An Old Brown Briefcase

I packed light for America: jeans, boots, three checked shirts, and an old brown briefcase stuffed with dollar bills. Cathy had given me the money at a small railway station in northern England, the day we parted ways again.

“I can't take a thousand pounds from you,” I'd said, when she told me she wanted to lend me enough to get away.

“But you have to,” she said, handing me the case. “I got it all out in single dollar bills and they won't exchange them again.”

This year is the twentieth year of our friendship and I cried when I got on the train. She kissed me on the forehead, then stood there on the platform until we'd disappeared around the bend.

Back to America

I should be working again by now, or at least have somewhere to live. Tibet is already a fading memory and China, well, China is basically dead to me. But then one night, Fiona calls.

Hello?

A job and somewhere to live?

Are you crazy?

This is no time for such trivial things, girl.

This is time to get back to America, head west and get the old band back together.

Are you still there?

Annie?

Hello?

Regan in Stoneybatter

Rosemary's Bedroom

I still haven't decided on where to live or what to do next, and Regan says well, Rosemary's going to Boston, why not come back here for the weekend and sleep in your old bedroom?

It's strange being back in the cottage. My towel is still in the bathroom, and there's a long rail of beautiful clothes where my desk used to be. Rosemary said make yourself at home, help yourself to whatever you want, but I'm too apprehensive about being back here to touch anything. I put my bags down softly, close the door behind me, and then just lie on the bed for a while in what is now Rosemary's bedroom.

I used to live here with David and Fiona, over a year ago, after falling madly in love with them. They kept the house open to a steady stream of people, and Fiona — whose special superpower is chatting — would hold court while David started cooking. Usually I'd join them and share their friends with them; other times I'd be happy to stay at my desk, hearing their laughter come in from the kitchen. Sometimes Lola would come in to me with her tail thumping and we'd sit here quietly together: me working; dog panting.

Fiona liked to play guitar, and I liked to piggyback off her talent and talk about starting a band. We'd sit up late together playing and singing, but mostly she'd take care of the music and I'd get busy designing the tour posters and the fame and the glory. Fergal once asked had we ever recorded? Fiona said YES! and David laughed and said guys, just because you once made a webcam video of yourselves for YouTube doesn't make you actual recording artists. And then we laughed too and made up another stupid song.

But people grow up and move on. When they told me they were having a baby they took care to break it to me gently. “Maybe,” Megan had teased me, “they'll take you for a day out at Alton Towers so you know you're still special.” They got married, packed up and left for America, and I moved across town to live with a man in Portobello.

Yep, people grow up and move on, and sometimes it works out, and other times you end up remembering things very carefully, up in Rosemary's bedroom.

Tibetan man and his terrific horse

We met this guy on our way back down from Base Camp. He was on his way, Wangden translated for me, to visit his girlfriend in the next village.



I found it quite difficult photographing people in Tibet because I didn't have the language skills to say "hey, do you mind if I point this camera in your face until I get a satisfactory picture of you for my blog?". But people with animals are easier, because I love animals. When you've just spent ten minutes admiring someone's terrific horse they'll let you take as many pictures as you like.

EDIT: I sometimes get quite confrontational replies from Free Tibet groups on twitter saying that posting these pictures is just adding to Chinese propaganda that Tibet is a happy, peaceful country.

Tibet is, of course, under occupation. I just don't have any photos to communicate that. Why not? Because it's also a beautiful, rugged country full of beautiful Buddhists, and that's what I was there photographing. Yes, there were soldiers with guns marching all over Lhasa, and yes I was forbidden to point my camera at them. Most people in Free Tibet groups have never actually been there, but I don't really subscribe to the view that tourism in Tibet is unethical. I think if you go with a grassroots agency like Wangden's, whose priority is to pay back into local native communities, it's a huge contribution to them maintaining their own society and identity.

