The Hotel on the Roof of the World (4 page)

It is normally at this time, with your thoughts far away in the snow peaks, that you drift off to sleep, just in time to be woken up by the stewardess bringing along your present. One of the perks of flying CAAC is that you always get a little present. I now have a great collection of them, ranging from: tie pins, belts, bags, tablecloths, fans, plastic wallets, key chains, pollen extract, to my favourite – the CAAC postcard collection. One side of these cards have pictures of pretty CAAC scenes: planes flying into the sunset, stewardesses glistening in the blue sky etc. The reverse sides of the cards are taken up with helpful travel tips which are guaranteed to wake you up.

WHAT FACILITIES AND SERVICE CAN BE PROVIDED IN THE CIVIL PLANE?

WHY PASSENGERS MUST FASTEN THEIR SAFETY BELTS ON BOARD OF CIVIL PLANES?

While passengers are working out how to use their presents and what to do if there should be one of those ‘hard to avoid failure of planes' etc, the stewardesses come around with what the CAAC postcard described as: ‘delicious food only at meal time.'

Either the person who wrote this had a terrific sense of humour or there is something seriously wrong with his or her taste buds. I suspect the latter.

The meal always comes in a cardboard box which has an imaginative route map on the back with maps of planes going all over China in every direction – even to places where there are no airports. The box contains a greenish egg, a variety of dry pastries with unidentifiable contents and a plastic bag of vacuum-packed pickled vegetables labelled ‘CSWA fly food'.

The health warning that CAAC prints in the in-flight magazine, advising passengers not to overeat is unnecessary.

DO NOT EAT TOO MUCH BY AIRPLANE

Anyone overeating on this food would qualify for CAAC's other travel advisory:

I must say that there have been tremendous improvements since my first flights on CAAC. The cardboard box now has a seal and a date stamped on it – so that you can check it is on its first flight with CAAC. This prevents problems occurring, such as that which happened to a group of tourists who arrived in Lhasa after a short visit to Gansu province. On their way to the city of Lanzhou, a two-hour flight from Chengdu, they had received the typical cardboard boxes. Most left the box untouched, one person just had a bite out of his stale bun and tossed it back into the box. Three days later on their return to Chengdu they were presented with cardboard boxes of ‘delicious food only at meal time'. Suddenly one of them called out: ‘Hey! Someone's had a bite out of my bun!'

Happily the days of the aged Boeing 707s for CAAC's flights to Lhasa are now numbered, as they have finally decided to take them out of the sky before they drop out. For many years Chinese authorities insisted that only planes with three or more engines could fly to Lhasa due to difficulties in landing other types of aircraft at an altitude of 12,000 feet. These apparently conscientious safety regulations were very convenient for CAAC. It just so happened that by a complete coincidence, CAAC was the only airline in the region operating aircraft with three or more engines – their good old Boeing 707s.

In order to convince the Chinese that a plane with less than three engines could land successfully at Lhasa airport, Boeing Corporation flew in a 757 – with the American Ambassador to China aboard. The Chinese requested that the anxious Ambassador, wearing his Victory Desert Storm sweatshirt, be put through a series of one-engine landing and take-off tests before placing their multi-million-dollar order for the 757s. The Boeing pilots performed superbly and the aged 707s are now being replaced. It has taken some of the fun out of flying CAAC but even if the machines are new, the service has the same charm. The immaculate interior of the new aircraft is rapidly changing in appearance and familiar odours peculiar to CAAC planes are already hanging in the aisles.

On my first flight into Lhasa I had managed to sleep for most of the two-hour journey. I was tired after the trip to the Far East from Europe, the one-night stopover in Hong Kong, Chengdu and then the early-morning departure. Even the stewardesses were asleep now.

For no apparent reason, I woke suddenly from the depths of a dream – where I had seen nothing around me but barren rocks and Chinese soldiers. Regaining my conscious thoughts, I strained my eyes at the window to estimate our position. Way beneath, veins of ocean-blue river traced across the white sand of the Tsangpo river bed. Mountain ranges rippled away in waves towards the peaks of the Himalayas. To the south, somewhere beyond the tiny speck of Yumbulagang temple was the mountain kingdom of Bhutan. My head was spinning with questions. Could that mountain be Everest? Or perhaps that one over there? They do tend to look alike when seen from above. Where is Nepal? Where are the boundaries between China and India where their soldiers peer at each other from frozen dugouts?

