Descent Read online

  “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pikas. A peck of pickled pikas Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pikas, where’s the peck of pickled pikas Peter Piper picked?”

  “What did you say?” Josh joined me on my swaying perch, sweating and scratched.

  “Nothing,” I answered, a little embarrassed. I hadn’t realized I was talking to myself, which was happening more and more lately. It was disconcerting.

  “The climb was harder than I thought,” Josh said, out of breath, giving me a bye on my slip of the tongue. “I had to detour around a big snake. Slowed me down. What do you see?”

  I scanned the canopy with my binoculars. “Smoke,” I said. At least, I was pretty sure it was smoke. It’s hard to tell the difference between smoke and mist in the rainforest. I handed the binoculars to Josh and pulled out my compass. “North by northwest. Maybe a mile away.”

  “I see it,” Josh said.

  “It could be a village, or maybe a camp.”

  “Or a forest fire,” Josh added.

  “That too, but I think we should check it out.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  We battled the tangle for another two hours with little progress, but I didn’t give up. The feeling I’d had earlier wasn’t nearly as strong, but there was still a tingle that if I kept going I would find Zopa. I took a couple more machete swipes and stumbled into a small clearing with a well-trodden trail running through the middle of it.

  “Boot prints,”  Yash said. “Fresh.”

  I wasn’t sure how fresh they were, but there were a lot of them headed in every direction. I wished Ethan were with us. He’d know exactly how old the boot prints were, how many people had made them, and which way they had gone.

  “Hunters,”  Yogi said. He was standing at the edge of the clearing, looking down at something.

  It turned out to be a stinking pile of guts and bones, covered by about two billion insects, which swarmed us as we approached. We backed away quickly and the insects settled back down on their feast.

  “What was it?” I asked.

  “Takin,”  Yash answered.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Takins are some kind of antelope,” Josh said. “But they look like a small musk ox. I’ve had takin stew a couple of times. It’s a little gamey, but tasty. Hunters get a pretty good price for the skins. Probably because takins are only found in godforsaken places like this.”

  Jack had not joined us to look at the guts. He was sitting on the ground leaning against a tree with his backpack still strapped on like a tipped-over turtle. He looked like he had taken a shower in his clothes. His face was florid and pockmarked with nasty bites and scratches. If we didn’t get to a village or road soon, we were going to be dragging him through the forest on a litter. I wished I had some of that goop Nick had concocted for bites and stings. Jack was out of water. I gave him some of mine, then helped him to his feet. He wobbled.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  I had an idea of what it might be. “Are you taking antimalarial pills?”

  “I was, but I ran out before we got to Myanmar. You think that’s my problem?”

  “I don’t know, but you’re kind of acting like Alessia did when she came down with it.” I didn’t mention that Alessia had been taking her pills and came down with it anyway.

  I dug my pills out of my pack and gave him a couple. I didn’t know if it would help, but I didn’t think it would hurt. If nothing else they might act like a placebo and make him feel better.

  “Are you okay to walk?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “None.”

  I led the way down the trail in the direction I thought the boot prints were heading. After about a mile I started to smell smoke and, more intriguing, meat cooking.

  There were at least a dozen people in the camp: several men, a few women, and a handful of children. Animal skins were hanging on racks, drying in the last of the afternoon sun. The hunters didn’t seem surprised to see us. That was because Zopa was sitting next to the smoky fire eating food out of his begging bowl. He had shaved his head and put on his orange monk robe. The only one of us who was surprised to see Zopa was Jack, who let out a feverish whoop of joy. He didn’t know Zopa as well as we did, and his uncanny, and kind of creepy, ability to appear in the middle of nowhere from out of nowhere.

  “I can’t believe you’re here!” Jack said. “What are the chances?”

  With Zopa the chances were extremely high, but Zopa only shrugged in reply to his question.

  “I told Peak that he would find me,” Zopa said. “He did.” I looked at him questioningly. He didn’t acknowledge me. Instead, he looked at Jack and said, “You have malaria.”

  “I’m not sure,” Jack said. “That’s what Peak thought.”

  “Sit down.”

  We all sat down. The hunters brought us water and bowls of hot, spicy takin stew, which was oddly cooling in the sweltering heat. The hunters explained that their takin hunt was over. Tomorrow morning, they would break camp and return to their village. They had been away for nearly three weeks. A supply truck stopped at their village once or twice a week. It would be able to give us a lift to the main road, where we could hitch a ride to Lhasa, the closest city with an international airport.

  It sounded so simple. So easy. Like we were jumping onto a subway in New York to get somewhere. Right. I looked at Zopa to see if there was any indication of what he thought of this. Except for a slight smile, and a little shine in his dark eyes, he was giving nothing away. He held his begging bowl out for another load of takin stew.

  And Then There Were Three

  It took us two days to reach the hunters’ village. Jack slowed us down. For every hour we cut our way through the jungle he had to rest for ten to fifteen minutes. By the time we got to the village, Yogi and Yash were all but carrying him. We needed to get him to a doctor, or a hospital—neither of which was going to happen quickly. The nearest hospital was more than a hundred miles away. A truck was expected at the village sometime the next day.

