Having left the last city so long ago, months if not years as it seems – it is hard to recall – first the flat unrelenting geography along the expressway out to the last exits and then out over the long dusty plains, there are maps for where we have been, and now these first foothills, it is not ‘terra incognita’, but they are not the kind of maps that are much help to us for the regular shifts of scene and site, as we continue to head for those snow capped peaks ahead, which stretch both north and south to the horizons on either side of us.
Andes? Or Himalayas? It matters less to us than you might think.
Crack! Crack! The whip. Yes, Immanuel, it is him who is constantly getting it across his back from her, that Judith lass, and also the quick lashings from her tongue, and fortunately so far not us, we have been lucky perhaps, or more a question of simply keeping our heads down, but frankly we couldn’t have begun to get this far without him, one of the great unsung.
Shout “I” for Immanuel! Hurray!
Admittedly he is not your usual kind of hero, frankly obscenely ugly and a political bore, but a true Trojan nonetheless, the loads he carries are quite astonishing, nearly our entire luggage, and then all of Judith’s books too, and the entire archive of Uncle Walter – Can you imagine the weight? – as well as all the cooking and camping equipment, cookers, tents, and so on, and the whole rest of the paraphernalia required these days for modern Sat-Nav living. While we complain of a sore bum and the occasional blister, I tell you, it is humbling and not a little embarrassing. And there are the scrapes he gets us out of, the wolves he saw off the other night, and remember the bandits that other time.
There is the thought that one day perhaps we will find ourselves sitting in armchairs somewhere reminiscing gently together about all this, but, No, right now we cant – we daren’t – let that idea intrude for a moment. Simply on – and all our attention needed for the path beside the yawning crevasses and shadowy gullies, those terrible gaps with their endless, plunging questions (such as those “Complex Questions from Russia” and so on, and so on). Simply on - Across Patagonia, Or is it across the Hindu Kush, No, we are not lost, and it is worth repeating the actual name of the plateau we crossed last week does not concern us too much here and now. Simply on – And early to bed, because tomorrow promises to be another long hard day in the saddle.