Tibet 1995-1996
The worst and most dangerous bus ride of our lives
(Excerpt from the diary)
With wild gestures, the bus driver tells us to take a seat in the penultimate row of seats. Although we know that the back rows are the most uncomfortable on an overland journey in old buses, we follow the Chinese man’s rough instructions and squeeze into the seats, which are far too narrow and completely cramped. “Put on your hats and cover yourselves with your scarves,” we think we understand his further instructions. “Why is that?” I ask in English, although I suspect that the unfriendly man can’t understand me. He and his cashier hold a pistol symbolized by their fingers to their heads and show us the star on a cap. We understand immediately and follow as if on command.
Tanja and I have embarked on an adventure, the outcome of which is completely uncertain. Because of the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama (the greatest religious leader in Tibet after the Dalai Lama), the Chinese authorities have hermetically sealed off all national borders to Tibet from the outside world. Since the Chinese have made the real Panchen Lama disappear and, in order to exert more political influence on Tibet, have appointed their own Panchen Lama, they are expecting unrest. Because they want to prevent this coup from becoming public at all costs, they have cut Tibet off from the outside world. However, as we are determined to complete our 30-year expedition from Germany to South America without an airplane, we have no choice but to take risks from time to time. To get from here, north-western China, to Nepal, we have to cross the Himalayas. In between is Tibet, which is now sealed off. The only option for us is to be smuggled onto this completely run-down bus. That is the reason why the bus driver and his cashier collected the equivalent of DM 170 per person – 12 times the fare. If we are discovered by the Chinese police during this adventure, we risk a prison sentence at worst or, at best, being thrown out of China. As usual, we trust our luck and the bad-tempered bus driver who has promised to take us to Lhasa. If we pass all the checkpoints unmolested, we can move relatively freely in Tibet with our Chinese visas.
Huddled together and wrapped up in wintery Chinese military clothing, which also serves as camouflage, we sit there and wait for the old rattletrap to finally start its mammoth two-day journey. According to other travelers we’ve met over the past few months, we know that one of the worst bus rides on the planet awaits us.
We watch in amazement as the already groaning vehicle is loaded to bursting point. Even the aisle between the rows of seats is used as a luggage rack. More and more passengers get on until absolutely every seat is taken. Suddenly the bus driver comes back and tells us in no uncertain terms that Tanja and I are not allowed to sit next to each other. “Police!” he seems to shout in Chinese. While Tanja now shares a double seat to my left with a monk and an old woman, a Tibetan sits down next to me. His over-thick fur coat and my puffy Chinese military jacket are already making me feel like I’m in a straitjacket.
Finally, at 5:30 p.m., the museum-worthy vehicle rumbles off. We leave the city of Golmund in Qinghai province. The province is geographically a foothill of the Tibetan plateau and has the dubious reputation of being the Siberia of China. The reason: this is where the majority of Chinese labor camps are located.
Due to a few small checks, refueling stops and reasons that are not obvious to us, it takes us two hours to leave the ugly, unfriendly city behind us. When we pass police officers or checkpoints, the driver tells us to duck down. When the bus reaches the open countryside at around 7:30 pm and the last brick houses of Golmund become smaller and smaller, we can finally sit upright again. My back is already hurting like hell and it’s a mystery to me how we’re going to get through the next 1,166 kilometers to Lhasa.
The passengers seem to be in a good mood as the Tibetans start to sing. Some of them now pray their mantras incessantly. It doesn’t take long for the Chinese minority to start singing too. In contrast to Tibetan singing, theirs sounds terribly wrong, especially deafeningly loud. Only a short time later, the Tibetans fall silent. As if every Chinese person had a megaphone in front of their mouth, they shout and talk at a volume that makes our hair stand on end.
