MEMOIR

Tibet: A Train Journey to the Sky

A sister’s pledge for peace in the land of the gods

Since the beginning of my working life, train travel has been a mere necessity to get me from A to B – an unavoidable grind to and fro the perpetual hubbub of London.

There is often no joy in it.

In fact, my daily commute can sometimes feel like a real test of my tolerance of other people. And the older I get, the less of it I have.

There are certain categories of commuters who annoy the hell out of me.

There’s the invasive type who thinks it OK to ‘man-spread’ his way into your personal space, because as a woman, sans a certain appendage, we don’t need as much space.

Then there are the ‘shouters’ – the ones with ear pods so far rammed in their ear holes, they lose sense of their volume, unwittingly sharing their life story with the entire carriage.

But the absolute worst are the ‘coughers’ and the ‘sneezers’. The ones who have forgotten the fundamental lessons of COVID-19 – to cover your mouth!

Train travel is a different story altogether when I’m on foreign soil though. When there is no pressing urgency to get from one place to the next, no race to claim the last prized seat, the romantic portrayal of train journeys on the silver screen comes alive. It’s in those moments, that I can embrace train travel wholeheartedly.

Taking a break from the man-spreaders, I have travelled 5,000 miles, only to travel another 1,100 miles by train.

I’m on the Qinghai-Tibet railway, a 43-hour crossing from China across the remote plateaus of Tibet. It is hailed as one of the greatest railway journeys to experience, and at an elevated height of 5072 meters, it is breathtaking.

Literally breathtaking.

The atmosphere becomes thinner as we trundle higher towards the sky, and my breathing decelerates to a slow cadence of shallow breaths. When my mind wanders to the spellbinding scenery, my heart thuds against my rib cage, an alarm reminding me to draw in greedy gulps of air.

What used to come naturally, and effortlessly without any thought, now feels labored, disrupting my calm with relentless waves.

I won’t lie and sugarcoat the ride. It certainly ain’t the Orient Express. The flat-screen TV has long malfunctioned and taunts me with its blank stare at the foot of my berth. The dining car tries to deliver an unforgettable guest experience with pressed white linen dressing the tables, but the menu is limited to greasy chow mien or fried rice. As for the toilets – well, let’s just say it’s not for the faint-hearted. Imagine hole-in-the-ground-loos with an ineffective flush system, paired with passengers with dizzying altitude sickness and dodgy tums.

The passengers are largely Han Chinese, and the belching, spitting and deep nasal hawking reminds me of the vast cultural divide. I thought luck was on my side when the last 2 berths in my cabin remained empty, but four hours into the journey, my new roommates abruptly crashed into my dream-filled slumber.

I opened one eye and saw two faces peering at me – a mirror image of the other. Double trouble. As a twin myself, I recognized the mischief behind their matching smiles. Accompanied by their Ye Ye (grandfather), the twin girls are on their way to Lhasa for their bi-annual visit to meet their parents. Despite the unsociable hour, they jumped from berth to berth, gleefully shrieking ‘Lhasa, Lhasa, Lhasa!’, punctuated by Grandpa’s nasal hawking.

With little else to occupy myself, I’ve eventually given in to the twins’ curious gazes and have made friends with Jie Jie, the older bossier twin, and Me Me, the younger mischievous twin. They were thrilled when I played with their hair and applied blusher to their delicate white skin.

Now, I’ve become their ‘ah-yee’ (aunty), and somehow I’m responsible for escorting them to the toilet. At first, they gave me puzzled looks when I refused to let them use the soiled hole-in-the-ground mess, and led them to the only Western-style toilet I stumbled upon during a stroll to stretch my legs. They cocked their heads at me when they saw the white throne, prompting the basic lesson on how to use it.

With eight more hours until we reach Lhasa, the unforgiving altitude is merciless, depriving us of oxygen. Between fits of disturbed sleep, I heard Me Me calling out for her Ye Ye. She has fallen victim to altitude sickness and was vomiting throughout the night. She’s not the only one. The sound of retching echoes through the carriages like a horrendous soundtrack.

While my back and lungs scream complaints at me, my eyes find solace in the never-ending expanse of mossy velvet plains rolling past us.

Now and again, the odd meandering stream cuts through desolate nothingness, peppered with the first signs of life. Wild yak, stopping for a sup along their journey. A nomadic home of a Tibetan herder, where smoke from its chimney unfurls itself into an impossible cerulean blue sky.

Both twins are on either side of me as we gaze out towards our oncoming destination. I see a string of colorful prayer flags strung across a distant mountain, a hint that we are soon reaching the ‘Land of the Gods’, the most revered and spiritual place on the face of the Earth.

I think about why I am here and where this journey is leading me.

I think about the tragedy that struck my family two months ago.

The sound of my sister’s deep, anguished sobs haunts the silence in my head. I picture her in those terrible, helpless moments when nothing could console her. Her shoulders slumped under the weight of her grief; her whole body shaking with each desperate sob. She cried until there was no sound left – just a hopeless whimper escaped her lips.

That was the first time I’d seen my sister like that. She was the strongest of the seven of us siblings – the one who always seemed impenetrable. Even when we buried our father, and then seven years later, our mother, she seemed to keep it together while I crumbled into a complete mess.

Now I was the strong one.

After my brother-in-law’s funeral, I somehow felt an indescribable responsibility to bring some light to the shadows he left behind.

Despite being a kind, gentle and quiet soul, unseen demons lurked within his head. A silent battle with depression had clung to him throughout his life, and in the last few years, his illness intensified. In the end, it took him to a place he ultimately felt he couldn’t escape.

I was carrying a photo of my brother-in-law with me, nestled carefully within the protective pages of ‘The Little Book of Buddhism’ by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

I’ve always been fairly pragmatic and I don’t even consider myself particularly religious, but over the last couple of months, I’ve found myself questioning if there is an afterlife.

Is there a place devoid of all pain and darkness where the embrace of our loved ones awaits us?

Desperate to console my sister, a sudden thought entered my mind from out of nowhere — to carry my brother-in-law’s spirit across the spiritual lands of Tibet. Despite never climbing a mountain in my life, I promised her that I would take him to Base Camp, Everest – to the ‘Roof of the World’ where Heaven is within reach.

I pledged that there, he would find the peace he never found on earth. She clung to that hope. I couldn’t let her down. I had to get to Base Camp.

It may sound ridiculous to non-believers – Geez! Do I even really believe it?! – but when you ponder the existence of heaven, it inevitably raises the question of a hell. And in that uncertainty, you damn well do everything you can to make sure your dearly departed finds the right path.

A lake, more a sea in its scale, suddenly appears and takes my mind to lighter places. The lake is so blue, sky and water merge into one element, a fine blue pastel smudge at the horizon the only tell-tale sign that things are as they should be.

A “Wah!” is suddenly emitted from my co-passengers. Sleep and oxygen-deprived faces are pressed against the glass, as the most vivid rainbow crosses our path. A good omen I hope of safe travels in Tibet.

I glance over at the twins. Their eyes are squeezed tight and their lips move in soundless murmurs. I wonder what they are praying for. A happy reunion with their mother that will not end with another farewell?

I close my eyes too. I think about my sister and her two young children, and I find myself doing something I’ve not done for a long, long time – I squeeze my eyes shut, concentrating on every word and send a silent prayer across these spiritual lands.

Many thanks for taking time to read 🙏🏼

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