The Hotel on the Roof of the World Read Online Free PDF Page B

the main force of the uprising against the Chinese in 1959. More recently, it was the Khampas who the CIA supported in a guerrilla warfare mounted against the Chinese from neighbouring Nepal. The Nepalese government eventually had to clean out the Khampas. Some say that it was under pressure from the Beijing government, but there is a popular story that the Nepalese became weary of having the Khampa bandits terrorising Nepalese villages with American-bought machine guns.
    Whatever the truth, these three Khampas looked fearsome enough. The crush of bodies pressing together in the aisle parted as the Khampas motioned that they wished to stand there too. The plane had still not come to a stop but everyone, except the bewildered tourists, was trying as hard as possible to stake a place in the aisle – ready for the dash to the exit.
    As the door opened, the Tibetans and Chinese strained their way to the front, flattening everything in their path. Heavy parcels of stinking garlic grass were dropped from overhead lockers onto the seats below. The few passengers who remained seated laughed it off with a shrug and a gaping mouth stuffed with the debris of the lunch box which they were still trying to finish. Any leftovers from the lunch boxes (and of course the wonderful CAAC giveaways) were crammed into the already rupturing hand luggage during the run down the aisle. Confusion arose at the entrance, as, despite efforts to prove this to the contrary, only one person and their bags can get out of the door at a time.
    Once on the runway, they scurried off towards the airport building dragging their bundles behind them. The Khampas stood apart from the rest, taller than the other Tibetans and towering above the Chinese. They did not walk, but swaggered, with their daggers glinting in the sunlight. The flock of hesitant tourists followed them, muttering that there was no bus, and asking each other what to do, as there was no indication of where to go next apart from the cloud of dust left by the Tibetans and Chinese disappearing into the distance.

    The airport buildings were far away, the noise of the plane had died down and I was left in peace to survey the scene around me. The sky directly above was an impossibly bright blue that I had only seen before on faked postcards. Woolly clouds hung in the air just over the mountain tops, while the first rays of the sun struck the valley bottom sending a light mist rolling over the foot hills. Mountains lined the north and south of the valley rising gently to rounded green peaks.
    At first I was slightly disappointed that there was no snow to be seen. I had expected the landing strip to be hacked out of ice between glaciers, but here everything looked soft and green. I didn’t realise at the time that I was seeing Tibet at the climax of its short summer and that, just two months later, I would be craving a glimpse of something green – other than the fluorescent Holiday Inn sign.
    As I walked across the runway the clouds to the west of the valley parted to reveal what I had asked for: two magnificent snow-covered summits. The more southerly one was a vertical tube of rock with snow-capped icing resembling a wedding cake. Stretching to the north from the base of the wedding cake was a great wedge of a mountain. A perfect 45-degree slope leading to a snowy crest, which stopped abruptly and dropped into a vertical cliff face. Intrigued with the notion that it should be possible to walk to the top of the mountain without actually doing any climbing I set about the more immediate task of finding my car and driver.
    â€˜They probably meet you at airport.’ Li had told me in Chengdu. Something was wrong. I had only walked 20 paces across the runway when I had to stop to take in lungfuls of air. I was gasping like a fish on the river bank. The first sensation of breathing Tibetan air was that of great relief after the rotting cabbage of the aircraft and the dreadful pollution in