Ｔｅｍｐｔａｔｉｏｎｓ　Ｏｆ　Ｔｈｅ　Ｓｕｎｓｈｉｎｅ　Ａｎｄ　Ｗｉｌｄｅｒｎｅｓｓ

Ｂａ　Ｈｕａｎｇ

When I had decided to visit Zanda and Guge alone I reduced my luggage time and again until all I had with me were a sleeping bag I had borrowed in Lhasa, two cans of green soy beans, 10 packs of instant noodle, a water bottle, some first-aid medicine and salt to be used as disinfectant. To lessen my burden I had left behind painting tools and materials, which were of little use in the wild fields, and torn blank pages from my notebooks and diary. I had made a ten day plan, knowing little about time and space, geography and what was to happen during my journey except the fact that Guge is somewhere in the barren, weather beaten dusty mountains of Zanda County. My mind was occupied by primitive and weather beaten scenes, and the horror of complicated situations. All I wanted was to find a place for myself amidst the ruins of the Guge Kingdom. The thought of thousand year old mummies, monsters with grotesque human faces, bandits charging at me and wolves I was to kill kept gnawing at my vitals. My only consolation came in the form of a borrowed pistol with 20 bullets, which felt assuredly heavy in my hands. It did not matter anymore at this moment whether I could make the most of my forthcoming fact finding tour as an artist, because I was uncertain if the inaccessibility of certain places would prevent me from trekking to my destinations I wanted so ardently to reach. I was certain that I would be stricken with terror and my knees would threaten to buckle when confronted by gruesome ancient castles bristling with the sound of sand carried in the wind, a human skeleton or grotesque faces or even a small animal that suddenly emerged from the wilderness.

Despite all the perils my lonely trek entailed, the prospects of transforming my obstinate, illusion filled desire into reality filled me with burning expectation.

A vehicle bound from Gartok to Zanda was hard to come by. After much effort I eventually got a lift in a cement-transporting Isuzu truck. The driver was a strong, reticent Tibetan. Barely a word had been exchanged during the journey. Only when he had stopped by a stream, fetched some water and boiled it with a blowtorch, did he ask, in heavily corrupted Mandarin, “You, drink water?” Feeling it unsightly to eat instant noodle with boiled water in front of a Tibetan, I asked for a cup of water and readily accepted his offer of preserved meat.

It took us an entire day to cover the 300 kilometers of mountain trail and get to Zanda. After a delay of three days I got my first chance to visit Guge. A Ngari Military Subzone jeep was passing Zanda on its way to Daba on the frontier border and the driver agreed to take me to Zarang. We set out west along the mountain trail that ran parallel with the Langqen Zangbo. After a number of hairpin turns we left the dangerous road, drove through a pebbly river beach and entered the territory of Zarang. The pebbles, washed clean, round and shiny by water, indicated that the Langqen Zangbo used to be a magnificent river. Only when the jeep returned to its bank in Zarang and ran alongside it did I saw what the river was really like. The water, heavily silted, foamed and swirled as it came rushing down the shallow river bed. The clayish cliffs on both sides of the river were riddled with caves, meaning that I had entered the heartland of the ancient kingdom of Shangshun.

My guide, Uncle Wangdu, was a care taker of the ruins of Guge. Having picked him up at Zarang Village, our jeep made another sharp turn up the last steep slope and brought me to the foot of the mountain where the once splendid edifice of the Guge Kingdom founded by one of the sons of Lan Darma, the last king of the Tubo Kingdom, stands amidst an extensive assemblage of mountains as if under the seige of a mighty army. For all the hundreds of years that have passed the historic castle, with its mass of crumbling walls and foundations scattered all over a dusty cliff that shoots 300 metres into the sky, has retained its imposing majesty. The deserted caves clustered together, turning the mountain into a massive beehive shining under the sun in splashes of radiant colors. Yet everything here bears marks of the tearing and wearing of wind and rain; deserted and in solitude, they lie there in a deep ravine surrounded by high mountains. A pall of hushed silence seems to be falling over the entire scene, like a vast flood, paradoxically violent and gentle, surging sorrowfully from the remote bank of history. In my mind?s eye Im swimming in this surging tide, in a vain attempt to dig up the heavy silt that has deposited deep at the river bottom. The Guge Kingdom, situated 5,000￠ùmetres above sea level, lay encircled by Yugu in the north, Kashmir in the west, India and Nepal in the south and Tubo in the east. In this unique geographical location the kingdom had written its illustrious history and culture. All this, nevertheless, came to an abrupt end in a bloody war, leaving the castle and temples to the mercy of the elements, which make the place more charismatic and tempting.