well, what now?" First, you have to establish a goal, and lure the disparate strains of thought towards that common point. In this case, it was like tossing a pile of situational-awareness birdseed in front of a raucous aviary of independently-minded birds of different species. The voice of Reason, in my head, can be like an old man in waders and glasses, who bears a strong resemblance to Sean Connery's appearance in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, tossing seeds for much the same reason (crashing Nazi fighter planes). I offer some tasty logical morsels such as "OK, there's no bus for the rest of the day", "OK, I know I am precisely 6.25 kilometers downhill from a village with proper accomodation", "I suppose the thing to do would be to start walking now, on the road leading east, which is in the opposite direction from the afternoon sun", and so on. The problem is, a great number of the metaphorical birds in my head are not, say, pigeons and warblers, but loud-ass parrots and the like who don't want any damn birdseed and flap off in search of mangoes. "Nahh, let's just stay here until we can get a picture of a monk at an unfortunate visual angle to a shitting mule", they'll say, or "SQUAWK I WANT MOMOS." The most annoying of these birds is the pouty ostrich who usually says something like "Well, it's FUCKING COLD like always, why don't we spare ourselves the trouble and JUST DIE, since laying these fucking ginormous eggs is killing me anyways?"

In the end, the ever-wily raven won the day, asserting its authority over the other, more easily distracted birdies by seizing upon the pertinent fact that going anywhere else but the aforementioned village would be much longer, and in a brilliant sop to the parrots, teasingly suggested "There could be yaaaaakkksss...."

So it was that I and the various entities inhabiting the haywire thicket of my neural pathways began our trudge up the mountains to the village of Kibber, despite knowing full well that at 4205 meters, Kibber is one of the highest villages on Earth (the bird who raised this objection, a Brazilian toucan, was shot, a fate common to the more troublesome members of my brightly-plumed flock of sentience at inconvenient moments). The walk up was not as hard as it could have been, since there was a proper road. The people of Kibber are very proud of this road, because it enables them to boast that they are the highest village in the world with both a motorable road and electricity. They formerly claimed to be THE highest village of all, but I guess their attention was drawn to a competing claim. In any event, their current boast, carefully phrased though it is, is still patently false, as can be demonstrated by undertaking the short walk many people in town recommend you go on to the higher village of Gete. Gete, it must be pointed out, is connected to Kibber by both road and electricity. Kibber's only defense is that Gete is hardly a village, consisting of seven houses and a fluctuating number of sheep.

This is not to detract from Kibber, which is indisputably altitudinous and borderline uninhabitable. Seeing as the height of summer is still rather nippy, and that the winters must be horrendously cold since the snow is enough to block all contact with the rest of the world, I was rather puzzled by the locals' insistence of hanging out in their stone houses year-round, despite having no immediate labor or other compulsion to do so. This seemed to me to reveal that this particular group of Tibetans is both exceedingly hardy and exceedingly immune to the temptation of other parts of the country where labor-free winters involve sitting under coconut trees and trying to get monkeys to pose with the little umbrellas from your drink.

As I said, the walk up was none too arduous, though it did presage difficulties to come. Most obviously, it gave me my first glimpses of certain mountains than soon were to factor heavily into my discomforts, but I also noticed that all the way up I was walking alongside a very, very deep and utterly vertical gorge. The completely denuded terrain and the rocky bluffs atop the gorge make a spectacular setting for Kibber indeed, and when the village comes into view your natural thought is "So that's what an infamously high village looks like." Kibber is cradled in a plateau of sorts (a plateau "of sorts" in that it is not even slightly flat like a proper plateau should be, but is on an undulating sheet of rocks and dust with a large enough expanse of not-utterly-vertical land to make it more suitable for habitation in comparison with surroundings that even the local goats refuse to traverse.

