Tawu to Lhagang, 2004

Snow had fallen, the night froze it, and only after the bus had skidded over the gorge several times did the driver give in to the passengers’ pleading and put chains on. Oncoming lorries floated across the road towards us. I pictured them picking our flattened bodies out of a flattened bus fifteen hundred metres below, and it did not even cheer me that two white corpses would be easy to find among fifty others. I worked out which handrail to grab if we started to fall. The only thing that calmed me was the deep, throaty “Ommm…” of the Tibetans in the seats in front.