Earlier on in this book af travel, Vikram wonders:
"Increasingly of late, and particularly when I drink, I find my thoughts drawn into the past rather than impelled into the future...What is the purpose, I wonder, of all this restlessness? I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias." Awaara Hoon?
He seems to answer this question, at least partially, towards the end of the book when he opines:"But on a personal level, to learn about another great culture is to enrich one's life, to understand one's own country, to feel more at home in the world, and indirectly to add to that reservoir of individual goodwill that may, generations from now, temper the cynical use of national power."
Ah, lofty words and hope, that, especially wishing that the 'reservoir of individual goodwill...may...temper the cynical use of national power.' So, maybe it should be a prerequisite for many world leaders who seem predisposed to exercise the 'cynical use of national power' to have been well travelled?
Well, that is a digression to the theme right now, which deals in examining Vikram Seth's sojourn into some fabled regions of the earth, namely parts of the Silk Route and then on into the Forbidden City, Lhasa. Eventually returning home by way of Nepal, Vikram chants the names of the places he has just recently passed through to remind himself of their actual existence and the hard fact of his journey: names like 'Turfan, Urumqi, Liuyaun, Dunhuang, Nanhu, Nilamu, Zhangmu...'
The book derives its name from the region of Tian Chi ("Heaven Lake"), "an area of such natural beauty that I could live here, content, for a year," according to Seth. This region, with its lake, is "few hours by bus from Urumqi," which is situated at the western end of China in the Xingjiang(Sinkiang) province, not too far from another prominent outpost, Turfan.
The author begins his journey from Nanjing, where he is a student, but the book starts out in Turfan. And it here that he manges to get an official stamp to go overland to Lhasa much to his immense joy (and thereon through Nepal to India).
After an "eastward loop" to accomplish some formalities in Nanjing and Beijing (the Nepalese visa, for one), he heads back westwards to resume he journey from Liuyuan and then on, hitching rides on boards trucks and encountering impossible situations (washed out roads and bridges, muddy, quagmirish-roads, altitude sickness, cramped travel in the trucks, poor food and routine checks of credentials), throughDunhuang, Nanhu, Germu, southern Qinghain in China onto northern Tibet and from there on to Lhasa.
Once in Lhasa, he has to further contend with the obstacles of exiting via Nepal, as the roads have be washed out in some flash floods, and with days running out on his Chinese permit, he is desperate for another ride, another route. The help, on this occassion, comes in the form of Mr. Shah, the Nepalese consulate ('mahavanijyadoot') in Lhasa. Shah suggests a road route till the point the road is motorable and from there a foot march to a bridge which still stands and would get him to Nepal.
Much of the earlier journey alternates between vistas of cold, dreary nothingness and then sudden visions of spectacular streams running at the base of tall snow-capped mountains.
But it is the author's descent from Shigatse to Nilamu that brings Vikram to familiar territory and sights, almost, from "alpine meadow to semi-deciduous forest," in an abrupt descent from the Thong La pass. From there on, during the march to the Nepalese border with the help of a porter, Tenzin, Seth notices 'increasingly familiar landscape.' When he actually gets to Nepal, this is what he has to say:" The landscapes is now increasingly familiar to me: terraced fields of rice, banana trees, flame-of-the-forest, champs. I see a piece of indigo colored paper fluttering by the side of the path. It is the overing of a packet of matches, of the sort in use in India and Nepal. Two women in bright saris walk through the emerald fields. As we enter Bahrbise, I notice the shops full of brilliantly colored cloth and bangles...One of the things I have been seriously deprived of for most of this year is color."
(This made me wonder how all the conquerers from the Turkic lands saw the Indian sub-continent. Compared to the general monochromatic drabness of their landscapes, India must have overwhelmed with its colors and flavors. But Babur, the original Mughal, never really liked India: he preferred the pomegrenate gardens and the watermelons of his region.)
The journey from Nepal, through Kathmandu, is without much incident. There are the temples of Pashupatinath and Bodhnath to take in and the general "vivid, mercenary" atmosphere of Kathmandu to describe.
In the last few pages , Seth is ruminative, wondering on the general lack of contact and awareness between the two great neighbors. And he offers hopes for at least a "respectful patience on either side as in, for instance, trying to solve a border problem."
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