As my mind pondered on these questions, gazing at the tangled mass of mountains that stretched away into the distance, the aircraft lurched forwards into its descent. The passenger next to me stirred from his sleep. His mouth stretched into a gaping yawn and the pieces of eggshell, which had fallen into the creases of his blue Mao jacket during his meal, now tumbled out onto the floor. They would soon be trodden in to the carpet by the trampling hordes on their way down the aisle. Hundreds of years ago the Mongolian hordes had wreaked havoc on the advanced civilisations of Asia, and soon they would be doing the same to the Boeing 707 carpet.

Tufts of black hair stood up at unnatural angles from the top of his head, where they had been pressed during the two hours that he had slept. His yawn lasted an eternity. His mouth opened so wide that it took up practically the entire sphere of his otherwise featureless face, giving me an unprecedented view of Chinese dental work. Judging by the display of pickled vegetables in various states of decomposition that were caught between his molars, it was apparent that dental floss is either not widely used or simply unavailable in China. I wondered if I had packed any in my 20 kg luggage allowance.

Coming out of his yawn, he squinted to focus on me and, seeing that he was sitting next to a foreigner, he beamed into a Cheshire cat Chinese smile.

‘Hello,' I said.

‘Lhasa!' he replied, pointing out of the window.

I could see that communication was going to be a problem but at least the Chinese seemed to be friendly people. After reading countless Western newspaper articles about China and Tibet I had been conditioned into mistrusting the Chinese. It was quite a pleasant surprise to find that as long as they were not standing behind a desk in a uniform or working in any capacity, the Chinese were generally extremely likeable people.

‘Lhasa!' beamed the Chinaman again, pointing eagerly to the floor of the plane. I peered out of the window. Still nothing.

TOUCHDOWN IN TIBET

The relentless, almost imperceptible descent over the Tsangpo valley is slightly unnerving for the first time. I could feel that the plane was descending but below there were no signs of any city or airport or runway. The plane did not circle or turn in any way but just continued to sink lower and ever lower in the morning sky. The mountaintops, viewed with delight from far away, now appeared ominously close outside the windows. Some were even above the plane.

The inquisitive mind can stretch the minutes of the descent into anxious hours. ‘Was the pilot really the uniformed youth we saw slurping from his jam jar of tea at the top of the steps? Has he been in a plane before? Did the man with the screwdriver do his job? Why can't we see anything of the airport?'

Hearts pounded as the aircraft rapidly approached the river bed and dunes. There were still no signs of modernity below; just the ever-nearing earth. As if in answer to the many prayers being said aboard the plane, a flash of grey runway appeared at the windows at the moment of impact and the jet liner rolled securely along one of the longest runways in Asia. Four kilometres of precision-laid Chinese concrete.

The relief of a safe touch-down is normally missed by the foreign passengers who watch in disbelief at the sight of many jolly Tibetans happily standing in the aisle at this tense moment, stretching, yawning and then unpacking their belongings from the overhead lockers. The stewardesses notice nothing unusual. I once sat on the plane to Lhasa with an American visitor who screamed, ‘SIT DOWN! EVERYBODY SIT DOWN!' at the top of her voice. All heads turned to this frantic lady who was gesticulating wildly at the Tibetans to get back in their seats. Rather sheepishly, those standing in the aisle, looked at one another, then back to the wild woman and decided that there would be less trouble if they just perched on the arms of their seats and waited until the plane had landed before going back to the overhead lockers.

After touchdown the stewardesses pushed their way along the aisle to return firearms and weapons to their respective owners. Chinese soldiers received revolvers and three tall Tibetans, each with a long red tassel braided into their hair, received daggers. Being somewhat larger than the Swiss army knife which I had been allowed to keep with me, these objects had been stored in CAAC brown paper envelopes for the duration of the journey. The envelopes were hopelessly small for the weapons they contained and the daggers repeatedly fell out of their sheaths, slicing through the air and digging into the Boeing carpet.

