MOVING MOUNTAINS Movement has been the one constant in my life. As a family, we moved often when I was young, with living stints in Switzerland - and the inevitable mountain ventures. Hungarian food - my father's clan is Hungarian - loads of literature and a wonderfully liberal upbringing allowed the mind and body to wander and thrive. With travel, I suppose, I could observe and pick up habits and ways of thinking that are perhaps more flexible and varied than if I had been fixed. One of my earliest 'spaces' of peace was water, as I was a swimmer for years, and there is a bit of irony in that water and the heights of the mountains both offer a kind of isolated sanctuary for the mind. I remember reading Don Quixote and a great purist tale of climbing by E. Shipton in the same brief period when I was young. Those two reads moved and reinforced in me the desire to follow that simultaneously pleasurable and masochistic 'travel-at-all-costs' philosophy.
CHASING TRAILS From a young age, my father and grandmother took me to mountains and their lonely little pathways became a faithful tonic that continually beckons. The mountains held their sway in my life; if I had to choose just one space to be in for the rest of my days, that space would be the windy heights. The need to wander up and into those wind-blown spires inevitably led to the discovery of cultures that make their homes within their heights. One expedition led to another and I realised that my interest in summiting peaks was secondary to finding where the mountain routes led and how they had been used. A sort of mentor and guide of the mountains once told me, 'You are either one of those people who must follow those errant mountain trails or one who is content to get to the summit.' I knew early on that I was one who must follow those trails. I have a kind of unending hunger for the next journey, the next route into the mountains.
FOLLOWING LINES It is the frontier zones of China that hold me, for it is here that one can find traces - linguistically, culturally and even genetically - of an incredible sphere of movement, trade and interaction with the rest of Asia. Once you start peering a little more closely into the cultures and traditions of locals you can start drawing lines that lead far and wide, largely because of trade and migration routes. It is in the rural, out-of-the-way places where magic and memory still exist, and it is these areas which draw me in again and again. Everyone seems to have a theory about China and its growth and ascension, but I'm not sure anyone really knows how a country this complex and huge will grow and move ahead. It is, though, a world that can offer every colour and sensation available in a 24-hour period.
TAKING THE WIDE ROAD Years ago, during a trek through Ladakh and Zanskar, in northern India, I spent a night with an ancient Tibetan man and his clan. During a night of tale-telling and a drink too many, he told me how his family [originally from eastern Tibet] came to settle so far west. He mentioned the Gyalam ['wide road'] as this 'trade route through the sky' and of its importance in Himalayan trade, bringing all manner of goods - particularly tea - into the remote Himalayan kingdoms. Fast forward almost four years and I am on an expedition in northwestern Yunnan and I again hear of this Gyalam, but this time I also hear of its Chinese name, Cha Ma Gu Dao ['ancient tea horse road'], and its crucial importance to a dozen cultures and I am hooked completely; utterly obsessed. A good friend of mine and I shook hands and committed to somehow travelling the route, to document this almost mystical journey. From that point on it took three years of obsessing, researching and searching out remaining traders, muleteers and travellers of the route. At long last, a team of friends, guides and fellow-obsessed departed with a rough plan of travelling along the entire 5,000-plus kilometres of both strands of the route. It ended up taking over seven months, we almost lost two team members to the mountain elements and we passed through a dozen language groups and four countries.
DOWN MEMORY LANE So much of the whole aspect of communication is changing and speeding up and much of the role of tale-telling, of taking the time not just to listen but to partake in a communal setting, is being lost. Much of the appeal of oral narratives for me is that they are in fact conversations that bind and unify a community. When I was interviewing old muleteers for the Tea Horse Road project it was incredibly telling how their information was uniformly consistent. These men were essentially illiterate and yet their memories of incredible exploits were razor sharp. Their memory of geographies, personalities and events were almost poetic - even their descriptions of places like Crying Pillar Pass, for example, left no doubt of its challenges and struggles.