By James P. McLaughlin | September 2011
Just a week and a half before, I had been docking large oil barges in the industrialized port of Philadelphia. I was a deck hand for a Baltimore based tugboat company, saving up money to travel abroad as a photojournalist. Through out my day, when I could find the time, I would grab my camera and snap telling images of the oil industry. Smoke from near by factories billowing into the setting sun giving the pollution a beautiful tint of red and orange, my fellow crewmembers pumping oil from a barge to a large ship destined for far off places, and the skeleton like structures on the shores of the Delaware River that had been abandoned; a photojournalist couldn’t ask for more. I worked and lived in an ever expanding world of consumerism: the western culture.
Now I’m standing on an abandoned road in the Himalayan Mountains of Nepal with my friends Florien, Irene, and Andrea. We are heading for the Chinese border. I’m just hoping for a glimpse of James Hilton’s Shangri – La; a fictional paradise hidden in the mountains of Tibet. I have grown up reading about Everest expeditions, the Dali Lama, and the barren and forgotten land of Tibet. In my mind, it is the end of the earth, it is untouched, and I have always planned on having my own wild adventures there.
It’s been an hour since we missed the bus heading for the border and we are now sitting on the side of the road just waiting for a car or a bus. I’m lying on a pile of firewood that rests against the side of small shacks that line the ravine that plummets into the earth below us while Florien sits several feet from me reading up on the Tatopani Hot Springs that lay just south of the Chinese border, in his Lonely Planet Guide to Nepal. I listen to the gushing of the Bagmati River, moving over rocks at the bottom of the ravine, and watch birds dip and glide around the green mountain peaks that look down on us like big green giants that would grace the pages of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. The jagged and densely vegetated peaks remind me of the peaks in the Andes Mountains surrounding the small-secluded town of Aguas Calientes.
Aguas Calientes seemed to be a place hidden from the world. Well not really hidden, but it felt like it was. The small town sat at the base of Machu Picchu, the incredible Incan ruins discovered by archeologist Hiram Bingham in 1911. It was built into the sides of the surrounding mountains and the only way to reach the town was by train or hiking from Cusco. It felt as if it were straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. The type of place I dreamed of as a kid. But in reality, it was a poor community scattered with hotels to accommodate the heavy traffic of tourists who came to visit Machu Picchu. This incredibly charming town was slowly being pushed down under the weight of a fast paced and changing world. Garbage scattered in gutters, tourists wondering through the market with their annoying children, becoming frustrated that the locals didn’t speak English, and the heavy chested female mannequin showing off sexy clothing in a shop window – I mean who’s looking for something to wear to the club in a place like this? It was there that my love for photojournalism had been re-sparked after years of dual routine.
Andrea finally flags a car that’s willing to pick up four hitchhikers but we only get several kilometers before we role to a stop. The road is blocked by a landslide that has happened just hours before. We get out to get a better look at the extent of the damage. As the other three approach two men perched on a large boulder to ask them how far the border is, my photojournalist instincts kick in. I rummage through my pack and pull out my camera and begin taking photos of the damage. Up the side of the mountain is a large backhoe slowly pushing rubble down the slope. As I climb up the landslide towards the large piece of machinery I find myself wondering if I could be standing several feet above someone who has been crushed by the sliding mountain.
Florien turns to me and says, “We’re going to walk. Its not far.”
We grab our packs and continue our journey on foot. As we walk the first couple of kilometers, I am over taken with the amount of industrialization in this secluded part of the world. There is a large warehouse with about one hundred tractor-trailer trucks with advertisements for the Beijing Olympics in the parking lot, and more bulldozers and backhoes like the one I saw hours before, building what looks like will one day be a large hotel. Are they trying to turn Shangri – La into a tourist attraction? Are they trying to turn Nepal and Tibet into Aguas Calientes?
We continue to walk from town to town up the long and narrow road that winds through the passes of the Himalaya. As we arrive at the Tatopani Hot Springs its getting dark and we are still far from the border.
“Oh thank God,” Irene whimpers in exhaustion. “I really need this.”
We are cold, tired, and in low spirits. We stumble through the village to where the hot springs are cut into the side of the mountain on the opposite side. As we approach the springs we are hit with another blow of disappointment. Before us lays, what looks like an inner city public swimming pool rather than the unique hot springs in the secluded Nepali Himalayas we had psyched our selves up for. We continue our bathless journey up the road towards the border in the dark.
This evening we sleep in a small bedroom above a restaurant for travelers crossing the Chinese border. As I lie in the dark listening to the girls breathing in their sleep and the Bagmati River pounding against the foundations of the small structure a little bit of hope returns. The one place in the world that I want to witness more then any other is just across the river. I have finally reached the place that will fulfill my childhood dreams. In my mind, it is the end of the earth, its untouched, and I have always planned on having my own wild adventures there – here. I have had adventures from the mountains of Peru to the shores of the Delaware River, while being everything from a Marine to a photojournalist. In my mind none can compare to what is about to come. Or so I think.
The following day would be marked with piles of trash as big as buildings laying on both sides of the border, miles of trucks lining the roads of Tibet waiting to make their next big delivery, and Tibetans being held at gunpoint by Chinese soldiers while they’re searched at the border; a photojournalist couldn’t ask for more; a kid looking for an untouched and wild place would be over come with a deep sadness and disappointment. I live and work, still, in the growing world of consumerism, expansion, westernization, and the destruction of cultures like Tibet, Nepal, and Peru. If there ever was a Shangri – La, it certainly does not exist any more; what’s worse is I wasn’t there to take pictures when it was destroyed.
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James P. McLaughlin 