Free from appointments, I’m moving now to my own rhythms, to the beat of my different drummer, happy for weeks in dust and sunshine. The world is my oyster. I nestle into its roadside grit. A pearl may form.
Spell of the country is upon me. Dust clouds rising like figures robed in light dance the plains and ranges. From dust a caravan of trucks appears. On board we lie atop the load, amongst baggage, nomads and pilgrims wrapped in tribal rugs against altitude and cold.
From scarves wound round heads like mummies, wild cries and mountain chants burst forth, in exaltation as we cross high passes. What passes! What valleys they are! Unprecedented scale touches and opens the heart.
“I am illuminated by the immensity”, and by myriad plays of shafting light, colour haze atmospherics, dust, cloud and cloud-shadow, sweeping pale deserts, once joined to West Australia and like it still, but now removed by continental drift and still uplifting.
The subcontinent is traveling. Risking my path across it, daring the ultimate encounter I tramp inner terrain up another mountain to the source, “at the still point of [my] turning world”. In this religion of adventure our contraband photos are currency for the way.
A lone speck strides a boundless plain. Far beyond him sunlight streaks pale sand. Ten times further out is a line of misty blue. Far farther again paler foothills rise. Then white peaks leap to infinite sky. Distance reaches back touching the throat, tugging the breath.
Yaks are dots on golden slopes. Mountains bleed rust and lurid mineral greens. Steam
spouts from snow around sulphurous volcanic cones. There are clay-pans and potholes, bulldust and stony plains, lofty mountains, green glaciers, grey screes and frozen rivers.
Wildly twisting across mountainsides, rocky strata zigzag curve and fracture. The writhing earth thrusts upwards still. The mother’s guts are bursting from her belly. Earth’s patterns are more fantastic than the richest thankas; gaunter than surrealism itself.
In Central Tibet I gape at lakes of turquoise green and lapis blue where icebergs float white like ships; or piled by storms on shores they raise ramparts; sometimes, lovely pink defying artifice. The geology is alive. If you love the earth, touch her here, but tenderly.
