Kingdoms in the Air (Cont.)

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Kingdoms in the Air (Cont.)


	Nomads that Laird met in 1992 perusing his book in 2001 (Thomas Laird)

VI. EVERYTHING CHANGES
ACROSS THE PLAZA FROM the king's funky four-story adobe palace, the Lo Manthang Guest House has all but run out of suitable lodging; queri have even pitched their tents on the flat roof rather than endure the last windowless dormitory space available. Laird and I follow Ang Tsering inside, past a souvenir shop (Visa or MasterCard) and a video parlor (25 raucous preteens watching a Hindi movie from Bollywood), up two death-defying flights of stone steps, through a kitchen with weathered ladies, didis, squatting around a stove, through a courtyard, past a room stabling a horse and a dzo, and out to fresh air and a final descent of steps to a small walled corral. "This will do?" Ang Tsering asks hopefully. The city's six guest houses are occupied, and our prospects are limited.

Out on the jovial streets, Laird bows and hugs old friends, but he can't remember names; by his own admission, social skills have always been "difficult." Then he sets out to escort his wife on a long-awaited personal tour of the legendary city that once made her a type of war bride—a town of only 1,000 people, a 15-minute walk from end to end.

We are having afternoon tea when Laird bursts in: Quick, quick, we must go immediately for a brief audience with the raja and rani. We cross the plaza to the dark, litter-strewn entrance of the palace. The king isn't big on upkeep, but never mind. Above us, on a second-floor balcony, two huge brown mastiffs bark psychotically and hurl themselves against their chains. The unlit passageways are steep, uneven, with cracked-off steps. On the third floor we are ushered into the main receiving room, benchlike tables fronting carpeted banquettes, ornately painted Tibetan cabinets against the walls, photographs of Nepal's soon-to-be-dead monarchs framed on the wall, linoleum covering the concrete floor.

Ten years ago it was customary for peasants, in homage to the king, to stick out their tongues and prostrate themselves in his presence. Today power has shifted to the bureaucracies of Kathmandu, and prostration is not so common, though villagers continue to scratch their heads in front of the king as a weird sign of respect. For us, the presentation of ceremonial silk khatas will suffice, first to the rani, pale-faced and fine-boned, elegant in her gray bukkhoo, her doe eyes beautiful but heavyhearted. She no longer attends public events, I'm told: She is shy, she can't stand the dust, and most of her ladies-in-waiting have expired anyway.

In the corner along the cushions sits the taciturn 70-year-old king, attired in a zipped blue windbreaker, a loop of prayer beads sliding through his fingers. Laird has a gift, a copy of his 2000 book The Dalai Lama's Secret Temple, a collaboration with author Ian Baker that features Laird's photographs of the exiled Tibetan leader's private chapel in Lhasa. The king bends his attention to the murals on the page and becomes immediately absorbed, increasingly devoted in his old age to otherworldly matters, clearly weary of all the nonsense he's bound to adjudicate, fatigued by the stream of not-always-distinguished guests who come petitioning his favor. When King Jigme finally steps into that other, better world, the throne will pass to his nephew, a man still fully entrenched in this one: Crown Prince Jigme S. P. Bista owns a rug factory and a trekking company in Kathmandu.

We sip lemon tea and chat about our journey, heaping praise on the agility and courage of the king's horses. The king is pleased (I think). When the topic turns to change, the king declares the Lobas are more prosperous, more educated than ten years ago. The city's a little cleaner, food's a little cheaper, and most people like the electricity introduced by ACAP, which insisted the lines be put underground—a difficult decision both politically and technically. As for tourism, says the king, so far so good, though he would be against even more foreigners coming to Lo Manthang.

But the villagers want tourists, I ask, they want the restrictions lifted, yes?

Mmm, the king softly grunts, lowering his head to the inscrutable ambiguity of his quasi-royal thoughts. His thumb caresses the beads. The audience is over.

Back in the crowded plaza, I notice someone impossible to miss, an Englishman named John Sanday. Certainly the largest queri in town, Sanday is hawk-nosed, pink-cheeked, and wears a wide-brimmed leather hat, clean blue jeans, and leather boots. He seems given to an autocratic pensiveness, and one might imagine him to be a London film director trying to wrestle the Third World into submission. He is in fact formidable in his occupation, architect and owner of the firm Sanday Associates. His restorations are world-famous—Angkor Wat, the Hanumandhoka Palace in Kathmandu—and now, funded by the King Mahendra Trust and the American Himalayan Foundation, he's restoring the Thubchen Gompa, one of the artistic and spiritual treasures of Lo Manthang.

The next day, I bear witness to the reunion Laird wanted, the one he foresaw, when he comes in to the guesthouse bar with a copy of his Mustang book and recognizes a bashful, elfin drokpa, a herder, sitting alone by the stove, staring with a bereaved look into a glass of milk tea. Their reunion is affectionate; Laird asks after the nomad's wife. She died, says the drokpa. But Laird photographed the two of them ten years ago, up in the high pastures standing proudly in front of their yurt. The photo is there, in the book. The man has never seen a picture of himself or his wife, but here she is, resurrected, here they are together again, and the fellow leans over the picture misty-eyed, and for a long time he holds his callused fingers on the page and quietly touches his dead wife's face.

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