cooler-than-thou in their cowboy hats and shades, their ladies in baggy pants and bangles, bright scarves wound about their necks.
Without a warning, like Alice through the rabbit hole, I had tumbled, so it seemed, into the upside-down world of the underground Overlanders, the tribe of countercultural imperialists that wanders the planet in search of cut-rate paradises. A few years ago, the hipster trail had stretched all the way from Amsterdam to Kathmandu, through Istanbul and Isfahan andKabul; nowadays, however, the professional drifters were beginning to converge on the hidden corners of the Himalayas and the newly opened minority areas of China. And as I settled down inside the Banak Shol, I realized that even this most esoteric of hideaways was fast being turned into the latest way station of the Denim Route. The only true democracy, D. H. Lawrence once wrote, is Whitman’s version, in which “soul meets soul on the open road,” and Lhasa was now being colonized by a free-floating band of Whitmanic democrats.
Certainly, there was a Whitman’s catalogue of characters in evidence around the guesthouse corridors. There was a shabby scientist who had received a grant from Washington to study cloud formations, and another dubious fellow who had unearthed some ancient maps of the secret monasteries of Lhasa and was now planning a book on them. There was an expert on Chinese music called R.I.P., who dressed from dawn to midnight in a heavy forest-green poncho and a dark brown gaucho hat, and told me, somewhat airily, that he came from nowhere, but commuted between Soho and Beijing—whenever, that is, he wasn’t living in South America and there was a soi-disant free-lance photographer who had been traveling for two years without deadline or destination. There was a Cambodian refugee in a chic Parisian leather jacket and a soft sweater with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and by his side a blowsy American redhead who confessed that eighteen months of budget traveling had cured her for life of a love for vagabondage.
Just down the corridor was a quiet Chinese girl from Beijing who had been allowed to become a painter because her father was a high-ranking cadre, and a British sailor who had been traveling for four full years with no companion except his shortwave radio (turned on each night at eleven to catch the news on the BBC). There was a teenage historian from Cambridge, and a social worker from Singapore. There was a pair of his-and-hers fitness freaks from Boulder, Colorado—Mr. Good Health a gentle, bearded craftsman, Ms. Good Health a radiant cowgirl—who were bicycling at a leisurely pace across the Himalayas. And, inevitably, there was a whole school of German, Dutch and Danish students who spoke gallingly fluent English and, more gallingly still, enjoyed five-month summer vacations even, so it seemed, into early middle age.
Next door to me lived a blonde from Hawaii who connected stereo speakers to her Walkman so that she could share the latest Talking Heads tapes with her neighbors while her tanned roommate swerved his skateboard frantically up and down the narrow guesthouse corridors. I took them at first to be an archetypal campus couple. But then one day, the girl referred to Tanzi as her kid brother. And later I gathered that she had only just graduated from high school. And later still, she happened to mention her parents, and I looked with new respect upon the figures beside us on the terrace—“Mom,” I inferred, was the one in wild earrings and flamboyant pantaloons, “Dad” the fellow in ponytail and chest-length beard, puffing serenely on his peace pipe. Astonishing! Here were some genuine Children—and Grandchildren—of the Revolution! Here in fact were two whole generations of freaks, dropping out and hitting the road
en famille!
The following day, on a bus out of town, I found myself next to a wonderfully high-spirited white-haired old lady from Pontiac, Michigan. Had she come here on
Without a warning, like Alice through the rabbit hole, I had tumbled, so it seemed, into the upside-down world of the underground Overlanders, the tribe of countercultural imperialists that wanders the planet in search of cut-rate paradises. A few years ago, the hipster trail had stretched all the way from Amsterdam to Kathmandu, through Istanbul and Isfahan andKabul; nowadays, however, the professional drifters were beginning to converge on the hidden corners of the Himalayas and the newly opened minority areas of China. And as I settled down inside the Banak Shol, I realized that even this most esoteric of hideaways was fast being turned into the latest way station of the Denim Route. The only true democracy, D. H. Lawrence once wrote, is Whitman’s version, in which “soul meets soul on the open road,” and Lhasa was now being colonized by a free-floating band of Whitmanic democrats.
Certainly, there was a Whitman’s catalogue of characters in evidence around the guesthouse corridors. There was a shabby scientist who had received a grant from Washington to study cloud formations, and another dubious fellow who had unearthed some ancient maps of the secret monasteries of Lhasa and was now planning a book on them. There was an expert on Chinese music called R.I.P., who dressed from dawn to midnight in a heavy forest-green poncho and a dark brown gaucho hat, and told me, somewhat airily, that he came from nowhere, but commuted between Soho and Beijing—whenever, that is, he wasn’t living in South America and there was a soi-disant free-lance photographer who had been traveling for two years without deadline or destination. There was a Cambodian refugee in a chic Parisian leather jacket and a soft sweater with sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and by his side a blowsy American redhead who confessed that eighteen months of budget traveling had cured her for life of a love for vagabondage.
Just down the corridor was a quiet Chinese girl from Beijing who had been allowed to become a painter because her father was a high-ranking cadre, and a British sailor who had been traveling for four full years with no companion except his shortwave radio (turned on each night at eleven to catch the news on the BBC). There was a teenage historian from Cambridge, and a social worker from Singapore. There was a pair of his-and-hers fitness freaks from Boulder, Colorado—Mr. Good Health a gentle, bearded craftsman, Ms. Good Health a radiant cowgirl—who were bicycling at a leisurely pace across the Himalayas. And, inevitably, there was a whole school of German, Dutch and Danish students who spoke gallingly fluent English and, more gallingly still, enjoyed five-month summer vacations even, so it seemed, into early middle age.
Next door to me lived a blonde from Hawaii who connected stereo speakers to her Walkman so that she could share the latest Talking Heads tapes with her neighbors while her tanned roommate swerved his skateboard frantically up and down the narrow guesthouse corridors. I took them at first to be an archetypal campus couple. But then one day, the girl referred to Tanzi as her kid brother. And later I gathered that she had only just graduated from high school. And later still, she happened to mention her parents, and I looked with new respect upon the figures beside us on the terrace—“Mom,” I inferred, was the one in wild earrings and flamboyant pantaloons, “Dad” the fellow in ponytail and chest-length beard, puffing serenely on his peace pipe. Astonishing! Here were some genuine Children—and Grandchildren—of the Revolution! Here in fact were two whole generations of freaks, dropping out and hitting the road
en famille!
The following day, on a bus out of town, I found myself next to a wonderfully high-spirited white-haired old lady from Pontiac, Michigan. Had she come here on
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