I did get quotes for my trip to Base Camp from some cheap Chinese agencies that were half the price, but the guides don't speak Tibetan and so I would never have had the opportunity, for example, to sit drinking tea with the nuns in Rombuk Monastery. Also, I doubt these (unpaid) guides would have sat up with me all night when I got sick like my guys did; and they certainly don't donate any of their profits to orphanages like Wangden does.

If anyone is looking for guides (and it's not legal to be in Tibet without them) then I totally recommend Snowlion Tours. I was looked after so well and invited in to so many places that I just would have missed if I hadn't have gone with them. Also, they were just great, funny, nice, warm guys. Wangden told me Sonan had said to him: "guiding this girl is easy, it's just like going on a road trip with a friend". I liked hearing this, because by the end of the trip that's how I felt about them.

Thank you

I'd like to say a massive thanks to everyone involved in this year's Irish Blog Awards. I'm so sorry I couldn't be there on the night, but I was at a Buddhist retreat centre in England trying to let go of attachment to material things. (Needless to say, I wasn't quite able to avoid the gift shop).

I've been going on and on about myself on the internet for five years now. Every so often I get cold feet and wonder if I should just, eh, stfu. Other times I am so extremely boring [read: happy] that I have nothing really to go on and on about and I kind of trail off. But most of the time I do love blogging, even when it gets me into certain kinds of trouble (like offending my mama, for example, or falling in love).

I really wasn't expecting to win again, so thank you to everyone who nominated me, everyone who comments, Karen for going up and collecting my award for me, all the other Irish bloggers who make it such a great and weird environment (particularly this one), and everybody else who's just lurking in the background. Thank you!

Lost or free

My parents want to know what I'm going to do next and I don't really know.

"I don't really know," I say, from Cathy's house in England on the phone. We'd stayed up late last night talking about love, in all its stupid forms, until eventually I'd got my appetite back and Cath had gone and heated up some soup, even though she had conjunctivitis and it was 4 in the morning.

"Is there anything on the horizon work-wise?" my father wants to know.

I sigh. Not really, no. "I heard there might be some action thriller coming up sometime in Eastern Europe," I say. "I might try to get on that."

"Well, that sounds encouraging," says my dad, and both of us sit there on the phone wondering what part of "hearing" that there "might be" some kind of "action thriller" coming up "sometime" that sounds all that encouraging.

I don't know. Do I feel lost or do I feel free? Sometimes they're the same thing and I wonder if maybe I should just keep moving. I'd said to him, as we'd broken up and he'd wondered where I'd live, that I might not be very good at relationships but that I am really good at being single and homeless. And it's true: I have no house but I have good friends. I have no plan but I have a car. I have no money but I have this great black leather jacket and I can play Life Goes On from beginning to end on my guitar.

If anyone wants to buy two pot plants, a map of the world, and a bin-bag full of greying knickers: call me.

Woman in Xining

Back

From: Megan
To: Annie

Annie! I'm so sorry to hear about you and C. Where are you? Are you back? Do you have somewhere to live?

I want to lend you Mog for a few weeks for cuddles, I find she really helps.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From: Annie
To: Megan

Megan! Thanks, but doesn't Mog hate cuddles? Last time I tried to touch her she hissed at me, scratched my wrist, then went and sat behind the fridge. I'm not sure that feeling rejected by your cat is going to help me get over the end of my most beautiful relationship, but you are sweet and kind for thinking of me.

And yes, I am back :)

.

Everest Base Camp

Where the Mountain Used to Be

It takes two hours to get to Everest the next morning, over the high mountain pass and through two military checkpoints. But when we get to Base Camp the crisp blue sky has disappeared and thick cloud hangs on the horizon. It blocks everything from sight, except for a flock of crows and Rombuk Monastery, the highest monastery in the world.

"That's the space where the mountain used to be," Wangden shouts over the wind at me, pointing at the cloud as we jump out of the jeep.

"I'm so sorry," says Sonon. "But you know they say Everest just looks like a fat old man in a group of beautiful women? There are better mountains."