As the recipients of the daggers grinned with delight at having their weapons returned I realised that I was seeing Khampas for the first time. I had read much about these fearsome people: the warriors of eastern Kham province.

It was the Khampas who were called upon to fight against the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 and who were the main force of the uprising against the Chinese in 1959. More recently, it was the Khampas who the CIA supported in a guerrilla warfare mounted against the Chinese from neighbouring Nepal. The Nepalese government eventually had to clean out the Khampas. Some say that it was under pressure from the Beijing government, but there is a popular story that the Nepalese became weary of having the Khampa bandits terrorising Nepalese villages with American-bought machine guns.

Whatever the truth, these three Khampas looked fearsome enough. The crush of bodies pressing together in the aisle parted as the Khampas motioned that they wished to stand there too. The plane had still not come to a stop but everyone, except the bewildered tourists, was trying as hard as possible to stake a place in the aisle – ready for the dash to the exit.

As the door opened, the Tibetans and Chinese strained their way to the front, flattening everything in their path. Heavy parcels of stinking garlic grass were dropped from overhead lockers onto the seats below. The few passengers who remained seated laughed it off with a shrug and a gaping mouth stuffed with the debris of the lunch box which they were still trying to finish. Any leftovers from the lunch boxes (and of course the wonderful CAAC giveaways) were crammed into the already rupturing hand luggage during the run down the aisle. Confusion arose at the entrance, as, despite efforts to prove this to the contrary, only one person and their bags can get out of the door at a time.

Once on the runway, they scurried off towards the airport building dragging their bundles behind them. The Khampas stood apart from the rest, taller than the other Tibetans and towering above the Chinese. They did not walk, but swaggered, with their daggers glinting in the sunlight. The flock of hesitant tourists followed them, muttering that there was no bus, and asking each other what to do, as there was no indication of where to go next apart from the cloud of dust left by the Tibetans and Chinese disappearing into the distance.

The airport buildings were far away, the noise of the plane had died down and I was left in peace to survey the scene around me. The sky directly above was an impossibly bright blue that I had only seen before on faked postcards. Woolly clouds hung in the air just over the mountain tops, while the first rays of the sun struck the valley bottom sending a light mist rolling over the foot hills. Mountains lined the north and south of the valley rising gently to rounded green peaks.

At first I was slightly disappointed that there was no snow to be seen. I had expected the landing strip to be hacked out of ice between glaciers, but here everything looked soft and green. I didn't realise at the time that I was seeing Tibet at the climax of its short summer and that, just two months later, I would be craving a glimpse of something green – other than the fluorescent Holiday Inn sign.

As I walked across the runway the clouds to the west of the valley parted to reveal what I had asked for: two magnificent snow-covered summits. The more southerly one was a vertical tube of rock with snow-capped icing resembling a wedding cake. Stretching to the north from the base of the wedding cake was a great wedge of a mountain. A perfect 45-degree slope leading to a snowy crest, which stopped abruptly and dropped into a vertical cliff face. Intrigued with the notion that it should be possible to walk to the top of the mountain without actually doing any climbing I set about the more immediate task of finding my car and driver.

‘They probably meet you at airport.' Li had told me in Chengdu. Something was wrong. I had only walked 20 paces across the runway when I had to stop to take in lungfuls of air. I was gasping like a fish on the river bank. The first sensation of breathing Tibetan air was that of great relief after the rotting cabbage of the aircraft and the dreadful pollution in Chengdu but the healthy feeling is short-lived. At the airport's altitude of 11,500 feet, the air contains nearly 30 per cent less oxygen than at sea level, and I could feel it. After a few moments to regain my breath I followed the Khampas in the direction of the airport building.

Stepping over a ditch which ran along the side of the runway a young man approached me waving a white cloth. ‘Holiday Inn?' he smiled. I nodded and returned the smile.

‘Ah, I am Tashi,' he said, busy unravelling the cloth which turned out to be a beautiful silk scarf. Still smiling, he placed the scarf over my head, bowed slightly and uttered the words
tashi delai
.

‘Good to meet you, Tashi Delai. I am Alec Le Sueur.'

