I'm living for a good view! Nothing more. Struggling up the path. Yesterday is yesterday and I really worked hard yesterday and I can't stop today... The day isn't really against me. My fading strength is against me. My body has to eat the little bit of fat it's saved.

The road rises, solidly smooth. How many times have I described this nonsense? I'm not getting anywhere. Maybe that's the point: I never shall! I will pass safely - unspoken for. Look at the innocent mind: the freer you are, the more innocent you will remain. The more contemptible and stupid you become, the more corrupt you will be. The logic of obvious lessons life gives refuses to forgive us, no matter how loudly we pretend not to care. You ought to laugh at yourself for being you. Righteousness and hubris overkill everything. Sadly - the imaginary grandiose - the persuasion, and the self-possession of dreams usually blinds those of us who don't care to discover what we've been missing.

These Tibetan Nomads, elemental people, have so much going for them because their natural intellect and spirit is unspoiled and self-fulfilling. The Nomads may feel lonely and poor, but they know what to do everyday. In cities and highly developed countries, we live, like so many half-people, full of pseudo-ideas and unoriginal philosophies, and all meant to settle our minds against the hideous compromises we are forced to make. I don't think anybody in Europe or America is really free to do what they know is best. Uniformity rules the world; individuals conform - or die...

None of us can feel or understand things as instinct would compel us... The compromises we make always reappear in our own minds as masks we must tear away. We are obliged to resign, but then we fill up with anger and resentment, all of it quite undirected. Start a war, and blame the rich; sure, that's what we do all the time... Tear away your mask, why not! Become who you really are! How can you "know thyself" when you can't be yourself, dear friend? Love is the first feeling we need. Pity comes afterwards, with understanding and forgiveness. Love is the most natural knowledge we have. Pity is learned and earned. Well, you can disagree... Because I know that you see too many people who pity themselves, don't you, or even too many more who are too arrogant and proudly self-assured. Of course, confidence is very healthy, all popular psychologists preach how to root yourself in parochial presumptions about knowing who you are... But everyone is a mutt, rooted in a narrow set of presumptions about who is who and what is what, bigoted and blind - all of us. How many dare talk about less popular subjects: that we have forgotten how to forgive each other. It's a real problem.

Let's go on. The day is cut off. For the first time in two weeks, heavy clouds have drawn over all. The sky is impenetrable, as if the final curtain has fallen upon a fantastic performance. We won't be seeing that great singer "sun" again for some time. The road slaps back and forth, and I feel like a spit-roasted chicken. There's nobody telling me to live or die today. The walnut and raisin nougat is still fresh. I have some dry bean porridge and wash it down with orange juice. A truck passes as I sit, watching the valley below. Many such valleys hide in Tibet. Though there may be few people in each valley, they stay there all summer, waiting for someone like me to relieve their loneliness.

On the last buttress of this last climb before Tsamda county, wisping right by me around the summit, goes a land-cruiser. In front sit two official looking Chinese; and in back, two aging, educated looking Tibetans. On a tour of inspection, it appears. The summit is full of wind and there's no horizon but more mountains slicing into a dark gorge. The south is shrouded by a livid mask: the clouds certainly bear more rain. I'm afraid of that weather. It's true, I have no fear for anything else.

One more truck comes at me as I descend, the two Tibetans grinning in disbelief. Go on! Don't be afraid: into the wind, into the rain! The clay sand turns to pebbles and gravel and I'm skittering. Can't stand the rain. It's so goddamn cold. I put on my raincoat and plastic pants, but have nothing for my poor feet. The rain comes harder. I'm at 4800 metres. When it rains at this altitude, you're in for it, brother. It's ice water and the wind is killingly chill. I dive down as fast as I can. Without a care for myself or the bike's leaping speed. You'd be surprised how much like a ski a loaded bicycle behaves on wet, pebbly descents. But I still have to brake for big rocks. Sometimes I fly over humps and must land without impacting the wheels. It's okay. Down for twenty kilometres at speed before the gorge begins to open and the rain ceases.

Some folks appear across the gorge, tending sheep. The precipitous land gives way to craggy remnants of mountains before opening into a great plateau, a grassy plain all around. The horizon is orange and yellow in the setting sunlight. Sixty kilometres away rises the vanguard of the Himalayas. Sharp white incisors and canines bite off the horizon. India lies beyond, invisible below the peaks. I speed and the landscape is more clearly revealed. I can see how an eroded sand canyon lies between me and the Himalayas. Through that canyon, southwest to India, flows the wondrous Sutlej River, a lifeline amid the desert dearth. The planet refuses to deny its own life.