We mess around in the fog for a while, Wangden and Sonan and Yeshi and me, taking pictures of each other by the plinth — Mount Qomolangma Base Camp, Altitude 5300 Metres — but the wind cuts through the blankets tied around our waists and stings our faces. There's nobody here but us and the cold: the tents have been packed up for the winter and everybody's gone home.

"Look," says Wangden, pointing towards the building. A woman in long red robes waves at us through the fog. She calls out to us in Tibetan and beckons us to come in, and we follow her up to the monastery. The courtyard is brightly painted; quiet and still and sheltered from the wind, and we take a minute to rub the blood back into our fingers.

"She says the weather has been like this for days," Wangden translates for me. "And they haven't seen the mountain in nearly a week. Do you want to go inside and drink tea?"

Yes, I want to drink tea. The guys go to the temple to bless themselves, and I let the nun lead me down a narrow stone corridor and through a small door, which is more like a hole in the wall. The room is low-ceilinged and dark, except for thin shafts of light beaming in through a low window. At first I think there's strange music playing, but as my eyes adjust I realise it's a group of nuns and a monk sitting around the stove, chanting. The music I'm hearing is their voices and the sound of the wind outside harmonising. One nun locks eyes with me and smiles, and makes the international sign for: Please, warm your hands by the fire, child.

I sit on a bench and drink the butter tea that's handed to me. I can feel the altitude in my head and in my stomach, but I'm so exhilarated to be here and this room is so peaceful that I just ignore it. Outside, the cloud still sits low and thick over the mountains and nothing seems to be changing. The guys come in from the temple and join me, and we all stay there very quietly for a while, absorbed by the chanting.

Eventually, Sonan says we can either stay at the monastery for a couple of days and hope the weather clears, or head back down to Lhasa. Of course I want to stay, but Wangden points out that the Chinese are closing Tibet to foreigners for the entire month of March. I have to get out of here and back to China.

It's okay. I'm just so happy to have been here, and the world really doesn't need another photograph of that mountain.

Boys on the cliffs above Shegar

Feeling the altitude

Shegar is 4300 metres above sea level and I'm beginning to feel it. There's a woman in the bar who wants to sing for me, but Wangden warns me that if I agree then she'll expect me to sing for her, too. But what Wangden doesn't know is that I'm my mother's daughter: of course I'm going to sing.

But when it's my turn to stand up the altitude goes to my head and I have to sit back down again and catch my breath. My stomach turns over so I stagger outside and try to get some air. It's cold in Shegar. It must be minus 10 out here, and it hadn't felt that much warmer inside the bar.

I find my way back to my room — a stone outhouse — in the dark. There's no electricity, and Sonan comes in with a candle and a hot water bottle. Wangden sits on the edge of my bed. He presses his hand to my forehead, which I find calming, and then he takes my pulse, which I find alarming.

"Is it normal?" I whisper, hoarsely, trying frantically to remember if a slow pulse or a fast pulse is better.

"It's okay," says Wangden, my own personal Buddhist, smiling at me gently. "But if you're still feeling ill after one hour, I think we should go lower."

He goes outside and talks to the guys. I shiver in the bed and listen to Yeshi packing up the jeep again. Sonan had already told me that last summer his whole group ended up on oxygen tanks in hospital back in Lhasa. But I don't want to go lower! I came all this way to see Everest in the sunrise tomorrow morning. I'm 5000 miles from home and only two more hours away from that mountain.

Wangden comes back in and puts his hand to my forehead again. He says he'll stay with me, and I tell him about not wanting to miss the mountain.

"My father is very proud of me," I explain. "He keeps saying to people 'my daughter is going to Everest by herself', even when he's talking to my mum and my best friend, in case they've forgotten who I am."

Wangden laughs. He gets up and finds me yet another blanket and puts it over the bed.

"But you're not by yourself, Annie," he says. "I don't think you ever really will be."

Just having him here is calming. We talk for a while in the moonlight coming in through the window. I show him pictures of my family, and he asks if my mother is an artist. How can he tell?