  The villagers were very friendly and accommodating. Even this far off the beaten track, they were used to seeing Western climbers and trekkers. They led us to a hut, which by its crude furnishing we could tell was already in use by someone else. Through Zopa we told the head man that we were more than happy to sleep outside under the open sky, but he insisted that we use the hut, telling us that the family was away for a few days. We found out that this was untrue when a young boy, maybe six or seven years old, walked in and asked if he could borrow his mother’s kettle so she could brew some green tea for his father.

  * * *

  After a good night’s rest in the comfortable hut, Jack was a little better, but he was still weak. I spent the morning helping villagers chop wood, tan takin skins—the stink of which nearly made me wretch—and milk their yaks, which they found wildly amusing. Around noon, a small pickup came backfiring into the village. It looked as if it had been rolled down a steep embankment a dozen times.

  “I think it might explode,” Josh observed.

  “I think it has already exploded,” Jack said.

  Appearance aside, I wondered how the six of us and our gear were going to fit into the truck bed, which had shrunk even further after the hunters tossed their rolled-up takin skins in. Josh asked the drivers if they could drive us all the way into Lhasa. They shook their heads, saying they had other villages to visit after they reached the road, and they were in the opposite direction from Lhasa. Josh offered them a wad of money to reconsider. It was clear they were tempted, but they still turned us down.

  “We will take you to highway,” one of them said in broken English. “From there you take bus into Lhasa. Cheap. Very easy.”

  We helped Jack into the truck, then surrounded him with gear and skins so he didn’t roll out as we
bounced down the rutted path, which was more like a game trail than a road.

  Three hours later we reached the highway, which was not much better than the tract we had taken to get to it. It was nearly dark. The drivers wished us luck and continued on their route, saying that a bus would be along soon to take us into Lhasa.

  Soon turned out to be early the next morning. We heard the overloaded bus rumbling down the road a couple of minutes before we saw it. It would not have stopped for us at all if Zopa hadn’t stepped out in front of it. Bad luck to run over a Buddhist monk. The driver jumped out, shouting and waving his arms. Many of the people on board were shouting at us too, but they stayed where they were because they didn’t want to lose their seats, or places (there were more people standing inside the bus than there were sitting). Zopa listened to the driver harangue him for a good three minutes without uttering a word. Eventually, the driver got tired of yelling and just stared at the road-blocking monk with disgust.

  Zopa smiled and started speaking quietly in Tibetan. I have no idea what he said, but when he finished, the driver climbed back onto the bus and three men stepped off with their stuff. They gave Zopa a bow. In return, Zopa gave each of them a blessing, after which they started down the road, smiling, carrying their heavy loads.

  “Three spots are open,” Zopa said. “Jack and two others.”

  I didn’t want to be one of the “others.” The bus looked horribly uncomfortable. No one else stepped forward either, but someone had to ride with Jack and take care of him. Zopa intervened, pointing at Yogi and Yash.

  “You two go. Get medical help. Put him on an airplane. I will see you in Nepal.”

  There wasn’t time for an argument or a long goodbye. The brothers grabbed Jack’s gear, helped him onto the bus, and left us in the dust.

  And then there were three.

  We started walking down the highway with Josh in the lead, Zopa right behind him, and me taking up the rear. I noticed that Zopa wasn’t wearing his backpack. I caught up with him.

  “Where’s your gear?”

  “I gave it to the hunters.”

  “Why?”

  “For their kindness. It is all about karma. The giving, not the taking. Monks do not need gear.”

  “Are you saying that Hkakabo Razi was the last mountain you’ll ever climb?”

  “Yes. But thinking something is true does not necessarily mean that it is true.”

  Zopa always seemed to leave a back door open to escape through if he needed one. I guess all of us do. Josh slowed and we caught up to him. He looked as if he had lost ten pounds since we’d left the cave. I was a little alarmed. Like me, he had always been on the lean side, but he looked almost skeletal now. Some of the look was because we had taken off our cold weather gear, but not all of it.

  “You’re looking a little thin,” I said. “You okay?”

  “I think so. I have my normal aches and pains, but nothing unusual. I’m sure I dropped weight on the seven summits. If I’d gone home after Everest, I would have gained it back wolfing down bowl after bowl of pad thai from Chiang Mai’s food vendors.”

  “A plate of pad thai sounds pretty good right now.”

  “No kidding.”

  We heard a truck coming up behind us and turned to look. It was about a quarter mile away.

  “Time to hitch a—”

  “Not this one,” Zopa said.

  “What difference does it make?” Josh asked.

  “Not the right ride.”

  The truck zoomed past without so much as a tap of its brake lights. I guess it wouldn’t have stopped anyway.

  “Exactly what kind of vehicle are we waiting for?” Josh asked.

  “The right one,” Zopa said.

  Two hours and five vehicles later, Zopa said, “This one.”

  Josh put his thumb out and a yellow Toyota Land Cruiser pulled over to the side of the road in front of us. It was in a lot better shape than the other cars and trucks that had zoomed past us. Except for the mud-splattered sides, it looked brand-new. A man got out of the driver’s side and started walking toward us. He was short and large and very hairy. His curly black hair fell down past his shoulders. His unkempt beard nearly reached the top of his substantial belly. He looked like a bear disguised as a human.