Suddenly, I reach the edge of a sharp gully that carries a fast creek from the mountains from which I have emerged. The road forks: I need to turn left - east. Here, two Tibetan men sit in a broken down truck, waiting for help. They see I'm chilled and wet from the rain; one of them approaches with a flask of tea. I join them in the truck and do nothing but warm up and watch the Himalayan horizon grow gold. One of the truckers offers me a bun, but I only nibble. They need it more than I do. They try to explain that some civilization exists in the small river valley nearby.

River water cuts an immense trench into the sandy plateau. At the bottom some clever folks have made a rest stop for truckers heading to Tsamda, or back up the pass. I set up my camp in the dusk, then join everybody for drinks in the main tent. They have plenty of hot water, and my noodles are tasty for a change.

I use my phrase book to trade names. The Tibetan men like to tease everyone, me and their women. The guys nudge my elbow and suggest I sleep with the prettiest one in the tent. She only blushes. Later, a gorgeous young mother comes in with her son, and again the young Tibetans tease me about going off with her. The curious thing is that the women take the suggestions hopefully, as if I really should go and make them a little richer after all.

Night arrives and so does mischief. I go outside. It's dark. I cannot always explain my behavior. The sound of children comes at me. I see nothing but night, but I do hear kids running away. They've been playing with my bike stuff. It's nothing serious: they pulled the rain covers off my panniers and took away my tent bag. I hear giggles. I can't find the tent bag and my tool kit's inside it. I get angry. Tibetan children are mischievous. They can't be held accountable. Perhaps Tibetans are naturally less repressed than other folk, just for this reason: children do as they want and their playful tricks are usually left unpunished. But then again, Tibetan infants are tied up in bundles - so they don't freeze to death or toddle too far from home during the winter... Maybe they need to react against a lot of things in the environment, which seem to control them too much.

Nobody in the bright host tent shows much concern when I return, angry. One of the mischievous kids came in ahead of me too, so I jump him. I put a quick strangle hold on him and shout, "Leave my stuff alone!" He doesn't understand, but the kid is scared enough. Curiously, none of the older Tibetan fellows tries to interfere with my action, and I manage to cool down without encouragement. I'm not even embarrassed, since everyone is fairly amused by the whole scene. I have another beer and conclude that it would be considered very abnormal for Tibetan kids not to make mischief.

After another drink, I politely bid good night and go out to sleep. Morning is rain-free, and that's enough to make me happy. Some of the same kids are up with me in the morning. The kids are smiling at least, even if their mother seems sheepish and doesn't understand me. I take a photo of brother and sister standing in front of the tent. They gawk as I stand up, and plow my bike through the fast creek...

Above the gorge the plateau raises a gradual dome. After two days of leaden sky, the sun illumines a most phenomenal vista. The Himalaya mountains stride gloriously above the Sutlej valley on my right, to the south. Picture a vast open space and a range of icy mountains, sixty kilometres away, and stretching hundreds of kilometres east and west - ruling the entire southern horizon. The glowing peaks stay cloud-free till middle morning.

I get closer to the Sutlej river canyons, which appear faintly beneath the peaks, cutting and trenching the earth. The canyons are golden, and then wash-out to grey as the lifting sun sears the land. Here's how my journal describes the scene: "I finally found the plateau I was waiting for. The distant range of the Himalayas runs like a grey and black ruler across the south, east to west. Beyond the spiky grass plateau was the upper edge of the canyon country. It looked a lighter grey, wrinkled like the flesh of an elderly person who spent all his time in the sun."

It's July 21. The road to Tsamda descends along a track heading due south... "The road fell into a steady descent, and the canyons, hoodooy ravines appeared. First, they were sandy yellow, a light ochre. As I rode down they grew taller and taller, looming a few hundred metres above the road on both sides. Basically the route traces along a dry riverbed."

Subterranean springs give life to a variety of tough, flowering shrubs. It's getting hot here! Each metre I descend - the temperature rises. Nearby sits a clay house, its windows bricked for the summer. I guess the locals have headed up to the wetter, greener plateau to graze their herds. Tibetans often seek the highest ground during summer months. I explore the empty site. Sandstone caves make homes and corrals. Judging by the freshness of the goat turds, it appears they didn't leave too long before... This hamlet is highly photogenic: millennia upon millennia of pencil-thin alluvial layers sleep in the fine forms behind the tiny Tibetan cottage...

A couple of clicks later, I come to a community of little birds. They chatter loudly and take shelter in vertical nooks overhead. I feel smaller and smaller by the minute as the sandstone mesas gets progressively taller. The grooves deepen: how mother Earth has raised her eons from the hills!

