Day Three: Part One

I awoke to a low sun filtered through thin white curtains. The day promised warmth, a welcome change from the drizzly chill of the previous afternoon. I washed, stretched a bit, and sat cross-legged on the couchbed for about ten minutes. I stared blankly at the opposite wall, trying to ignore the patterns of gold paint traced amid patches of pink and green and blue that make up the majority of the designs around the walls of the home. I finished packing away the sweaters and hats we had horded for the upcoming journey, and readied myself for breakfast.

I had a dull headache as I ate the endless stream of boiled eggs presented to me. It was an annoying throb, unusual because I hadn't had anything to drink since Kangding three nights before. I drank extra bowls of water, and after Dorje finished his tsampa I grabbed the bag and we headed to the back of the house to check out the motorcycle he had borrowed. He informed me that he used to drive bikes very recklessly in the days of his rebellious youth. About two years ago, at the age of sixteen, he realized the emotional trouble he was causing his parents and decided to "change his heart." Now he is one of the top students in my class, and a conscientious Buddhist.

The bike was red, and had a colored Tibetan snow lion etched below the seat on the back panel. It reminded me of Leroy "Horsemouth" Wallace's freewheeling hog from the film The Rockers. He kicked the foot starter, and the engine whined but refused to turn over. After a few more tries, Dorje asked me to push the bike as he tried the ignition. Soon the right throttle handle came completely loose. Dorje was not pleased, and decisively unscrewed the steel nuts that held in place the thin cable that runs from the chassis to the throttle. The wire slipped easily out of the handle, clearly frayed at its end. By twisting the skinny steel cable around his fingers, he was able to get it to start as I, pack on my back, pushed the motorcycle all the way down the rocky driveway and into the thin highway. He gassed it up the road a bit, and spun around to pick me up. As I mounted the hog, I could see that the wire was already causing his fingers to turn bright red.

We rode the five clicks to Daofu with high spirits after our potentially abortive obstacle. This was the second time in five days that I had been on the back of a motorcycle, out of perhaps five times in my entire life. It was far more pleasant than whipping through Chengdu, and certainly beat the hell out of drunkenly crossing Houston on the back of a rice rocket. In a cabin in the Himalayan foothills of India Michael had recounted a story about his trip from New Orleans to D.C. in a busted jeep. He moralized his story by saying, "if it seems that everything is trying to keep you from doing something, then perhaps you shouldn't do it." My headache was growing more persistant, but my spirits had risen considerably.

As Dorje had the bike repaired in a roadside shop in Daofu, I ducked into a local drug store and purchase some headache medicine. After resisting the shopkeepers attempts at selling me some extra cold medicine, I took a few of the pills with a cup of hot water and rejoined Dorje by the bike. He was having it serviced fully for the trip. I watched the motor oil pool on the sidewalk as a couple of young Tibetan men were having a tape deck installed on their roadhog. Their motorcycle was decked out with colored carpet on the seat and streamers on the handlebars. Dorje bought some white gloves, the same as the technicians were using to repair the bikes. We mounted, crossed town for some petrol, and turned on a paved road rising steeply from the town's main road. Soon it became a rocky dirt road.

As we snaked up the hill, I asked him if the road would be so bad the entire way to Yuke, the nomad community to which we were headed. He said no, and I remarked that it must be a shortcut. He said he understood, which was clearly not the case as the road would only get less smooth from then on. I thought it was a good time to explain to Dorje the English language concept of the open road. Freedom, Captain America riding his chopper across an unencumbered New Mexico, limitless possibility, the Zen of a moment. Soon we were eye level with the hillside mantras. I began to see the way in which Daofu sits within an accommodating valley, as the rest of the countryside rolls and slopes through grassland and forest on average a good thousand feet above the river below. It was breathtaking. Stunning prehistoric mountains started to peer from above the more gentle and still autumn grasslands. My headache was gone, and we made numerous stops to pee and to bundle up as the wind and air grew more frigid. I could see snow above the pines. We curved numerous times around progressively more threatening bends. I got my first look at the range that contained our pass to Yuke, a snowy razor edge of grey stone and patchy snow. The bike glided up the last few hundred meters and slipped through the aperture that separated this side from that.

The top of the pass sits at well over four thousand meters, and is marked with a couple of shrines to mountain deities. The vertical flags make a colorful contrast to the brown and grey, white and deep green that is evident at every angle. I forced Dorje to stop for a couple of pictures. By now my bag was empty as we had layered every sweater and jacket that we had brought. I was wearing two hats, and it was more than worth it. On the opposite side of the pass from which we had ascended, there was a thousand-plus foot drop into a pristine valley, alpine yet fertile, walled on the other side by an even higher strip of mountains and passes. Delta-like threads of blue-white snowmelt cut down it's face, the lifeblood of the plain below. A few black yak-fur tents dotted its grassy floor. We got back on the bike and rolled down the frozen path.

It took no time for the sub-tundra plain to fade into nomad plains, and soon we dipped below tree line. Vast triangular configurations of prayer flags melted with pines in both directions of the valley. Soon squatty horses and shaggy yaks could be seen grazing in fields beside the road. Crude fences appeared, and homesteads of frontier cabins and black tents established themselves in the ever more lush valley.

Dorje steered the bike off the road at one settlement to check out the tent, and although a hat was hung on a peg outside and smoke poured from the slit of a door, no one was to be seen. My legs had stiffened completely. Soon we passed through a real community, and within another ten clicks we had arrived at our destination, the small mountain town of Yuke. From the back of the motorcycle I felt very free and very fortunate.

It was the culmination of two months of blemish-free karma. I vowed not to forget the feeling once the karmic pendulum began its decent.

For the first time in a couple of years, I really felt there. Everything was totally with it, and my thoughts were with you through it all. I tried to enjoy it all for its own sake, for my sake alone. I couldn't help but anticipate recanting the tale, threatened by my own motivations of vanity. It is my pride and my ego, but it also the only gift I have for you now. This is my love.