As one would expect from a village whose life centers around growing barley once a year and hiding from snow the rest of the time, the only real activity is leaving it. I am being a bit harsh. I mean the town itself is quite boring (but in a serene, potentially appealing sort of way), and the natural source of entertainment is to go for walks in the surrounding slopes. My first such walk was out to find this Gete village. "Why?" you may wonder. Simple. I was told, with no ambiguity, that there would be TONS of yaks. Predictably, I somehow missed the proper path and ended up climbing a mountain gully until I came across stray piles of snow and ice and concluded it was probably time to move in a more horizontal direction. I scrambled over loose rock slopes and all the way up and over a steep ridge with primitive Buddhist memorials on top, all in hope of gaining a vantage point from where to espy a throng of yaks. When I crested this ridge, I saw without question, the village of Gete: seven houses with a large expanse of rare green pasture stretching high above it on fortuitously "level" ground (i.e. a 30 degree slope). Dotting this pasture were a handful of gray ponds, and in the distance of mighty herd of... about 12 cows and an assortment of sheep. I WAS PROMISED YAKS.

It had occurred to me also by this point, that I was walking completely alone across a wilderness, where there were visibly no other people for miles, that I was also ill and therefore fatiguing quickly, and that if anything bad happened it would be a long time before anyone stumbled across me. Not that anything bad could happen, or at least nothing worse than being alone on the mountain and being caught in a snowstorm. I was standing up there, marveling in my solitude. Now, surely I have been in more isolated places on this trip, such as in the middle of the Thar Desert, but that was with other people. I have also been on numerous camping trips and such into fairly unspoilt areas, but at that moment it dawned on me with complete clarity that I was as alone -as far away from any other human being- as I had ever been. The unobstructed, cover-less panorama confirmed that much. It occurred to me, recollecting my recent evaluation of the situation, that it was probably not good to be so alone, especially if, like I suggested, something bad were to happen, such as (I don't know), a snowstorm HINT HINT.

There may or may not have been a snowstorm. What I will tell you is that were definitely no fucking yaks.

Arriving rather bedraggled back into town, I called it an early night, since after all I had been on monastic adventures that very morning and since climbed up to Kibber and thence stupidly over some mountainsides. I awoke after a long sleep when I could no longer resist the morning sun assaulting the dark cocoon of my massive quilt through my carefully-maintained breathing hole. Stretching on my balcony I said to myself "Hey, I know! Let's go for a walk today!" I think the voice was that of a spoonbill.

Plainly visible from Kibber is the village of Chicham and the appealingly green, albeit steep, pastures above the town. From above Kibber, you can also see the winding dirt road that leads around the end of the gorge and up the slopes on the other side. Except, when you actually walk on the road, you will not fail to notice that the road does not go around the end of the gorge, but dead-ends at that same gorge at a point where about 8% of a bridge has been constructed on the other side. Since the sides of said gorge are inarguably vertical, made of solid rock, and approximately 3000 feet deep (by crude eyeballing), it goes without saying that the lack of a bridge posed something of a conundrum. Something, however, was pecking at my mind, and it wasn't a bluejay. There was a steel cable across the gorge, such as one would expect to find on the site of a future suspension bridge, except it was completely alone and there was in fact no bridge tower. There was however, in the distance, what appeared to be a crude metal basket hanging from said cable...

Nuh-uh. No. Fucking. Way.

Just then a local laborer came and confirmed my suspicions by pulling on a long, dangling rope which was also attached to the faraway basket, causing it to slowly climb the cable towards us. It was now pretty clear how we were supposed to cross the gorge. When we finally got the basket all the way up our side, I took my seat within and prepared to laboriously pull myself back across...and went fucking zooming. On the slightly downwards slope of such a cable, the basket behaves much like a zipline, save that it has no mechanism for braking and there is no harness to save you should you wobble yourself out of the basket. Almost as suddenly as the swift descent of the cable began, it stalled. I seemed to have reached the nadir, and though I was about 3/4 of the way across the gorge, this still left about 50 meters to manually pull to a safe disembarkation, and about a billion fucking meters down to the river. Fortunately, there is usually someone on hand to take a moment from their work and help tug you up to the landing (and then ask for money). "Well, that was much easier and about equally nerve-wracking as I expected", I thought. "The way back should be much easier."