Humanity's span is so obviously only a fraction of second. Although we see the cosmos all around us everyday, we don't know what it means for us... We're blind to a vast universe that doesn't know us at all, a universe made mostly of inanimate gas and nuclear fire; we prefer to trick ourselves with complex faiths in divine sublimity and the certainty of "purposes." The universe is there, that's all. It doesn't wait for us to make up our minds. We happen to be alive, so perhaps we should wonder what that might mean before imagining the plan god might be making for us.

A truck is parked in the middle of the road. Some soldiers with sunglasses stand around looking at another soldier on a ladder. He's checking the phone line to Tsamda. They're replacing old ceramic insulators with new ones. More soldiers working in the next ravine, too. One walks up. I say hello, say it's so hot and smile. Then, a flat tire. It's the first puncture in 1800 kilometres. The culprit turns out a thistle spike. Changing the tire, I feel how hot, still and dry desert air can be. It's 32 degrees Celsius.

A muddy creek flows by a path leading into a new army camp in the adjacent gully. I spot a farm beyond. Here are the first trees I've seen in a long while: they are tall, a verdure among the bleak, lifeless sand. Strangely remote and beautiful, but how lonesome a homestead! So many green things grow in the farmer's yard...

Hundreds of thick, prickly thistles appear by a creek flowing towards the Sutlej. I'm near to Tsamda town. The river sweeps into view: huge vertical buttes tower over Tsamda across the water. But there's no bridge in sight. Suddenly a truck pulls up and halts. Out jumps the same Japanese guy I met at the beginning of the Aksai Chin plateau near Xinjiang's border with Tibet. What's he doing here? We stand under a blazing sun and talk. His nose is red and peeling. I ask him if Guge is nearby the town across the river. He nods and points south. He says the hotel is okay. His driver has to go. So they do...

The wide meandering river doesn't allow for a bridge at this point. Along the road are several small, ruinous stupas and overhead, a few grottoes... The whole hill is the ruin of some very ancient town. Some young Tibetans are standing up there... What in the world are they doing?!

Happy, or unhappy, they're trying hard to smash some rocks together. Crack, crack comes the sound of big rocks striking each other. A woman sees me and waves for my attention... Some of the young men have climbed into the mouth of a leviathan and I see them chucking down stones. From this distance, it's difficult to read their faces. I cannot imagine what they read in me. Then I see, again, the woman gesture for me to climb up, as if I'm missing a good old-style gang-bang. Or their unspoken anguish. The woman still waves: "Come up to me!"

God must know a lot more than I do about this insane pandemonium of conflicting ideas, narrow obsession and miraculous specialization that leads to undreamed of progress! My fate is to pass you by as you pass by me - each of us completely ignorant of each other's emotions and feelings. It's my old Montreal syndrome: someone else gets read, whom I've never heard of at all... And as they run out, Dave still doles the drums, yeah. You think I dwell on being left out too much? I know, it's an imaginary thing. Because others are left out, too: just think of all your country's poor and unemployed, your unheard-of poets, let alone the rich sap who gets defeated on election day! Don't bother with other people's judgements: otherwise, how can you make up your own mind?

I don't want to deny anybody. I want to be free! Same as those half-crazed Tibetans want to be free: maybe that's the point of their strange behavior... Tomorrow can't arrive fast enough. Who entitles us to be impatient? What buys us the privilege to demand anything!? I would kill myself from self-loathing if I were forced to become a hand-rubbing lawyer specializing in civil suits...

How strange, the gross amoral conquest with which material "necessity" possesses us! Our selfish "rights and needs" destroy love, compassion and forgiveness. The corporation rolls over your rights, buys out your little local paper only to regurgitate some "new" popularized format... Then your history is x-rated, sister. Nobody is permitted to know. Oh yes, but the euphemisms will annul your pain as you sit silently before the holy seat of culture - a box full of tv - a computer - whatever. Amen, we're all good little - and silent brothers!

The vegetable kingdom of trivia and media personality does not lead to reflection and sound judgement. What is it you're more aware of after all, boss? Is it really enough to see, and is it really so much worse just to ignore all the bad shit going down?! A lot of big zeroes are very rich today! Like me! Plenty a suitcase full of other people's disposable incomes buy out excuses. We must quell frustration somehow, I know. So, I lease in my entertainment, too. But what does it matter - since the poor don't, can't and won't save even a few pennies. Why not let them buy your dinner again, big man..?

Good luck comes your way. A free election is rare today, so be glad the opposition can win sometimes. Are your blessings too few to count? What's the best solution? Our desire for pleasure, for truth and for love do rule us: we're forced by nature to accept and crave the insatiable end. How true it is! Personal wealth only breeds more and more superfluous hunger for acquisition... Do we imagine everything we need because nothing satisfies? Do the questions remain unanswered, eternally? Greed for dollars was only your unquenched longing for love? Mom and dad weren't really that mean, eh?