Karen 1972 (3)
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Walking Back to Houei Pho
Next day — the Long March. My new companion is a wiry little fellow, and he’s carrying half as much as I am. He thinks we can make it to Ban Houei Pho in six hours. I ask him if he’s made the journey before. No, he says, but the villagers told him it would take six hours. I don’t bother to suggest that six hours is probably the all-time village record. I just say it might take a little longer.
He walks like a maniac. After two hours, the backs of my tennis shoes have ripped the skin off my heels. Fortunately, my Kayah companion gives me a pair of socks to cover the sores. The first part of the journey is like an obstacle course; every hundred yards or so, there is a stream to cross. Of course, it is the same stream — the trail goes straight while the stream meanders through the valley. I am squelching along behind with my pack getting heavier every moment, while the nimble little Kayah scampers along in front at tremendous speed. Despite everything, I manage to keep him in sight.
After a while, we pause for breakfast. I tell him there is a sala not far ahead, but he ignores me. So we squat by a bend in the trail amongst the elephant shit, and he eats his rice and fried fish and I eat my orange. He offers me a cigarette, so I accept. I always do if they are offered. I ask him about the Kayah army. He says there are several thousand Kayah soldiers, but only 500 are fully armed. Then he springs to his feet with a “Let’s go!” and before I can blink, he’s all but disappeared into the distance.
A little further on we pass the sala, an elephant drivers’ oasis littered with empty sardine cans. “Oh, we could have had breakfast here!” he exclaims. I begin to realise that he doesn’t listen to anything I say, so I don’t bother to say much any more.
We had started out from Mae Sam Laep at 7am. Now it is 10 o’clock and getting hotter. By eleven, we reach the mountain. On the elephant trek, I had noticed two springs. Somehow, we manage to miss both of them. Halfway up the mountain I find him waiting round a bend in the trail. “It’s too hot!” he exclaims, and before I can voice my agreement, he’s off into the distance again.
By twelve, we reach the top of the mountain. There we collapse in a little sala. I notice with some pleasure that he is sweating profusely. Maybe he’ll slow down, I think. But no such luck. Ten minutes and he’s off again like the White Rabbit, late for a very important date. Soon we come to a bamboo lean-to, and here the elephant track turns off the main trail and plummets down the mountainside. He’s looking a little disconsolate because the strap of his shoulder bag has broken, so I give him my string. “Okay, we go this way!” he says, and plunges down the slope. I linger, considering desertion; but I’ve got his socks and he’s got my precious piece of string, so I follow.
This is the most gruelling part of the journey, particularly for me, because the pack is becoming very heavy. The track is extremely steep, and it goes down, and down, and down. Once started, gravity takes over — I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.
After what seems an age, I reach the bottom. My legs have turned to jelly, and the perspiration is pouring out of me. My Kayah friend has been there for some time. He’s sitting by a stream smoking a Burmese cheroot. I drop my bags, stagger into the water and prostrate myself full-length beneath the nearest cascade. The cold water rushes over me and I lie there in breathless ecstasy. When I open my eyes, he’s laughing. I laugh too. We rest a while, take photographs, contemplate the scenery. This time, I rise first, ready to go. He looks at me in surprise.”You don’t change your dress?” he says. “No, it’ll soon dry,” I reply. But I can tell he thinks I’m a barbarian.
“How far now?” he asks. Another two hours, I tell him. He looks at me dubiously. We’ve been walking for six hours already. He doesn’t believe me.
We walk for another two hours and we’re within a stone’s throw of Ban Houei Pho. Then I miss the track that goes down to the village, and we take a scenic detour through the rice paddies for another hour under the blazing afternoon sun. Now he’s really in a sweat. “You were wrong!” he keeps saying. “Yes, I was wrong,” I admit, “Nobody’s perfect.” But he refuses to take it fatalistically. I was wrong, and he isn’t pleased at all.
Eventually we reach the village. The White Rabbit gallops off to the boat landing while I wander around the village. I go to see Sisolay, to bid him farewell. He and his friends want me to stay the night, but I know that it would mean entertaining for hours, playing the flute and harmonica, singing songs… and I am tired. Also, I have no food, and they have only rice and chilli sauce… and I am hungry. So I lie and tell them I must go to Mae Sariang today, and with much clasping of hands and “T’bleu-T’bleus,” I head off toward the landing.
I find the White Rabbit haggling with the boatman, who doesn’t want to go to Mae Sariang because it’s too late. I think — ah well, I’ll stay here… but then my companion offers the boatman sixty baht to take the two of us. I am horrified — that’s double the normal price. The boatman says a hundred and Rabbit ups to seventy. I tell him I don’t want to pay that much. He is obviously pissed off but says he’ll pay the larger portion. We are late because I was wrong. What can I say?
So we get our boat and chug off upriver. The sun goes down in a blaze of pinks and golds and soon it is almost dark.
Then the light show begins. Behind the distant mountains, lightning flashes, momentarily illuminating the entire landscape. As the sky grows darker, the stars appear in their millions, sending down points of light that pierce the mind. Then fireflies begin to trace their erratic paths through the night, flashing on and off with the intensity of acetylene torches. Two of them follow the boat for a while performing a courtship dance, then flit away into the blackness where they fuse in mutual orgasm. Along the bank, the dull red glow of bonfires barely outlines the flickering shapes of visionary figures. I am so enraptured by the whole scene that I hardly notice every time the boat runs aground.