'From Heaven Lake: Travels through Sinkiang and Tibet'
For the ultimate intrepid global traveller, there is Timbuctoo and there is Tibet. Among routes less travelled, the Tibetan destination offers terrifying twists, terrifying drop-offs, massive mudslides, moon-scaped paths and assured uncertainty and yet people continue to dot the destination. In 1885, the Bengali babu, Sarat Chandra Das on two occasions visited Tibet and he too left a record.
Tibet in the early 1980s is the riveting read put forth by Vikram Seth in his first published book (1983). A student at Nanjing University from 1980-1982, he made the hitch-hiking journey from the oases of northwest China to the Himalaya - the lofty land of perpetual snow-tipped peaks – covering the basin and plateau of Qinghai to his destination the 'roof of the world' Tibet. Notably, this is China a few years following the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s. Here is the land over which Chairman Mao ruled till his demise in 1976.
Turfan in July: "In summer it bakes and in winter it freezes…Xian reminds me irresistibly of Delhi…and most of all, the city wall, the presence of history. The only other place where I have had a similar sense of déjà vu is Shanghai. There the intolerably density of population, the sluggish river crammed with boats and sewage, and the vestiges of British commercial architecture combine to create an atmosphere evocative of Calcutta. Beijing and Nanjing, the two cities I know best, remind me of nothing but themselves." Do note that these are Chinese cities in the 1980s. Since then the transformation has been of tectonic magnitude.
In a language that is lyrical, Seth writes on water. "There is enchantment in flowing water: I sit hypnotized by its beauty – water, the most unifying of the elements, that ties land and sea and air in one living ring. .." He is observing the many faces of water in one of the valleys in a terrain known for its extreme harshness and rugged beauty.
Noteworthy are his comments on social development in China and India. In his dairy on the 14th August, 1981, Vikram Seth records: "Tomorrow is Indian Independence Day. Reading Naipaul makes for sad and serious thought. I think about what the two countries have done for their people in the course of the last thirty years. One overwhelming fact is that the Chinese have a better system of social care and of distribution than we do...Tibet will take a long time to achieve the standard of living of other parts of China; however, in this comparatively prosperous part of Tibet I have not, for instance, seen signs of malnutrition."
On the Tibetan trail amongst his travails and travel, most engaging is his running account of his interactions with truck-drivers, the tea-shop owner, the garage mechanic, fellow hitch-hikers – the populace that Seth meets on route. The last paragraph of one of his poems encapsulates the sentiment:
'Here we three, cooped, alone,
Tibetan, Indian, Han,
Against a common dawn
Catch what poor sleep we can,
And sleeping drag the same
Sparse air into our lungs,
And dreaming each of home
Sleeptalk in different tongues.'
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