Seven Years in Tibet Page 4

  Our zero hour was fixed as 2 P.M. on April 29, 1944. Our plan was to disguise ourselves as a barbed-wire repairing section. Such working parties were a normal sight. The reason for them was that white ants were always busy eating away the numerous posts that supported the wire, and these had to be continually renewed. Working parties consisted of Indians with an English overseer.

  At the appointed time, we met in a little hut in the neighborhood of one of the least closely watched wire corridors. Here makeup experts from the camp transformed us in a trice into Indians. Von Have and Magener got English officers’ uniforms. We “Indians” had our heads shaved and put on turbans. Serious as the situation was, we could not help laughing when we looked at one another. We looked like masqueraders bound for a carnival. Two of us carried a ladder, which had been conveyed the night before to an unguarded spot in the wire fencing. We had also wangled a long roll of barbed wire and hung it on a post. Our belongings were stowed away under our white robes and in bundles, which did not look odd as Indians always carry things around with them. Our two “British officers” behaved very realistically. They carried rolls of blueprints under their arms and swung their swagger canes. We had already made a breach in the fence through which we now slipped one after another into the unguarded passage that separated the different sections of the camp. From here it was about three hundred yards to the main gate. We attracted no attention and stopped only once, when the sergeant major rode by the main gate on his bicycle. Our “officers” chose that moment to inspect the wire closely. After that we passed out through the gate without causing the guards to bat an eyelid. It was comforting to see them saluting smartly, and obviously suspicious of nobody. Our seventh man, Sattler, who had left his hut rather late, arrived after us. His face was black and he was swinging a tar pot energetically. The sentries let him through, and he caught up with us only outside the gate.

  As soon as we were out of sight of the guards, we vanished into the bush and got rid of our disguises. Under our Indian robes we wore khaki, our normal dress when on outings. In few words we bade each other good-bye. Von Have, Magener, and I ran for a few miles together, and then our ways parted. I chose the same route as last time and traveled as fast as I could in order to put as long a distance as possible between me and the camp by the next morning. This time I was determined not to depart from my resolve to travel only by night and lie up by day. No! this time I was not going to take any risks. My four comrades, for whom Tibet was also the objective, moved in a party and had the nerve to use the main road, which led via Mussoorie into the valley of the Ganges. I found this too risky and followed my former route through the Jumna and Aglar valleys. During the first night I must have waded through the Aglar forty times. All the same, when morning came I lay up in exactly the same place that it had taken me four days to reach in the previous year. Happy to be free, I felt satisfied with my performance, though I was covered with scratches and bruises, and owing to my heavy load, had walked through the soles of a pair of new tennis shoes in a single night.

  I chose my first day camp between two boulders in the riverbed, but I had hardly unpacked my things when a company of apes appeared. They caught sight of me and began to pelt me with clods. Distracted by their noise, I failed to observe a body of thirty Indians who came running up the riverbed. I noticed them only when they had approached dangerously near to my hiding place. I still do not know if they were fishermen or persons in search of us fugitives. In any case, I could hardly believe that they had not spotted me, for they were within a few yards of me as they ran by. I breathed again, but took this for a warning and remained in my shelter till evening, not moving till darkness had fallen. I followed the Aglar the whole night long and made good progress. My next camp provided no excitements, and I was able to refresh myself with a good sleep. Toward evening I grew impatient and broke camp rather too early. I had been walking for only a few hundred yards when I ran into an Indian woman at a water hole. She screamed with fright, let her water jar fall, and ran toward the nearby houses. I was no less frightened than she was and dashed from the track into a gully. Here I had to climb steeply, and though I knew I was going in the right direction, my diversion represented a painful detour that put me back by several hours. I had to climb Nag Tibba, a mountain over 10,000 feet high, which in its upper regions is completely deserted and thickly covered with forest.

  As I was loping along in the gray of dawn, I found myself facing my first leopard. My heart nearly stopped beating, as I was completely defenseless. My only weapon was a long knife, which the camp blacksmith had made expressly for me. I carried it sheathed in a stick. The leopard sat on a thick branch fifteen feet or more above the ground, ready to spring. I thought like lightning what was the best thing to do; then, masking my fear, I walked steadily on my way. Nothing happened, but for a long time I had a peculiar feeling in my back.

  Up to now I had been following the ridge of Nag Tibba, and now at last I tumbled onto the road again. I had not gone far when I got another surprise. In the middle of the track lay some men—snoring! They were Peter Aufschnaiter and his three companions. I shook them awake, and we all betook ourselves to a sheltered spot, where we recounted what had befallen us on the trek. We were all in excellent shape and were convinced that we should get through to Tibet. After passing the day in the company of my friends, I found it hard to go on alone in the evening, but I remained true to my resolve. The same night I reached the Ganges. I had been five days on the run.