"She's wearing a peculiar hat," he says, as if it's obvious.

Then he shows me pictures of his own parents, who are also wearing peculiar hats, I point out, but their excuse is that they're Tibetan nomads. I ask him about his childhood and he tells me about travelling the grasslands with their forty yaks. Eventually my legs stop shaking: I think I must have acclimatised because I can breathe again without concentrating.

"Maybe it was just hypochondria," I say, sitting up and drinking some water. But Wangden's never heard of hypochondria so I have to explain it to him.

"You know, it's when you worry that you're ill when you're not ill, and that makes you feel ill?"

Wangden smiles and shakes his head. "I think this must be a Western thing," he says.

Tibetan Monks

How Sonan ended up in prison

Some years ago, Sonan decided to leave Tibet forever and cross the border. He'd heard there were two Nepalese guys bridging the Arun river with a rope and a harness, selling freedom for only 8000 yuan per person.

"So," said Sonan to his friend, the Monk. "How about it?"

The Monk was interested. He'd had enough of living under occupation, and leaving legally was out of the question. The Chinese Government don't just go handing out passports to Tibetans.

"But you can't go dressed like this," said Sonan, tugging at the Monk's red robes. "The Nepalese soldiers will know we're Tibetan. They'll send us right back over here and straight in to a Chinese prison."

The Monk agreed. He'd buy some ordinary clothes from the market and they'd wait a week for his hair to grow out a bit. In the meantime, they'd both brush up on their Nepali so as not to stand out too much when they arrived at the first village.


* * *


"You really wanted to leave Tibet so badly that you'd risk jail?" I ask Sonan up in our guesthouse bar in the middle of nowhere. The four of us are huddled around the stove in the middle of the room, rubbing our hands together and waiting for our food.

"I was 23," says Sonan, pouring yak butter tea. "I wanted to see something."

"Okay," I say, taking the hot cup from him. "Go on."


* * *


It took all day to get to the border. They abandoned their car and found the two Nepalese guys waiting for them, one on either side of the river as promised. The rope looked safe enough tied between two trees, but Sonan hadn't known how fast the water flowed there. The gorge wasn't wide, but it was deep and dark and loud, and the sound of the water crashing over the rocks below unnerved him.

"It's okay," shouted the Monk, handing him two wads of cotton. "Stuff these in your ears so you can't hear it."

The Monk went first. He said goodbye to Tibet forever, put on the harness, and pulled himself across the river. Sonan looked back at the Tibetan desert fading in the sunset and wondered if they were making a mistake by leaving. But the Nepalese guys were getting impatient. The Monk waved at him from the other side of the Arun. It was no time to stand there looking at the desert. And so Sonan also said goodbye to Tibet forever, kissed the ground, and crossed the river.


* * *


"But how did you know where to go," I ask. "When you got to the other side?"

"We didn't," says Sonan. "The Nepalese guys packed up their rope and disappeared. It was just me and the Monk and the forest."

Sonan stands up and pours more tea. The bar doesn't seem to be getting any warmer: I can see my breath in front of me when I speak. But this is the Tibetan highlands in winter, and this is what I signed up for.

"So what did you do?"

"We started walking."

* * *


Sonan and the Monk walked on and on through the forest, further and further down the hill, until they found a cave. They lit a fire to keep away any tigers and decided to try and get some rest. They would walk again in the morning.

But Sonan couldn't sleep. All he could think about was Nepal right there outside of the cave. It sounded different and it felt different: he was sure he could smell fruit growing on the trees. But he wasn't going to stay here. His plan was to keep going until he reached India, where he'd take his first look at the sea. Tomorrow, he thought. When we get to the first village, I'm going to sit there in the sunshine drinking fresh mango juice.


* * *


"Weren't you scared of the tigers?" I ask.

Sonan and Wangden laugh. When you've just escaped China over the Nepalese border, you're not afraid of tigers. You're afraid of soldiers.

