Way Out Where The Mountains Play

A couple weeks, and much passing through--me through things, things through me. Well, no use wasting time. To summarize (but not even that, perhaps only to hint at, to flash a corner of the quilt):

I found a week for tucking myself away into the grooves of the Himalayan foothills. My companions: a Swiss girl and a cold, the latter of which, like the ghost of a late-round boxer, did not hesitate to throw heavy punches of air, phlegm, and germ up through my throat (a convoluted way to say that I've been coughing a lot). We rode buses, and with bent knees I became a small giant in a large toy vehicle, zooming across cliff-hugging highways, higher and higher, vaulting mountain passes with the clouds slow-motion galloping right along with us. Villages: houses and rice terraces peeking out from between the creases of rock and dirt--sleepy, yes, I think they are, as both tourist and home-ist brumbuh-hum-hum by way of old metal green and grey bus onwards to Yubeng.

Yubeng! A town, lightly touched by the wand of tourism but by no means turned from beautiful Yak to ugly Zhongdian (the city some few hours back on this journey, otherwise named Shangri-la, where you can watch real genuine bona fide tibetan monks buy cell phones and appear in music videos. Buy prayer flags, incense, salvation, all for a low, low price). Yubeng, only accessible by foot--if you're like the Swiss, the Boxer and me--or by mule, and if you are a tourist from Shanghai, also by iPod. And here is the past, the old folk of the town who still wear traditional clothing, the men who carry their babies with cloth straps, the women who make us tomato and cucumber soup in old, old bowls. And here is the future, the twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings who run the tourist mule trains, who wear brand-emblazoned shirts and Von Dutch hats. Which of the two are the present, that is hard to say. And now, me and the Swiss are gratefully eating corn in a smokey kitchen where the old mother makes stew, and here comes the Von Dutch mule-herding son, and they argue in Tibetan, they gesture wildly (why does he keep gesturing at us?). The Swiss and I are nervous. Even the boxer is quiet for the time being. We're worried that we're not welcome here, that maybe we should leave--but then, he smiles, asks us if the food is good. And then, she smiles, brings over a kettle, and pours what comes as a sign that everything is OK: home-made apple liquor. The smokey kitchen fills with cheers, the nervous corn cobs are put away, and that night we dream of mountains, prayer flags, glaciers, snow leopards, and the best yogurt I've ever had.

All of this was the prime rib, held together by fat-slabs of long bus rides (for the logisticicians: Kunming to Zhondian to Deqin to Feilaisi to Yubeng to Feilaisi to Deqin to Zhongdian to Kunming--7 days), and on-the-go meals of packaged peanuts and half-green tangerines.


But these are the stories of dreams away from Kunming. The next words will be for Kunming, the hospital, the rehab center, the Peking Opera, the markets, the graffiti, the baozi, but most importantly, the host family, who I need to go join again in the livingroom now.

-s