‘No, no, I am not Tashi Delai. I am Tashi. Tashi Delai.'

‘So who is Tashi Delai?' I asked. He looked puzzled.

‘Nobody is Tashi Delai.'

This conversation was getting us nowhere.

‘
Tashi delai
is Tibetan greeting,' he explained. ‘My name is Tashi. Only Tashi. Not
tashi delai
– that is Tibetan greeting.'

‘Ah, I see,' I said. Not seeing at all. I tried another
‘Tashi delai'
.

‘Yes,
tashi delai!
'

We laughed all the way along the muddy track, repeating
tashi delai
to each other ad nauseam. Whoever Tashi was I could see that we were going to be friends.

On the grass beyond the ditch we entered the general arrivals field. It was the meeting place where the numbered tourists would be matched up with their corresponding guides. None of the guides knew the names of the people they would be meeting, so they held up signs showing their group's number. Each sign had been written hurriedly at the airport on a scrap of whatever paper was available – usually on the back of a cigarette carton. Unfortunately, the tourists arriving were never aware that they had been reduced to a number by the authorities and so matching the correct guide with their group always took some time.

From the selection of rusting buses and Beijing jeeps which filled the car park, I was glad to see that Tashi was taking me to a fairly new Toyota Landcruiser. The outline of a yak had been stencilled crudely onto the side of the car, with the faded lettering ‘Lhasa Hotel'. Tashi read them out aloud and laughed. Lhasa Hotel had been the old name of the hotel, before Holiday Inn had taken it over.

The driver of the car, a Mr Dorje, greeted me with as many smiles as Tashi and just as many
tashi delai
's. Dorje made no attempt at English, after all why should he, and immediately set into a mime: an aircraft coming in to land, straining with heavy bags, gripping a steering wheel and then pointing to something which was far away. I was having trouble with the last bit but with some added help from Tashi, who said the word ‘hotel' as Dorje was pointing into the distance, I understood that my bags would follow later.

I asked Tashi how long it would take to reach the hotel.

This was a mistake. The smile disappeared from Tashi's face, his eyebrows came down over his eyes and his forehead wrinkled into a deep frown. Struggling in thought for some time, he eventually shrugged ‘sorry' and smiled again. Conversation during the car journey was going to be limited. I would just have to learn Tibetan when we reached Lhasa.

The city lies beyond the hills to the north, almost due north, of the airport, but the road must follow the course of the Tsangpo River and then its tributary the Kyi Chu in a lengthy and dwindling detour away from the rising sun. According to the Chinese, the reason why Lhasa's airport was built by the tiny village of Gonggar, some 60 miles from Lhasa, is due to the topography of the region. I have a theory that some PLA General just pointed to the wrong valley when he gave orders for construction work to start.

Dorje swung out onto the main road; a narrow, undulating stretch of tarmac which I was to learn is the best quality road in Tibet. Green lakes of barley, the staple crop of Tibet, shimmered in the breeze. The corn was on the verge of ripening and it would soon be time for harvest. On the other side of the road were the uncultivated foothills, grazed only by sheep. High above in the mountains we could just make out the black shapes of yaks.

I have often been asked by tourists what yaks are. Putting it simply: yaks are hairy, high-altitude cows, although I must admit that this is not a foolproof definition. I once gave this description of yaks to a particularly annoying couple whom I had the great misfortune to pick up at the airport. I was supposed to be meeting Goldie Hawn but good old CAAC had changed the flights without telling anyone and instead I had to give a ride to a couple who should have been banned from travelling further than their front doorstep.

As I drove into Lhasa with them a flock of sheep ran across the road. ‘Oh look, are those yaks?' the lady called out with excitement. I had to disappoint her by informing her that in Tibet those were called sheep and in fact yaks were somewhat larger animals with long pointy horns and black shaggy coats. Perhaps I had explained it badly.

Tashi was doing the explanations for me on my first trip in from the airport. ‘Gonggar Dzong' he pointed out.
Dzong
means fortress, but there was nothing where Tashi had pointed. A few rocks were strewn about on a hill but that was all. More precisely it was where Gonggar Dzong had been, before it was blown away in fighting when the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959.