Just an hour later, the bus driver is gesticulating wildly, so we make ourselves small again behind the seats. “Checkpost!” we hear a Tibetan passenger shout. Startled, I bend down. No sooner have I pressed my upper body against my thighs than the Tibetan next to me puts his thick fur coat over me. I wait in the small prison that smells of rancid milk and start to sweat. It doesn’t take long before I start to struggle to breathe. I pull the stale air through my lungs as best I can and wonder how long my body can hold out. Loud, commanding voices penetrate through the fur. Soldiers or policemen are checking passengers’ travel permits and papers. “What if they discover us?” I ask myself anxiously. I wonder how Tanja is doing? The ignorance about what is going on out there is almost unbearable. Fear creeps over me, creeps into my overheated bones and I begin to pray one Our Father after another. What happens when they get on the bus? “My God, there’s no way I want to end up in prison,” I think. I estimate that at least 30 minutes have already passed. It can’t be long now before I have to rip the cruel fur coat off my back from overheating. Brooommm, brrrooomm, suddenly the diesel engine starts up again. Our vehicle continues its journey, bumping and rumbling. It doesn’t take long for my neighbor’s grinning, friendly face to appear in front of my sweaty countenance and free me from his protective coat. He gives me the thumbs up and is delighted to have made it through the first important checkpoint in one piece.
Tanja’s neighbor pulls pityingly on her cap. “You can take them off,” she says, whereupon Tanja takes the thick winter cap off her bright red head with relief. Believing that we have left the biggest hurdles behind us and now have a free ride to Lhasa, we smile at each other with relief. In a good mood, I start a conversation with my neighbor. “What’s your name?” I ask him in English, which he obviously misunderstands and immediately frees up his seat for Tanja. Because of the language barrier, I don’t try to explain to him what I wanted to say and am glad to have Tanja by my side again.
A Chinese man next to us smokes foul-smelling cigarettes incessantly, much to our annoyance. His barking smoker’s cough is already ringing in our ears. Again and again, with a barely believable “Ccchhhuud”, he brings up some of the contents of his stomach and spits the greenish-yellow pus unabashedly onto the floor next to Tanja’s foot. Because there is no heating in the bus, the stuff freezes instantly. Just an hour later, the captain of this lurching road steamer orders us to resume our old seating positions. We look at each other in shock. “Do you think there will be another checkpoint?” asks Tanja. “I have no idea. We’d better follow his instructions,” I reply with a growing uneasy feeling. In fact, the bus is stopped again just 10 minutes later.
Test of nerves
I’ve been crouching in an uncomfortable, hunched position under my neighbor’s thick coat for half an hour. This time I got the window seat. The windshield is iced over due to the extreme cold. I squint cautiously through a fold of fur at the glass decorated with ice flowers to see what’s going on out there. However, the ice crust is so thick that nothing at all can be seen. Loud, aggressive vocal fragments reach my ears. Some passengers are dragged off the bus, complaining loudly. My stomach cramps up. One heatwave after another makes the sweat pour from my pores. Suddenly I notice my neighbor standing up and resting his hand on my back. What’s going on? In the meantime, 45 minutes must have passed. A man’s voice, accustomed to giving orders, blares through the night sky. “Oh God, they’re on the bus,” it flashes through my mind. The police officers now seem to be going through row after row of seats. The evil voices are clearly getting closer. Panic strikes me and I fear drowning in my own sweat. My head is pounding like crazy. Thoughts race through my brain and I begin to curse myself for having imagined that our journey to Tibet could go undetected. “What an idiot I am!” The policeman is now standing just one row of seats in front of me and shouting at the top of his voice. Has he tracked Tanja down? What an achievement it must be for a Chinese policeman to suddenly discover a European among a crowd of Tibetans and Chinese who is clearly trying to enter one of China’s most politically sensitive regions illegally via a hermetically sealed border? This should be a fantastic success for the hot-tempered, profile-neurotic officials. Maybe it means a promotion for the man right next to me? My thoughts are racing, my back is on the verge of breaking and my nerves seem to be about to snap at any moment. “Please, please,” I plead to the heavens, “please let us get out of here safely.” The unpleasant, sharp voice continues to cut through the thick air. If they have Tanja, I will also make myself known. I have to stand by her, I think, and am already about to pull off the fur coat and blankets that have been placed over me. I hold back at the last second. What if the drooling policeman hasn’t discovered Tanja at all and I come out of the woodwork for no reason? I would tell us straight away. What would I do in their place if they caught me? Sure, she would also reveal herself, the game would be over. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