  At Uttar Kashi, the temple town that I have mentioned in connection with my first escape, I had to run for my life. I had just passed a house when two men came out and started running after me. I fled headlong through fields and scrub down to the Ganges and there hid myself between two great blocks of boulders. All was quiet, and it was clear that I had escaped from my pursuers, but only after a longish time did I dare to come out into the bright moonlight. It was a pleasure for me at this stage to travel along a familiar route, and my happiness at such speedy progress made me forget the heavy load I was carrying. It is true that my feet were very sore, but they seemed to recover during my daytime rest. I often slept for ten hours at a stretch.

  At length I came to the farmhouse of my Indian friend to whom I had in the previous year entrusted my money and effects. It was now May, and we had agreed that he was to expect me at midnight any day during the month. I purposely did not walk straight into the house, and before doing anything else I hid my rucksack, as betrayal was not beyond the bounds of possibility.

  The moon shone full upon the farmhouse, so I hid myself in the darkness of the stable and twice softly called my friend’s name. The door was flung open, and out rushed my friend, who threw himself on the ground and kissed my feet. Tears of joy flowed down his cheeks. He led me to a room lying apart from the house, in the door of which an enormous key was hanging. Here he lit a pinewood torch and opened a wooden chest. Inside were all my things, carefully sewn up in cotton bags. Deeply touched by his loyalty, I unpacked everything and gave him a reward. You can imagine that I enjoyed the food that he then set before me. I asked him to get me provisions and a woolen blanket before the following night. He promised to do this and in addition made me a present of a pair of handwoven woolen drawers and a shawl.

  The next day I slept in a neighboring wood and came in the evening to fetch my things. My friend gave me a hearty meal and accompanied me for a part of my way. He insisted on carrying some of my baggage, undernourished as he was and hardly able to keep pace with me. I soon sent him back and after the friendliest parting found myself alone again.

  It may have been a little after midnight when I ran into a bear standing on his hind legs in the middle of my path, growling at me. At this point the sound of the swiftly running waters of the Ganges was so loud that we had neither of us heard the other’s approach. Pointing my primitive spear at his heart, I backed up step by step so as to keep my eyes fixed on him. Around the first bend of the track, I hurriedly lit a fire, and p
ulling out a burning stick, I brandished it in front of me and moved forward to meet my enemy. But coming around the corner, I found the road clear and the bear gone. Tibetan peasants later told me that bears are aggressive only by day. At night they are afraid to attack.

  I had already been on the march for ten days when I reached the village of Nelang, where last year destiny had wrecked my hopes. This time I was a month earlier, and the village was still uninhabited. But what was my delight to find there my four comrades from the camp! They had overtaken me when I was staying with my Indian friend. We took up our quarters in an open house and slept the whole night through. Sattler unfortunately had an attack of mountain sickness; he felt wretched and declared himself unequal to further efforts. He decided to return but promised not to surrender till two days were up, so as not to endanger our escape. Kopp, who in the previous year had penetrated into Tibet by this route in company with the wrestler Krämer, joined me as a partner.

  It took us seven long days of marching, however, before we finally reached the pass that forms the frontier between India and Tibet. Our delay was due to a bad miscalculation. After leaving Tirpani, a well-known caravan center, we followed the most easterly of three valleys but eventually had to admit that we had lost our way. In order to find our bearings, Aufschnaiter and I climbed to the top of a mountain from which we expected a good view of the country on the other side. From here we saw Tibet for the first time, but were far too tired to enjoy the prospect, and at an altitude of nearly 18,000 feet, we suffered from lack of oxygen. To our great disappointment, we decided that we must return to Tirpani. There we found that the pass we were bound for lay almost within a stone’s throw. Our error had cost us three days and caused us the greatest discouragement. We had to cut our rations and felt the utmost anxiety about our capacity to hold out until we reached the next inhabited place.

  From Tirpani our way sloped gently upward by green pastures, through which one of the baby Ganges streams flowed. This brook, which we had known a week back as a raging, deafening torrent racing down the valley, now wound gently through the grasslands. In a few weeks the whole country would be green, and the numerous camping places, recognizable from their fire-blackened stones, made us picture to ourselves the caravans that cross the passes from India into Tibet in the summer season. A troop of mountain sheep passed in front of us. Light-footed as chamois, they soon vanished from our sight without having noticed us. Alas! our stomachs regretted them. It would have been grand to see one of them stewing in our cooking pot, thereby giving us a chance, for once, to eat our fill.

  At the foot of the pass, we camped in India for the last time. Instead of the hearty meat dinner we had been dreaming of, we baked skimpy cakes with the last of our flour mixed with water and laid on hot stones. It was bitterly cold, and our only protection against the icy mountain wind that stormed through the valley was a stone wall.

  At last on May 17, 1944, we stood at the top of the Tsangchokla Pass. We knew from our maps that our altitude was 17,200 feet.

  So here we were on the frontier between India and Tibet, so long the object of our wishful dreams.

  Here we enjoyed for the first time a sense of security, for we knew that no Englishman could arrest us here. We did not know how the Tibetans would treat us, but as our country was not at war with Tibet, we hoped confidently for a hospitable welcome.