I walked to Chicham and found it was much like Kibber, minus the idea of commerce, so I proceeded to Chicham's pastures, which were much like Kibber's minus the idea of slowing erosion. After a great deal of awkwarldy slipping about over the side of a creek, two options appeared before me, and they were both in retrospect the crazed jabberings of suicidal parakeets with nests in privileged positions on my frontal lobe (I suspect these nests are adorned with a mixture of tinsel, twigs, and cuttings from underground nihilist newsletters). One was to go up and over the top of the pastures, which appeared very very high and led to a mountain pass (it turns out that this route is indeed the beginning of a long trek into Ladakh). The other was to go directly up the side of the mountain immediately next to me so as to tromp about its relatively low-looking snowline and feel smug about myself. I doubt you will have trouble guessing which I chose.

The problem with this mountain, obviously, was that it was steep. And I mean really steep. I've talked a lot about steep paths, but this was no path, it was just the side of a very, very steep mountain. Aside from a number of tough stream crossings, I rather underestimated the steepness of this slope, which at times reached about 70 degrees, yet I foolishly pressed upwards, pulling my way up with my hands as the ground constantly gave way under my feet. It was a slope best tackled with proper climbing shoes, a rope, carabiners, and an Austrian man named Jurgen. Lacking any of these aids, I had to make do with the supplies on hand: sneakers, a backpack containing a 500-page history of Muslim India, and a large pair of polished titanium-alloy testicles. As I got higher and higher and neared the 5000-meter mark, the dangerously loose soil ceased and the dangerously loose stones began. I have never studied geology, but based on my firsthand experience, it would be better if it did not exist. It would seem that the part of a mountain that is usually covered in snow all the time experiences dramatic effects from the summer thaw, and this summer-denuded area consists not of a solid rock surface, but of about a two-foot layer of precariously balanced, very sharp stones about the size of a loaf of bread. Whereas lower down the soil beneath my feet slipped and forced me to cling desperately to handholds above, I found that hanging on these rocks was a very poor idea indeed as it tended to send similarly large rocks crashing down towards me, and many of these rocks were in turn maintaining the delicate equilibrium of very lethal-looking boulders. Nevertheless, I pushed up, charting a torturous course on ground I chose on the basis of how far I would fall if the entire pile slipped (and this was important because the pile always slipped), and the likelihood of triggering a non-trivial avalanche. Weaving between islands of snow at a snail's pace, bloodying my hands grasping which sharp stones seemed most immobile, and bruising my hands many times as the rock immediately above tumbled ever-so-perfectly onto my knuckles, I finally reached the bottom of the Himalayan snowsheet. This being the astronomical peak of summer, the summit was a mere 150 meters above me. I looked up at the possibility, and saw a whole lot of rather deep snow, some even worse slopes, and some much unsteadier-looking rock piles. I thought to myself "Fuck. That." The eurasian nuthatch may be a little bitch of a bird, but he has his uses.

I contented myself with using some of the smaller stones nearby to assemble the Ghostface Buddha signature you may be seeing in the photograph on the side of this page [unless I have changed it by the time you read this], and then made my way down the mountain. "Making my way down" the mountain entailed bringing much of the mountain down with me, taking very worried glances over my shoulder, and turning several spots on my ass and thighs the same blueish-gray color as a North Atlantic fish. Unable to cross the streams back over (since I had made several daring leaps that were obviously not possible in the other direction), and with the memory of soaking my feet and walking back down the Kedarnath trail with boxer shorts on my feet fresh in my mind, I hit upon a desperate, and ultimately stupid strategy. I could easily have dry socks and shoes, I figured, if I just hiked up my pants, went barefoot, and scampered through the freezing rapids as unclumsily as I could manage. A serious tip: though idiotic, this actually proved much more pleasant than having drenched footwear.

I lumbered back to Chicham extremely slowly and scrounged a bowl of barley-thickened milk curd to assuage the fatigue of hunger. Finally off the mountain, I had a long night of very dedicated nothing-doing in my bed to look forward to... on the other side of the gorge.