My muscles are shaking. Over an hour must have passed by now. The Tibetan taps my back with his hand and presses his body against me. To an outsider, the whole thing must look like I’m a wild pile of old, rancid blankets. Suddenly the hostile voices die down, become quieter, and as the diesel engine starts up and the bodywork shakes, I am flooded with a wave of relief. Only a few minutes later we are relieved of our camouflage. I immediately look at Tanja who, despite her smile, looks as if she’s about to faint. “That was close. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer,” she moans. “Were you that hot too?” I ask. “Hot? My God, that’s not even an expression. I could hardly breathe and thought I was going to lose my senses at any moment. The nice monk next to me must have sensed my distress and luckily opened the window a crack.
Only now do I notice that some passengers are missing. The police obviously took them away. Although all the inmates are mainly Tibetan and about one-fifth Chinese, some of them had faulty or no travel documents. It’s a mystery to me how we remained undetected, but we were probably just lucky.
Murderous cold – a true TorTour
Because there is no heating in the bus, our feet turned to ice hours later. It’s probably at least minus 15 degrees outside. A strong wind blows across the vast land. A horribly cold draught forces its way through a broken window pane in front of us. The Tibetan mothers hold their babies across the aisle of the rows of seats. Her urine splashes onto the metal floor, disappears under the luggage and is frozen just seconds later. “If we don’t want our toes to freeze off here, we have to move them”. I then wriggle my numb toes 300 times until I finally get some blood pumping through the constricted veins again. But it’s not long before my toes are numb again and I’m forced to repeat the strenuous exercise. It would be great to freeze your toes off on a bus ride. I can understand when mountaineers lose a toe on the summit of Mount Everest. But if you lose your toes on a bus ride? That would probably be an irony of fate. Although: the travel guide clearly warns against this bus ride. It is said to be not uncommon for people to freeze to death during this two to three-day “TorTour”. In order to cope better with the exertion and the icy cold, they pump themselves full of sleeping pills and then never wake up. Some of the Chinese, who are also absolutely scantily clad, are actually lying completely bent over in their seats and sleeping.
Sometimes the monotonous driving noises combine with horrible choking. A Chinese woman right in front of us is definitely not well. She has been throwing up for half an hour. Shreds of her vomit fly in our direction in the icy cold wind. No wonder, with this road. The bus jumps from one pothole to the next and shakes us around like fallen fruit. The discomfort is compounded by a severe headache, which is most likely due to a lack of fluids because of the initial sweating attacks.
Suddenly, right next to Tanja, a loud clamor begins. The chain-smoking, spitting Chinese man screams as if someone had stabbed him. He screams at Tanja like a berserker. “What on earth is going on now?” I shout in horror. “I have no idea. I just told him not to keep banging his knee against my thigh,” Tanja replies. I watch in horror as the quick-tempered man grabs Tanja by the jacket and pulls her out of her seat. I’m about to sink my fist into his unsightly face when Tanja stops me abruptly. “I’ll take care of it. Stay out of this,” she gasps and starts singing a loud OM. “Oooohhhmmm! Oooohhhmmm! Oooohhhmmm!” her voice hums through the speeding bus. In the meantime, almost all the passengers are wide awake. The Tibetans look angrily at the Chinese man, who is still swearing loudly. Cursing, he loosens his strangling grip and lets Tanja sink back into her seat. “Phew, you did well,” I whisper and wonder what else we will have to experience on this hellish journey.
