“A child who cannot sleep.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Haven’t I?” replied the stranger and stood up. He walked away into the darkness, silent and tense, waiting for the dawn to come.
They travelled for six days. Christopher tried to work out where they were, but it was useless. There were landmarks the peaks of Kachenjunga, Chombu, Kachenjhau, Panhunri, and Chomolhari lay in the distance, now visible, now hidden from sight by lower but nearer masses of rock or ice. As they progressed, however, it became increasingly difficult to distinguish even the more distinctive peaks. Christopher had never set eyes on them from this angle, and most of the time he was guessing their identity on the basis of comparative height and position.
To make matters worse, the mountains themselves seemed determined to play a madcap game of disguises. First one would put on a crown of clouds, then another would wreath itself in mist while a third drew down on itself a heavy fall of snow that quickly distorted its shape. Light and shadows danced at intervals on every crag and gully they could reach. What seemed a valley one moment might in the next be transformed into a glacier; a flat buttress would suddenly become a razor-edged ridge; a bright snow-field would in the blink of an eye be replaced by a swathe of the deepest shadow. Nothing was constant, and Christopher despaired of ever making sense of the path he followed or of being able to find his way back again. Once or twice, even the monks stopped and consulted before deciding which of two possible routes to follow.
Late on the sixth day, Christopher saw that they were approaching a broad pass. The air felt incredibly thin and he had difficulty breathing. Even the monks, he noticed, were labouring. They stopped just short of the pass to rest.
“Our journey will be over soon,” the lama whispered to Christopher.
“That is our destination.”
He pointed upwards in the direction of the pass. Fading sunlight beaded the edges of a curved ridge. A lammergeyer swooped effortlessly down through the opening, then rose again, catching the sunlight momentarily on its wings. Beyond the light, at the head of the pass, a bank of mist moved lazily.
“I see nothing,” Christopher said.
“Look more closely,” the lama told him.
“Up there, just to the left of the mist.” He pointed again.
Christopher saw something fluttering. It took him a few moments to make out what it was a tarcho, the traditional pole bearing down its length a cotton flag printed with prayers and the emblem of the wind-horse. Somewhere nearby, there would be a habitation a small village or a hermit’s cell.
Suddenly, as though Christopher’s discovery of the tarcho had been a signal, the valley reverberated with sound. From high above came the deep notes of a Temple prayer-horn. It was no ordinary trumpet but a giant dung-chen. Low and deep-throated, the voice of the great horn penetrated every corner of the pass and the valley below. In that dreadful silence, in that vast solitude, its bellow filled Christopher with something akin to terror. He felt his flesh creep as the sound echoed and re-echoed over everything.
And then, as suddenly as it had come, the sound ceased. The last echoes died away and silence flooded back.
They began to climb towards the pass. The ascent was steep and treacherous. Wide patches of ice forced the men to crawl part of the way. Although the head of the pass had seemed near from below, now it appeared to tease them, receding and receding ever further into the distance as they climbed. It was some sort of optical illusion, caused by a curious combination of shadow and the light of the setting sun.
Finally, they reached the top and rounded the corner of the pass.
The monks shouted “Lha-gyal-lo Lha-gyal-loV loudly. It was the first sign of anything approaching exuberance Christopher had ever observed in them.
Tsarong Rinpoche came up close beside Christopher and grasped his arm. There was a look of intense excitement in his eyes. The rest of his face was hidden by his scarf.
“Look up,” he said in a sharp whisper that sounded exaggeratedly loud in the crisp air.
Christopher looked. At first, he could see nothing out of the ordinary: just a rock face that rose up and up into a curtain of swirling mist. The mist seemed to fill the region ahead of them, rising like a wall into a bank of freezing cloud. On either side of them, ice and mist formed a cradle in which they were gently rocked.
“There’s nothing,” Christopher murmured.
“Stones and mist.
That’s all.”
Suddenly, the trumpet sounded as before, but nearer this time.
Much nearer. Its deep, throbbing notes travelled through the mist like the blasts of a foghorn at sea. But wherever he looked, Christopher could see nothing but rocks covered in ice, rolling mist, and low cloud.
“Wait,” whispered Tsarong Rinpoche “You will see.”
The other monks were busy whirling their prayer wheels, adding the tinny whirring sound to the reverberations of the unseen trumpet that blared out from behind the mist.
And then, quite remarkably, as though the trumpet had wrought a miracle in the heavens, a portion of mist parted, revealing a golden roof and a terrace below it on which an orange-clad figure stood motionless against the dying light. The man blew into a large trumpet resting on wooden blocks. Obliquely, the sun’s rays caught the bowl of the instrument, turning it to fire. Then, it fell abruptly silent once more, and across the silence, like the murmur of waves falling on a pebbled shore far away, the sound of chanting voices came faintly to their ears. The figure on the terrace bowed and vanished into the mist.
As Christopher watched, the mist parted further, revealing bit by bit the clustered buildings of a vast monastery complex. The great edifice seemed as though suspended between earth and sky, floating impossibly on a cushion of mist, its topmost pinnacles lost among clouds.
At the centre stood a vast central building, painted red, to which a variety of lesser buildings clung like chicks about a mother hen.
The main edifice was several storeys tall, with brightly gilded roofs and pinnacles that burned in the light of the setting sun. Its windows were already shuttered against the evening wind. Icicles hung from eaves and lintels everywhere, like decorations on a giant cake.
Christopher was awed by the sight after so many days of unrelieved whiteness and desolation. The colours of the place dazzled him. He had forgotten how much life there could be in colour. Like a hungry man, he feasted on the golden vision in front of him until the sunlight turned violet and began to fade, taking the warm colours with it. His vision turned to darkness and he wondered if it had really been there at all.
“What is this place?” he whispered, to no-one in particular.
“Our destination,” said Tsarong Rinpoche.
“The pass we have just climbed is Dorje-la. The monastery in front of you is Dorje-la Gompa. But its proper name is Sanga Chelling: the Place of Secret Spells.”
Christopher looked up again. In a window high up near the roof, someone had lit a lamp. Someone was watching them. Someone was waiting for them.
Dorje-la Gompa, southern Tibet, January 1921 They entered the monastery the following morning after dawn.
The sound of the temple-horn had awakened them, braying high up on the wide terrace, calling in the darkness for the light to return. And it did return, lingering briefly on the broad peaks of the Eastern Himalaya before sliding reluctantly down into the dark valley below Dorje-la.
The ascent to the building was made on a long wooden ladder that threatened to give way at any moment and send them spinning back on to the rocks below. Christopher climbed without emotions of any kind; dread, anticipation, even triumph at having reached this place all had deserted him.
The first morning assembly had finished by the time they entered the building. They came in through a small red gate, but the monks were still in the Lha-khang taking tea before resuming their devotions. The travellers were met by a fat little monk dressed in the robes of a steward. The two trap as mumbled greetings and at once scuttled off down a dimly lit corridor, like rabbits returning to their warren. The lama entered a doorway on the left and closed the door behind him without a word. Christopher was led in a different direction, along a passage lit by rancid butter-lamps that gave off a jaundiced, almost sulphurous glow. The all-pervasive smells of ancient dri-