Some time later I was once again in the crude metal basket and zipping over the void, though this time I stopped quite near where I began. Going back up, I had neglected to calculate, was going to be a much greater challenge. Pulling on the rope relentlessly, I inched my way across the chasm, and the closer one gets to the middle, the more acutely aware one becomes of the extreme height one is dangling at, the suddenly perceived immensity of a 200-yard crossing when made in five-inch increments, and the incredible crudity of the contraption in which one is sitting. The problem isn't so much the height: presumably, if you were to sit and do nothing, you would just harmlessly sit there until you muster the willpower to get yourself the hell out. However, on an upwards slope this is not the case, because if you let loose your aching grip on the pull-rope for even an instant, you are going to zip back down to some other point in the middle of the gorge as helplessly as a baby on a treadmill, and until you can pull yourself all the way to one side in a single, continuous application of brute force you will never reach the end. That, and because you are sitting in a basket rather than a box, you continually worry that important items may fall out of your pocket and be a real bitch to pick up later. Suddenly, I was inspired by another classic Sean Connery role (all I can say is that it must have been one of those days), though this time a less happy one. I refer specifically to the scene near the end of The Man Who Would Be King, which fittingly takes place in an obscure Himalayan kingdom, and made a strong impression on me as a child when spoiler! Connery is walked onto a rope bridge, the ropes are cut, and as the narrator hauntingly recalls, "It took him half an hour to fall..." Later, Connery's head is presented to a rather stunned Rudyard Kipling, but it was the falling part that stuck with me. As I looked down, I had the presence of mind to at least do some elementary physics calculations and concluded that a very nasty wobble would be the beginning of a fall lasting a mercifully brief 45-85 seconds, depending on the terminal velocity of a pimp.

Needless to say, I successfully crossed the chasm and gloated inwardly at length while I rested. I hobbled along the desolate road and approached the tin-sided work shacks that were there for no apparent reason. Just outside one, a young Tibetan women was -gasp- changing her overshirt, and in the open terrain it was impossible for me not to see her undershirt. To say it could have been awkward is a massive understatement. I smiled and made a great show of looking as apologetic as I could while trying to indicate that to me it was really no great deal and I wasn't about to mistake her for a harlot and inform her relatives of her careless dishonor, or whatever the ingrained fear would be. Unlike my Hindi, which is awful, my Tibetan does not exist, and I assumed that I had done all I could do to ameliorate the catastrophic faux-pas. As I passed right by her, I felt acute anxiety of what she might do in reaction to my own reaction. Much to my surprise, in a land where things that are "much to my surprise" have ceased to really surprise me all that much, I was actually much surprised by the surprise that followed.

She showed me her tits.

Then, much to my surpise.... I will spare you further grammatic contortions, but I was very surpised indeed, she took hold of hy arms and pulled my wounded hands directly onto her cream-brown breasts.

There are several observations to make here. Firstly, it would appear that altitude and decreased atmospheric pressure have no detectable effect on the texture and consistency of the human mammary organs. Secondly, it further appeared that in this particular case, it was the effects of gravity that had instead been suspended. What I'm saying is that they were some very perky breasts. I paused for a moment and came to a third conclusion: regardless of the unexpected circumstances, having one's hands grasping a comely Tibetan girl's soft, naked breasts is a considerable improvement in a day that had theretofore been marked by grasping very sharp rocks.

What naturally is to follow in such situations I will leave the reader to imagine, for I cannot empirically provide the answer myself. Interrupting the research prior to its conclusion, as it were, I pulled myself away remembering that Ghostface Buddha's customary state of bachelorhood is currently in a state of deluded yet happy compromise thanks to the nefarious yet delightful wiles of an Indian sweetie. With the Tibetan tongue once again eluding me (though the other Tibetan tongue had not found me so elusive), I struggled to gesticulate that by declining what seemed to be a very generous offer I was not being ungrateful, but merely had other commitments. Unfortunately, I had no idea how Tibetans would sign "girlfriend", so I tried "married", though since I was even more clueless of the markers of a married Buddhist man, I had to make do with "Hindu wife". This only seemed to add to the confusion, as the girl's face registered first that I apparently was proposing marriage, and then a second look of even greater confusion, perhaps meaning I had accidentally told her that I transgressively dabble in the customs of Hindu women. Finally I tried the gesture for having a "child" or "something about knee-tall", and though I have no idea what she thought, the cyclone of her desires had seemed to fade into mere tropical storm territory. With that, I left.

"Go back, you moron!" I heard myself thinking. "It's not too late!" "She WANTED you, man!" "That was a way better Tibetan experience that Dharamshala."

My head contains a multitude of sexually voracious birds.