Lack of water and poor food
(Monday, 11.12. 1995)
Just before I think I’m going to pee my pants, the moving nightmare stops for a short rest. It is 10:00 in the morning. With stiff bones and exhausted by the experiences of the last 17 hours, we crawl out of the dented metal box. We are somewhere in Tibet. Far and wide, all you can see is barren, desolate land. We have no eye for the beauty of this landscape. Instead, we are greeted by mangy dogs and highland goats. They search for food in the garbage of the simple truck stop. Giant black ravens that look like stuffed chickens hop back and forth on the road.
Tired, we enter the draughty wooden rack of the service station, which is bustling with activity. All the passengers start spooning in something we can’t define. We desperately point to a kind of meatball that looks the most appetizing of all the indefinable things. The toothless old woman serves us food on greasy plates. Although I’ve had to munch on a lot of crazy food in the last 13 years of traveling, my stomach almost turns and I leave the plate untouched. Tanja is not much different. To quench our thirst, we are served salty tea with rancid butter. As we are afraid of the murky water (bacteria), we force ourselves to drink the tea.
Unsatisfied and still suffering from a severe headache, we get back on the bus. After the meal, the snotting, vomiting and coughing of the passengers seems to reach its peak. Or is it because most people are awake again? The silence of the night is definitely over. People talk loudly and smoke endlessly. The food waste in the corridor, the frozen children’s urine and the human exhalations make it smell god-awful. At least the driver takes a pee break every two hours or so. Or does he want to save himself from falling asleep? It is incomprehensible to me anyway how a person can sit behind the wheel for so many hours without a break. There is no doubt that the man is doped.
Suddenly there is a terribly loud hiss and the bus stops abruptly. We have a flat tire. No wonder with the potholed gravel road, which certainly doesn’t deserve the word road. While the driver and his helper replace the worn tire with another, also worn tire, many passengers are out on the windy, open terrain. Most of the area is covered in snow. It is bitterly cold. My former neighbor, who protected me from the police with his coat, simply lies flat on his back. The stones and snow don’t seem to bother him. There is no doubt that these people have a different connection to the earth than the Chinese or us Europeans, I think to myself. I would love to lie down next to him so that I could stretch my body out again for once.
We reach another rest stop in the late afternoon. This time we have the choice between a completely dirty Tibetan pub or an absolutely run-down Chinese pub. “I can’t eat anything, I feel sick,” Tanja complains as I bring a completely overpriced plate of rice with beans and meat to the table. On closer inspection, the meat is pure fat and the sauce is so terribly spicy that I end up making do with the plain rice.
The driver and his assistant use the break to repair the tire. With their fingers and a lot of spit, they search for the hole in the tube. They are busy for hours and I can stretch my legs thoroughly. My Tibetan rescuer comes up to me at some point and tells me not to walk around outside. He tugs on my sleeve and tries to pull me into the stuffy restaurant. When I explain to him in sign language that I want to stay outside, he points to my scarf, which I should put around my face as camouflage. “Ah, okay,” I answer him gratefully. It would be less good if a policeman discovered me here, because we are not yet in Lhasa.
Just before we continue, the driver’s helper comes up to me and tries to explain that we are already on the outskirts of Lhasa. With gestures he makes me understand that they are about to unload our luggage. At first I think it’s a joke, but the man doesn’t let up until I realize that they actually want to abandon us here in the middle of nowhere. “Absolutely not,” I say indignantly in German, because he doesn’t understand anything apart from Chinese anyway and my knowledge of English is therefore completely useless here. “You leave your luggage on the roof,” I swear loudly, whereupon the man simply leaves me standing there. After three hours, the spare tire is repaired and we board the bus without further incident. Again we are shaken for another night. Our headaches become unbearable, probably the onset of altitude sickness. By now we should be at 3,600 meters.