  “Brits or Yanks?” he shouted with a British accent.

  “Yanks,” Josh answered.

  “And the holy man?”

  “Nepalese,” I said. Although, Zopa was actually a free Tibetan living in exile in Nepal.

  “Climbers or trekkers?”

  “Trekkers,” Josh said. He had slipped on his sunglasses and pulled his hair under his sock cap, no doubt in an attempt to disguise himself. He was probably the most famous face in climbing.

  “On your way in, or out?” the bear man asked.

  “Just finished up,” Josh answered. “We’re on our way home.”

  “Ah, good, good. Are you traveling to Lhasa?”

  “Yes,” Josh said. Lhasa had an international airport. From there we could get anywhere in the world.

  “That is a long way. I’m only going as far as Bāyī town. Do you know it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s a hundred kilometers from here. A new city by Tibetan standards. Sixty thousand people, give or take. Built in the sixties. Bāyī means ‘eight one’ in Chinese. August first, which is the official date of the rise of the People’s Liberation Army in 1927. The joke is that Bāyī really means eight Chinese for every one Tibetan. It’s more like twenty Chinese soldiers to one Tibetan right now. The annual liberation celebration is in a couple of days.”

  That many soldiers didn’t sound good to me. Maybe Zopa had picked the wrong ride. I glanced at Josh and Zopa. If they were concerned, they weren’t showing it.

  “Are you going there for the celebration?” I asked.

  “No way. I’m going there for meetings with my Chinese bosses. The road to Lhasa is washed out in several places beyond Bāyī. Floods. Erosion. Difficult going. Some of the traders have gone back to the old way of moving supplies. Caravans of camels and yaks. I’m a highway engineer. I’m doing what I can to get the show back on the road.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  “Thirty years.”

  I was pretty sure that he hadn’t shaved or cut his hair since he arrived. I doubted that he changed or washed much either. He smelled like the takin hunters that had rescued us. A combination of sweat, wet fur, rancid yak butter, and campfire smoke, which was perfume to me. The smell of wild places and adventure.

  He put his hand out. “My name is Percival Willingham, but you can call me Percy, or the Road Builder.”

  “My name is Jim,” Josh said. “And this is my son, Pete.” I guess he didn’t want it known that Joshua Wood was in Tibet, which was a smart move considering he was wanted here. Zopa didn’t bother introducing himself at all. We followed Percy to his SUV. I was expecting the inside of the Toyota to be an extension of Percy’s outward appearance, but it was immaculate inside. I felt uncomfortable sliding into the back seat. The last time I had thoroughly washed was in Burma, on the other side of Hkakabo Razi. Two weeks ago? Josh offered the front seat to Zopa, but he shook his head and climbed into the back with me, which was odd because Zopa usually chose shotgun if given a chance.

  Percy prattled on with Josh as we rattled down the rough road, but I couldn’t really hear much of what they were saying from the back seat. I wondered for the umpteenth time that day how Ethan was doing in Yangon, which reminded me of the dead satellite phone and how I might be able to charge it in the Toyota. Then I remembered that we had given all that stuff to Jack.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” I shouted above the road noise.

  “I think so,” Percy answered. “But to tell you the truth, I’m not exactly sure where. There are scant cell towers out here. I only use it when I go to Lhasa, which is rare, and half the time I forget to bring it with me. There are landlines in Bāyī that work som
etimes. Most everything I do is done face-to-face, or by messenger.”

  I took out my journal and started to write . . .

  We’ve hitched a ride with a bear of a man named Percival Willingham, Percy, or the Road Builder. He is driving us to a town called Bāyī in his Toyota Land Cruiser. I think we should have waited for another ride that would have gotten us closer to Lhasa, or better yet, all the way into Lhasa. I’m worried about Ethan’s brain and I miss Alessia. I’d like to spend time with them in Yangon before I have to head back to the States and start school. After I leave Yangon, it will be months before I see Alessia or Ethan again. And Percy tells us that Bāyī is filled with Chinese soldiers celebrating the birthday of the revolution. That cannot be good . . .

  “What are you doing?” Zopa asked.

  “Writing in my journal.”

  “Why?”

  “Something to do.”

  “You are disconnected,” Zopa said. “I knew a monk who was always writing things down in notebooks. It was very distracting, because she rarely talked and never divulged what she was writing.”

  “I didn’t know there were women monks,” I said.

  “There are many. Enlightenment has nothing to do with gender.”

  “Did you think she was writing about you?”

  “As I said, I had no idea. Why would she write about me?”

  “Because you’re interesting. What makes you say that I’m disconnected?”

  “Because you were writing about the past, or perhaps the future. Both mean that you are disconnected from the present.”

  “It’s a school assignment. If I don’t fill this journal up, I’ll be disconnected from school. My mom and stepdad would be very disappointed. They’ve spent a lot of money on my education and I have an obligation to them. There wasn’t any time to write while we were climbing. Now’s the perfect place to catch up, because we’re not doing anything.”