It was raining when we left Golmud, a frontier garrison post controlling access to Tibet from the west, on the morning of July 1. The year was 1994. There had been a heavy snowstorm the previous night and the Kun Lun ranges were streaked in white. Though we were out of the spiritless Chadam Basin, we were still going through a  gravel desert. As we came up to the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, we were greeted by a wall of snow mountains sweeping across our left with beautiful rolling green grassland in the foreground. Long-handled tractors packed with rations, sticks, equipment and smiling construction workers, unwashed and unkempt, in filthy sheep-skin coats, rattled along on the bumpy Highway 109 that stretches from Urumchi to Lhasa.

122 kms from Golmud, we stopped for lunch at a wayside station in Sitadan, 13160 feet closer to the sky than the sea. While we waited for the innkeeper to procure and cook the food for their unexpected guests, we feasted our eyes on the snow-clad Karao-Sigtai, an arm’s length away, whose proud peak stood at 20387 feet. It was winter and summer at the same time. When the sun was behind the clouds, we shivered with chill and enveloped our noses in our woollen sweaters; when the sun was out, the oppressive heat pierced through our clothes. At length we reached the top of the 15714 feet Kun Lun Shan Pass and stopped to photograph ourselves on the white vertical stone marker painted with red Chinese letters and to admire the barrenness of the place. Beneath us lay, as far as the sight could reach, a vast extent of wilderness and solitude, a trackless waste with no living thing in view except the breeze-blown snow that whirled and danced before us in cordial salutation.

Coming down the Kun Lun Shan on a comfortable road with an insignificant gradient, we entered a wide valley. The mountains had become more distant. After a brief stopover, just before sunset, at a quiet encampment of a herder, we reached the town 

The highest pool-addicts
of Tutuhiyan late on a starless night. Tutuhiyan, on the banks of Tutuhe River, is a part of the great Yangtze Kiang and very close to its source. The town comprises of about a dozen houses, a pool table, a restaurant devoid of food, and a barrack-type hotel without toilets. We bowled along the Tibetan Plateau at a smart pace, admiring the summer loveliness of the country. The picture was brightened by the wild drokpa, the nomad. Fired by the love of liberty and independence, the Drokpa roams the vast spaces, proud and free, like a monarch of this lofty realm. Every haughty Drokpa attracted my attention and I looked at them with envy. His cool temperament, the solemnity of his behaviour, his acute judgement of natural phenomenon, his rock-like ruggedness excited my distant adoration.

To get better acquainted with the image I had worshipped, I traversed the open country to get to a nomad’s camp. After seeking permission from am old drokpa, I entered the tent. Its inside was full of smoke from the burning yak dung fuel. An alien odour emanating from the pungent-smelling yak butter placed in wooden cylinders made me hold my breath. I suffered the suffocation of a nomad’s wilderness home and "fresh" air for a full thirty seconds before diving out of it. Travel educates you to discount the rhapsodies of poets, the cant of sentimentalists, and the extravagance of romantic writers who bestow upon the exotic nomads an image of wonder and majesty.

As we could not reach our day’s destination - Nagchu - we made an unscheduled night halt at Amdo, the birthplace of the present Dalai Lama, and a busy junction for the Chinese army in occupation of Tibet. There were no inns in the small town. Limin, our Chinese escort, himself an ex-Army officer, organised our stay in the army barracks.

The PLA truck drivers and soldiers with whom we were sharing the dormitory joined us. They were all in their teens with plain, smooth faces that had not, as yet, felt the sharpness of a razor. We introduced each other and tried making ourselves understood as best as we could. Cigarettes were exchanged and a while later, one of the expedition members produced a bottle, full of yellowish liquid, that did the rounds. As soon as our blood was properly provided by the liquid, our spirits began to rise. As more bottles were produced, our spirits began to rise faster. Language was no barrier after that. Lewd stories were told by the Indians that made the Chinese bellies shake with laughter and tears run down their chinky eyes. Lecherous songs were hollered by the Chinese and the Indians joined them in a mighty chorus that would have drowned the boom of the loudest guns.