"Did you think you'd get caught?" I ask Sonan. "Were you afraid?"

"We did get caught," he says. "And yes, I was very afraid."


* * *


By the time they reached the first village they must have dropped 2000 metres just from walking downhill all day.

"Can you hear me?" shouted Sonan to the Monk. "I can't hear anything!"

"Do you still have the cotton in your ears?" shouted the Monk, but Sonan didn't. Their ear drums had popped in the change of altitude. They felt light-headed and dizzy and they held on to each other and tried to walk steadily.

"I think we have low-altitude sickness," said Sonan, although he hadn't even realised it existed.

The village was a small pile of shops and houses on the edge of the forest. Nepalese children ran out to meet them and took them to a hut where they could buy a drink.

"Do you have any fresh mango juice?" asked Sonan in his best Nepali, unaware that he was still shouting.

"I think you're shouting, Sonan," shouted the Monk in Tibetan.

The barman looked them up and down. Tibetans! If he helped them he'd be thrown into jail by the military.

"You can't stay here," he said. "You'll have to keep going."


* * *


"But that's terrible," I say. "He wouldn't even give you a drink?"

"There are spies all around the border," Sonan shrugs. "Nepalese spies and the Chinese Government. Nobody wants to end up in prison."

"So what did you do?"

"We kept walking until we found a guesthouse that took us in," says Sonan. "And in the morning two men came in to our room with guns and that was it, we were saying hello to Tibet again."


* * *


After a short drive back to the border, Sonan and the Monk were met by Chinese soldiers and thrown into jail. They shared a small cell with ten other Tibetans and a hole in the ground to shit in. They weren't given any food to eat and they didn't know when, if ever, they'd be freed. The Monk marked the days on the wall one by one, and in the end they calculated that they'd been there for five months before they were released again.

"What an awful, awful punishment," I say, shaking my head. I'd really thought they were going to make it as far as the Indian ocean.

"No, no," says Sonan, quickly. "We weren't punished. We were just put in prison. No torture."

This makes me laugh. "In Ireland," I say. "Being thrown in jail with no food for five months is kind of considered punishment."

Sonan laughs too. "Okay," he says. "But the local Tibetans brought food to us every single day. And my mother never found out. She still doesn't know where I was to this day."

"So what did you tell her when you got out?"

"I told her," says Sonan. "That I'd been staying with my friend."

Wass your name

Every time we stop at a village a giggle of kids come running out at us. In a hamlet outside of Shegar two tiny little girls throw their arms around my neck and I let them hug me and play with my hair. They're filthy with dirt from the desert and their noses are dripping with snot in the wind, but their skin is warm from being out in the sun all day and it feels good just to be getting a cuddle, so I don't care.

"Wass your name, wass your name," they say, imitating the Westerners that pass through here in the summers.

"It's Annie," I say, and then I ask them for their names, too, but they don't answer me.

"Wass your name, wass your name," they just keep saying, and then Wangden and Sonan hand them chunks of yak meat and candy and I climb back up in to the jeep because we have to keep going.

On the road to Everest

In a jeep full of boiled yak

In the morning the guys pack up the jeep for the three-day trip to Base Camp and Tashi the housekeeper gives us two baskets full of yak meat.

"If you want to stop at villages for pictures along the way, you have to tell Yeshi, okay?" she says. "Otherwise he's just going to drive right by."

I get it: the villages don't interest the guides. It's like a Tibetan coming to Ireland to photograph Crumlin rather than the Cliffs of Moher.

"And be careful up there," says Tashi, waving us goodbye. "You feel sick you just come back."

It's okay, I don't need to be told. I'm too much of a hypochondriac to let myself die alone at the bottom of a mountain. And anyway, last night's fears have faded in the sunshine: I'm in a jeep packed with potatoes and candy and boiled yak, sleeping bags and blankets and hats, and three Tibetan Buddhists for guides.

My Three Tibetan Guides

Yeshi, Wangden, and Sonan.