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Outside Magazine October 2003

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The Ghost Road (Cont.)


	Joint custody: the Burmese soldiers who escorted the author to the India border at the summit of Pangsau Pass, where he was met by Indian commander Y.S. Rama (next page, in blue) (Mark Jenkins)

IN FEBRUARY 1998, I return to Assam and the town of Ledo, the beginning of the Stilwell Road. After several weeks of bureaucratic wrangling, I manage to sidestep obtaining a Restricted Area Permit and inveigle permission to travel the road up to the border of Burma. A platoon from the 28th Assam Rifles garrison, led by Commander Y. S. Rama, is enjoined to escort me on foot from Nampong, the last Indian outpost, up to Pangsau Pass, on the border, and then directly back. It is illegal to cross the border in either direction.

The night before our hike, I pull out several bottles of whiskey and start pouring drinks. The soldiers regale me with tales of the horrors unfolding nearby in Burma. There is a command post somewhere past Pangsau Pass, and the soldiers there are almost starving. Many have malaria. Rice is in short supply, and they never have salt. Salt is worth anything to the Burmese soldiers. They sneak over the border with something they have taken from the Naga or Kachin tribes—a bearskin shield, a wooden mask—and trade it for salt. Pangsau Pass, they say, is a punishment posting for Burmese soldiers who have run afoul of the military leadership.

Commander Rama, in his blue uniform

I know that my plan might fail. The Stilwell Road is a paradigm for failure, another one of humankind's grandiose exercises in futility.

and white ascot, sits ramrod stiff after polishing off most of a bottle of whiskey by himself. "Across the border is the end of the world," he declares. "You can go backward in history, Mr. Mark. Americans want to believe that everything goes forward. But if you went forward on this road, you would go backward."

When I leave at five the next morning, the platoon is fast asleep, as if the warm night air were an anesthetic. I know I have a head start of only a few hours at most. The road hooks uphill, disappearing into the black Patkai Range, taking me with it.

My intention is to cross over into Burma, alone and illegally. I don't think I'm delusional; I have a plan. I also know that my plan might fail. The difficulty itself is no small part of the appeal. If success is a certainty, where is the challenge? I am still entranced by the road, but now the seeds of something darker have taken root inside me.

The Stilwell Road was built to stop the spread of totalitarianism. For 2,000 years, from Caesar to Stilwell, building roads was how one nation conquered another. That ended with the rise of air power: Planes in the sky, not trucks on a road, would thenceforth largely determine the course of warfare. Some generals could envision this not-so-brave new world, but Stilwell was not one of them. It was an airplane that dropped the atomic bomb and pushed us across a new rubicon of technological morality.

The Stilwell Road is a paradigm for failure, another one of humankind's grandiose exercises in futility. As I know in my heart, this means that my own attempt at traveling the Stilwell Road is stained with the same futility. But of course this doesn't stop me. On the contrary, I charge forward, carrying through with my complicated, contradictory convictions. Is this not what all humans sometimes do? We deftly lay out snares and then proceed to walk right into them.

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