The woman in front of us throws up out of the window again. “It’s probably dinner,” I say apathetically. In order to get as little of the foul-smelling spray as possible, we hold our hands in front of our faces or hide behind our scarves. Unfortunately, this doesn’t help us much because, for whatever reason, she suddenly empties the contents of her stomach into the already contaminated corridor. Even when we take a break, the sick person just sits there and throws up on the metal floor. Tanja is always able to pull her feet away just in time …
During the night, the atmosphere between the Tibetans and us becomes more cordial. A trader wants to sell us jewelry and glass beads all the time. He hisses and laughs and tries to convince us of the high quality of his vendor’s tray in a really funny way. When he pulls on my thick winter trousers and makes it unmistakably clear that I should take them off, the whole bus almost collapses with laughter. Although we are probably all suffering from the merciless ride, we do have a lot of fun for a moment.
The shock runs deep
(Tuesday, 12.12.1995)
As I open my puffy eyes, I notice a pale strip of light on the horizon. Tired, I observe the idiosyncratic landscape of Tibet. Suddenly it gets loud again on the bus. People wake each other up, pack up their small bags and look out of the window with excitement. “I think we’ll be there soon,” I say expectantly, looking up rather than through the dirty window. More and more houses appear and unexpectedly I see him. “Quick, look, there he is!” I shout, gazing joyfully at the Potala, the Dalai Lama’s winter palace. “We’ve made it,” Tanja says happily and gives me a wonderful kiss.
“What is that? It looks like a checkpoint. Look at all those policemen! I look out of the window in horror as we turn into the bus station in Lhasa. This time the driver doesn’t need to tell us to hide. We duck down immediately and while many passengers leave the bus, we are desperately stuck to our seats. Under a blanket, I can see a huge commotion outside. Several police officers are running around the bus. Our hearts are slipping into our pants. How are we supposed to get out of here without being discovered? And what if we are caught? “They’ll just send us back,” I say. “Or they lock us up,” Tanja suspects. My overburdened stomach cramps up again. Pale as a sheet, I watch the goings-on outside the bus as inconspicuously as possible. “They’re unloading the luggage from the roof,” I say. We watch spellbound as our rucksacks are lifted off the roof. If they were to be stolen now, we would be absolutely powerless. And when one of the policemen sees the rucksacks, it’s clear that there are foreigners somewhere.
I cautiously lift my head to see what is happening in the passenger compartment. When I spot a policeman talking to the driver just a few meters from us, I collapse forward as if hit by an arrow and slump back behind the seat. “They’re very close,” I whisper to Tanja so that she doesn’t move for God’s sake. Suddenly a hand grabs me roughly by the shoulder. “That’s it,” I say resignedly and lift my head. Stunned, I look into the face of the driver, who orders us to leave the bus immediately. Without hesitation, we get up and slowly descend the steps outside. Some of the Tibetan passengers and the cashier manage to keep two policemen busy behind the bus, while leading hands guide us to the front of the bus. With our winter hats pulled low on our foreheads and covered by our thick scarves, we are indistinguishable from locals at first glance. Everything now happens at lightning speed. Our driver waves a minibus over, which stops right in front of the cab. As soon as the doors open, we are pushed inside. Other passers-by are roughly pushed aside. As if by magic, helping hands heave our heavy rucksacks into the overcrowded passenger compartment and before the door can close, the minibus shoots off.
“Have we made it now?” asks Tanja, her eyes wide with disbelief. “I think so,” I say, still dizzy with excitement and exhaustion. “I hope our stay doesn’t continue like this,” says Tanja, smiling exhaustedly. “My speech”. The relief carries me as if on clouds.
Tibet 1995/1996
Tanja & Denis Katzer were fascinated by the landscape with its wide, open plains, its towering mountains and its wafer-thin, crystal-clear atmosphere, as well as the dignified and tenacious people. On the other hand, the images of arbitrarily destroyed monasteries reminded them of the tragedy of occupation and oppression.
