The wind kicks up again. A vast, desolate swath of sand stretches for miles, days in any direction. We are insignificant: insects trudging across a desert. Meager possessions are slung across a patient horse's back. Once-strong bodies buckle under the pervasive wind. We bend double, choking on dust. Sand invades every pore. Pus seeps into stiff socks from sores pocking our feet. Hopelessness, undeniable hunger and unquenchable thirst fill us with a gnawing rage.
For hours or days hatred sustains us. Hatred of self. Each other. The inadequacy of our bodies. The forsaken land we vowed to cross, a ground that consumes our very souls.
Maybe we approached the journey all wrong from the very start, gulping in its challenge in one gigantic breath, like diving headfirst off a cliff into some mirrored pool of unknown depth. It was bound to be a great adventure, we argued, a chance to prove something to ourselves-especially to those who vowed it couldn't be done. But any Western sense of toughing things out, of muscling our way across a land as complex as utter darkness, soon fell by the wayside like exhausted matchsticks.
Survival has somehow become mysteriously linked with the uneasy idea of letting go. Perhaps it always has been. But leaps of faith have never given me much personal comfort. Still, this is Tibet, it's unsettling, yet reassuring.
When life is bleakest, magic appears, tenuous at first. It's a strange, exhilarating force, a peace. Obstacles vanish and hurdles disappear. We find water where there is none. Someone arrives out of nowhere offering shelter. Another shares his meager food. Another, his love.
At those moments we have a gnawing suspicion that there is something more to our thousand-kilometer trek, something more than just two weary travelers tracing an ancient pilgrim's path from Lhasa to Kathmandu across the Himalayas.
And that sense of greater purpose, more than any personal tenacity or courage, ultimately keeps us moving.