  On the top of the pass were heaps of stones and prayer flags dedicated to their gods by pious Buddhists. It was very cold, but we took a long rest and considered our situation. We had almost no knowledge of the language and very little money. Above all, we were near starvation and must find human habitation as soon as possible. But as far as we could see, there were only empty mountain heights and deserted valleys. Our maps showed only vaguely the presence of villages in this region. Our final objective, as I have already mentioned, was the Japanese lines—thousands of miles away. The route we planned to follow led first to the holy mountain of Kailas and thence along the course of the Brahmaputra till at last it would bring us to Eastern Tibet. Kopp, who had been in Tibet the year before and had been expelled from that country, thought that the indications on our maps were reasonably accurate.

  After a steep descent we reached the course of the Opchu and rested there at noon. Overhanging rock walls flanked the valley like a canyon. The valley was absolutely uninhabited, and only a wooden pole showed that men sometimes came there. The other side of the valley consisted of slopes of shale up which we had to climb. It was evening before we reached the plateau, and we bivouacked in icy cold. Our fuel during the last few days had been the branches of thorn bushes, which we found on the slopes. Here there was nothing growing, so we had to use dry cow dung, laboriously collected.

  BEFORE NOON THE NEXT DAY, we reached our first Tibetan village, Kasapuling, which consisted of six houses. The place appeared to be completely deserted, and when we knocked at the doors, nothing stirred. We then discovered that all the villagers were busy sowing barley in the surrounding fields. Sitting on their haunches, they put each individual grain of seed into the ground with the regularity and speed of machines. We looked at them with feelings that might compare with those of Columbus when he met his first Indians. Would they receive us as friends or foes? For the moment they took no notice of us. The cries of an old woman, looking like a witch, were the only sound we heard. They were not aimed at us, but at the swarms of wild pigeons that swooped down to get at the newly planted grain. Until evening the villagers hardly deigned to bestow a glance on us, so we four established our camp near one of the houses, and when at nightfall the people came in from the fields, we tried to trade with them. We offered them money for one of their sheep or goats, but they showed themselves disinclined to trade. As Tibet has no frontier posts, the whole population is brought up to be hostile to foreigners, and there are severe penalties for any Tibetan who sells anything to a foreigner. We were starving and had no choice but to intimidate them. We threatened to take one of their animals by force if they would not freely sell us one, and as none of the four of us looked a weakling, this method of argument eventually succeeded. It was pitch-dark before they handed to us for a shamelessly high price the oldest billy goat they could put their hands on. We knew we were being blackmailed, but we put up with it, as we wished to win the hospitality of this country.

  We slaughtered the goat in a stable, and it was not till midnight that we fell to on the half-cooked meat.

  We spent the next day resting and looking more closely at the houses. These were stone built with flat roofs on which the fuel was laid out to dry. The Tibetans who live here cannot be compared with those who inhabit the interior, whom we got to know later. The brisk summer caravan traffic with India has spoiled them. We found them dirty, dark-skinned, and shifty-eyed, with no trace of that gaiety for which their race is famous. They went sulkily to their daily work, and one felt that they had settled in this sterile country only in order to earn good money from the caravans for the produce of their land. These six houses on the frontier formed, as I later was able to confirm, almost the only village without a monastery.

  The next morning we left this inhospitable place without hindrance. We were by now fairly well rested, and Kopp’s Berlin native wit, which during the last few days had suffered an eclipse, had us laughing again. We crossed over fields to go downhill into a little valley. On the way up the opposite slope to the next plateau, we felt the weight of our packs more than ever. This physical fatigue was caused mainly by a reaction to the disappointment that this long-dreamed-of country had up to now caused us. We had to spend the night in an inhospitable sort of depression in the ground, which barely shielded us from the wind.

  At the very beginning of our journey, we had detailed each member of the party for special duties. Fetching water, lighting fires, and making tea meant hard work. Every evening we emptied our rucksacks in order to use them as foot bags against the cold. When that evening I shook mine out, there was a small explosion. My matches had
caught fire from friction—a proof of the dryness of the air in the high Tibetan plateau.

  By the first light of day, we examined the place in which we had camped. We observed that the depression in which we had bivouacked must have been made by the hand of man, as it was quite circular and had perpendicular walls. It had perhaps been originally designed as a trap for wild beasts. Behind us lay the Himalayas with Kamet’s perfect snow pyramid; in front, forbidding, mountainous country. We went downhill through a sort of loess formation and arrived toward noon in the village of Dushang. Again we found very few houses and a reception as inhospitable as at Kasapuling. Peter Aufschnaiter, in vain, showed off all his knowledge of the language acquired in years of study, and our gesticulations were equally unsuccessful.

  However, we saw here for the first time a proper Tibetan monastery. Black holes gaped in the loam walls, and on a ridge we saw the ruins of gigantic buildings. Hundreds of monks must have lived here once. Now there were only a few living in a more modern house, but they never showed themselves to us. On a terrace in front of the monastery were ordered lines of red-painted tombstones.

  Somewhat depressed we returned to our tent, which was for us a little home in the midst of an interesting but oddly hostile world.