Patrick Woodhead - The Cloud Maker (2010)

He looked up to where thousands of lines of criss-crossing prayer flags fluttered in the breeze high above them. They were tied from building to building, across lamp-posts and guttering, any place where they might catch the wind. Each patch of coloured cloth was emblazoned with Buddhist sutras and pictures of wind horses. As the fabric flapped in the breeze, the horses were said to be carrying the prayers up into the heavens.

Luca counted five colours to the flags, and checked again. He knew of the four sects of Tibetan Buddhism, each one with their own distinct colour, but had never heard of blue representing one of the orders. Perhaps it was another sect that had previously existed and had now fallen by the wayside. Or maybe there was a whole other strand of Buddhism out there he had simply never heard of. He shook his head. He had always found the enormous scope of Tibetan religion bewildering.

Walking away from the great doors of the temple, the men passed round its back, following hundreds of others along the well-trodden pilgrimage trail of the Barkor. The buildings to either side were high, hemming in the narrow streets with walls made from thick blocks of ancient stone, whitewashed in the traditional Tibetan style. Market stalls lined every inch of the streets, cluttered to overflowing. Everything was for sale, from army surplus military jackets to yak-bone prayer wheels, old Tibetan scrolls to plastic cutlery sets.

The vendors stood behind their tiny stalls, sipping yak-butter tea and occasionally heckling one of the passing devotees. There were hundreds of pilgrims, moving in a steady flow around the temple. Each held a prayer wheel of varying size. The top half of the wheel was attached to weighted beads that were spun round in a constant cycle to release a series of holy words written within. Some hung nearly a meter long, requiring a support hanging from the owner’s belt and great circular arm movements to get the momentum going.

Bill and Luca were passing the first of the market stalls when three small children, dirty and with cardboard still strapped to their hands, approached. Giggling and talking rapidly amongst themselves, one of them walked up to Luca and pulled on his arm. He crouched down, smiling.

‘Hello, guys.’

One whispered something to the next who hesitated for a second before leaning forward and gently pulling the blond hair on Luca’s forearm. He looked amazed to discover it was actually attached.

‘Of course . . . Tibetans don’t have any body hair,’ Luca said, glancing up at Bill, before turning back to face the children. ‘If you think that’s bad, kids, look at this.’ And, leaning forward, he pulled down the top of his T-shirt to reveal a patch of hair at the centre of his chest. The children squealed in delighted horror and retreated backwards, hugging each other. The same boy who had made the original discovery stepped forward again and pointed at Luca.

‘ Po ,’ he said simply, then ran off to the temple doors closely followed by his friends, all shrieking with laughter. Bill and Luca looked at each other blankly.

‘Any guesses?’

‘Not a clue,’ said Bill, and they strolled on together past the market stalls. From behind each came shouts of ‘Cheapie! Cheapie!’ as yak-bone dominoes, jade necklaces and ceremonial knives were thrust in front of them with encouraging grins.

‘So what are we going to do about our visas?’ Bill asked, as they approached one of the stalls. ‘I thought you said you had it covered?’

‘I had the border covered,’ Luca corrected, ‘but we’re just going to have to figure something out for heading further east.’

‘You know what they’re like, Luca. Once an area goes on the restricted list, there’s no way in hell they’ll change our permits. And if we do try and leave, they’ll definitely assign us one of those idiot interpreters who’ll do nothing more than spy on us the whole time.’

‘We’ll find a way,’ Luca said absent-mindedly, shaking his head as a vendor pressed on him what looked to be a human skull emblazoned with a silver swastika. He turned the skull over in his hands slowly, running a finger over the tiny indentations where the brain had been.

‘Listen, Luca, I’m serious,’ Bill said, taking him by the wrist. ‘I’m not about to waste three weeks kicking my heels in Lhasa, waiting for a bit of paper. I don’t have time for this.’

‘Neither do I, but I’ve already arranged . . .’

As he tried to speak, the vendor has moved round to the front of the stall, beaming a well-practised smile. She started listing prices enthusiastically, using her right hand to count the numbers off, bartering herself down from an outrageous starting point without Bill or Luca having said a word. Eventually, Luca spoke a few words of his limited Tibetan to her and she slowly retreated behind the stall, her expression instantly darkening.

They moved off again, back into the flow of human traffic.

‘What I was trying to say is that I’ve already arranged a meeting with René,’ Luca explained. ‘He’ll be able to think of something. He always does.’

Bill stopped in his tracks. ‘René? You’re serious?’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he is a disaster waiting to happen and I don’t think we should have anything to do with the man! How the hell he hasn’t been kicked out of Lhasa yet, God only knows.’

‘Yeah, but if there’s one person who knows how to get visas and deal with the bastard Chinese roadblocks, it’s him.’

Turning down one of the side streets, Luca headed in the opposite direction from the main temple and away from the Tibetan quarter.

‘Come on,’ he said, quickening his pace. ‘Or we won’t get a table.’

A few hundred yards later they found themselves on Lhasa’s main high street. The wide strip was flanked with modern shops, the fluorescent signs and electric lighting clearly marking the transition from the Tibetan quarter into the rest of the city run by the Chinese.

Dusty cranes towered over half-finished buildings in every direction, and at the end of the high street they could see the golden roof of the Dalai Lama’s former residence, the Potala.

Up on its hill and carved into the living rock, the palace of a thousand rooms remained aloof from the urban development below, its vertiginous walls shielding it from the hasty expansion all around. But what was clear to see was that, the ‘peaceful liberation’ by the Chinese had not just been an external assault on the city of Lhasa and its temples. Inside, the pulse of the Dalai Lama’s former residence was slowly fading.

The Chinese had forbidden monks from worshipping in the temple. Its hollow rooms and deserted corridors were now bereft of their presence. Stone steps, worn in the middle from centuries of footsteps, were now barely used. The deserted shell of the building conveyed little of the teeming life that had once made its chambers, murals and thousands of figures of the Buddha seem to actually breathe. Now, the Potala stood silently at the end of the high street and was little more than an empty shell – a tourist attraction for anyone but Tibetans.

At the end of the street, Bill and Luca passed rows of shop windows with new posters glued on top, showing a picture of a pale Chinese man, about twenty years old and with a shaven head. He stared out impassively, his expression neither welcoming nor hostile. Thick bold characters were printed below. By the sheer number of posters visible, it was obviously important news.

Luca bent forward, peering at the newly pasted posters. At the bottom of every one was a single sentence printed in English: His Holiness the eleventh Panchen Lama’s inauguration, 1 June 2005 .

‘Looks like we’re going to miss the big event,’ Luca said, pointing to the date.