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Adventures with Ruth in China – The Little Monk – Dale Blanchard

Z-i-i-p! Z-i-i-p! That was the sound of the two zippers on my tent being opened, first the rain fly then the main tent. I slowly opened my eyes and was greeted with a row of smiling Tibetan faces. They were speaking Tibetan but I knew what they were saying: "Are you all right? Do you want tea?"

If you've read the previous two adventures you know that I was now camped with nomads nearly 16,000 feet above sea level and that I was in the middle of a kidney stone attack. I was too sick to keep riding and the nomads we were camping with had helped me set up my tent.

I was trying to take a nap. That was not easy because my right kidney was generating waves of pain and my ears were ringing incessantly from a serious overdose of aspirin. I am, and as far as I can remember, always have been, of the belief that if something cannot be cured with three aspirin it is probably fatal and there is no use spending good money on more expensive drugs. I also know that six aspirin are about all you should take in a twenty-four hour period. By the time we reached the nomad tent I had taken twelve and that was in a three-hour period. Yes, my ears were ringing!

Ruth had asked me earlier how I was doing and when I told her, she decided that I probably needed something a bit stronger than aspirin. She pulled a package of six thin wafers from her pack. "Try one of these," she said. "Put it under your tongue and let it dissolve."

"What is it?" It was a needless question because it didn't matter what it was, I was going to take it. "Opium, I think," Ruth replied.

English is not Ruth's first language. I'm not sure where it ranks in her constellation of languages, but I think it is below German, Spanish, French and Italian and is somewhere above Tibetan. So when Ruth said "Opium," I knew I needed to do a bit of translating and decided it was probably some version of morphine. Yes, morphine would do just fine.

I waved the row of faces away making them understand that I wanted nothing, only to sleep. They zipped up my tent and I closed my eyes again. A few minutes later: Z-i-i-p, Z-i-i-p. Someone was opening my tent again! I opened my eyes expecting to see my Tibetan entourage again, but this time it was Ruth. She was holding a bowl of rice. "You should eat this," she said.

I told her that I was in no mood to eat and all I wanted was to sleep. She nodded her understanding and started to leave. "Oh, by the way," she said. "The Old Grandmother told me to watch out for the little monk. He's a thief." The Old Grandmother, as Ruth called her, was probably all of fifty years old, but she was the oldest person in the camp and clearly in charge. There seemed to be two monks staying here. One looked to be around twenty, the other had the face of a twelve to thirteen year-old, but was the size of a ten year-old. I assumed he must be the little monk.

It had never occurred to me that a monk might be a thief, but I guess it makes sense. These children are not placed as monks because of their holiness. Most are just kids. I guess some kids turn out to be thieves. I looked around my tent. My bags were all inside. "I'm good," I said. "Everything is inside my tent."

I woke up several times during the night. My kidney was still hurting so each time I awoke I melted another of Ruth's pills under my tongue. And then suddenly it was morning. Z-i-i-p, Z-i-i-p. I was being visited again. I opened my eyes and saw that I had my full complement of Tibetan faces peering in at me. Did I want tea? Did I want to eat? I considered the questions. No, I did not want tea and I did not want to eat, but thankfully, my kidney was no longer hurting. I smiled at my crowd and waved them away. I would get up.

As I came out of my tent I saw Ruth walking toward me. "Dale, are you ok?"

"Yes," I replied, "but I've decided to go back down to Maniganggo."

"Why?"

"Because when these pills wear off I think I might need some serious medical attention. I don't want to be twenty miles from the main road if that happens."

"These pills?" she asked. "How many did you take?"  I pulled out the package she had given me. There were four pills missing. Ruth's eyes got very big. "You took four? You're supposed to take only one in twenty-four hours!"

"All the more reason to go back down," I replied.

"You probably won't even be able to ride your bike."

"Then I'll walk."

"Well, I'm not coming with you!" Her voice was very definite. That was interesting, I thought. Does she think that if she threatens to not come with me, I'll not go? I shrugged. "Then I'll go alone."

"Please don't," Ruth pleaded. "Stay here another day. If you're not better tomorrow I'll come down with you." There was an urgency in her voice. Something was going on. "Ok, Ruth, what's really going on? Why don't you want to come back with me?"

She waited a long time before answering, refusing to look at me, "I'm afraid that if we go back to Maniganggo now, we'll end up going back to Chengdu almost two weeks ahead of schedule. I don't have enough money to stay in Chengdu that long."

"Ruth," I said softly. "I have plenty of money. If you run out, you can use mine."

"I can't take your money." From the desolation in her voice I knew there was a story here, but I didn't pursue it.  "It's dangerous for me to stay here." I said. "I could die. I need to get down to where I can catch a truck back to Ganze. There's a hospital there."

Ruth wasn't there when I finally got my bike loaded and was ready to leave. I wasn't strong enough to push the loaded bike up to the road, so two of the men of the camp helped me. For a long moment I was afraid Ruth was right, maybe I couldn't ride my bike. But it was downhill and I straddled my bike, then lifted myself up on to the seat and coasted away.

That downhill was long, maybe five miles, but it did not last forever. When I finally reached the bottom I was faced with an uphill, not a long uphill, but I knew it was more than I could handle. I had last eaten at breakfast the day before, I was sick, I was overdosed on aspirin and probably morphine, and I had nothing left. I could barely stand, let alone ride or even push a loaded bike up a hill. I needed nourishment.

Here, at the bottom of the hill, the road came right next to a small stream. Inside one of my bags I had an emergency stash of beef bouillon cubes (not the wimpy little 1/2 inch cubes, but the larger ones). I also had a backpacker's camp stove. So, I had source of clean water, I had a stove, and I had bouillon cubes. Nourishment was at hand.

I poured fuel into the stove's tank, pumped up the pressure, got a cooking pot out of my pack and filled it with water. I then tried to light the stove. It flickered once, then nothing. I pumped the pressure in the stove higher. Still no fuel came out to the burner. Clearly, our weeks of sometimes very dirty travel had clogged something. I would have to disassemble the stove, clean it, put it back together, and try again. For that I would need wrenches.

On my bike I carried all my tools in a small triangular bag that fits under the top bar. I undid the zipper. All my tools were gone! All of them, every last one! They had been outside on my bike when Ruth warned me about the little monk. Damn Little Monk! Damn stove! Damn kidney stones!

After that short outburst I decided that getting angry was not going to get me back down to Maniganggo so I sat down, emptied the water out of my cooking pot, dumped the fuel out of the stove back into its bottle, packed the pot and the stove back into my bags, and then calmly unwrapped what now looked like a huge beef bouillon cube and began to take little bites of it.

It was awful! It was salty, it was strong-tasting, it made me want to vomit, but I ate it all. And I drank as much water as I could stand. Then I lay down on the grass and waited. I wondered briefly, as I had many times during the night, if my kidney problem was a result of my cavalier attitude toward good-deed points and all other things to do with karma. If so, this was the second time I had been slapped down on this trip. (Another time, another story.)

But karma or not, here I was, completely alone, miles from civilization, and my "things" did not matter. With the help of The Little Monk my life had been reduced to its bare essentials and I had just eaten a beef bouillon cube to survive. It really doesn't get any better than that!

Soon, I could feel energy flowing back into my body. After twenty minutes I was ready to tackle the hill that was between me and the safety of Maniganggo.

(To be continued…..)

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