...the previous day Traveller had attempted to go North, but ended up running 24 Km South out of Luang Prabang, a small, UN Historical site and city on Highway 13, and then he turned left, running 16 additional Kilometers on a washboard dirt road on a Suzuki motor bike he had rented in town.
Laos may have 14,000 Kilometers of road, but 70% of all roads are unpaved. At least the government, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, says this honestly and up front.
People, and all Lao people seem kind and giving and smiling broadly, asked him where in the world he was going. He stopped in the Northern Forestry Reserve and Research Center, which was far off any paved road also, and discussed the immense complexity of this riot of bio-diversity with the Researchers who where started to have anyone visit them, let alone a white man that spoke no Lao. But they greeted him happily, they happy for the company and Traveller knew that his duty, his responsibility, anywhere, was to be entertaining and he was.
He also gave the researchers Oreo Cookies which he just happened to have in his backpack. Many times he would ride into a village and children would run and hide and cry, the mother or an elder explaining to Traveller, “Forgive the little boy, he’s never seen a foreigner before!”
Traveller thought to himself when this happened at a river fording on the North-East, largely roadless side of the Mekong, when he was with the Pao Lui tribe, “Certainly the lad has never seen a Farang in a yellow, oxford cloth, Brooks Brothers, button down shirt, that’s for sure,” and he laughed out loud that had the added benefit of making the boy stop crying
"I'm going to the Far Mountain," he would explain to everyone, but, since most Lao's spoke very little English and he spoke no Lao at all and worse, he didn't even have a Lao/English dictionary, yet alone a phrase book, in the end, people did not understand him, but he would take his hand and gesture toward some high peaks where clouds were wispily circling about....and they'd smile and seem to understand that The Far Mountain wasn't an actual destination...it was a metaphor...for, somewhere special, somewhere out there, somewhere beyond the normal cares and worries...or so he prayed.
All he found though was Were The Clouds were Made....many peaks, according to his map were over 1,500 meters tall, one even 2,357M. But he was satisfied even if he didn't find the Far Mountain.... The Mountains where the Clouds were Born was cool enough and he smiled in the rain washing over him.
He wished he was back in the city, Mrs. Adventure daintily perched on the Back of Mr. Adventure's bicycle, they laughing and smiling as they went up and down the streets under pedal power...he was sad when they left him to go back to Bangkok and the USA, but they understood how very special it was to be with Lao people, to be out there with himself, looking for the Far Mountain.
***********
...Traveller had just had this discussion with Mr & Mrs Adventure after his bleeding injury and slicing open his big toe....do bad things happen because we go from early morning to late at night....all out, and therefore become inattentive? Or, if you expose yourself to 200 possible dangers per day, after five or so days, it just catches up with you? If you expose yourself 2 dangers a day, it takes a year or two for something to happen...but who wants to live that way?
Mr. Adventure's injury looked terrible, black and bleeding and maybe the lesson was....don't ride motor bikes in the high ridged mountains of Laos in open toed sandals? And Traveller’s lesson from today? From the Crash about 11 Clicks out of Lunag Prabang, on not even a dirt road, but a rock road, sharp and jagged, waiting to cut and maul anybody's body falling on it at 30~40 KPH. After staggering to his feet, surprised that his brand new flexon titanium frames with glass lenses, as he always insisted on despite the rise of plastic lenses almost everywhere...were gouged beyond recognition and completely ruined, he realized that somehow they had bounced on his upper right forehead and taken most of the damage intended for his face.
He also realized that he was at least 5 clicks from anywhere at all and there was nothing but thick jungle and a light chilling drizzling rain to mix into his dripping blood, down his forehead, down his right leg, and most especially, down his right arm that had taken most of the blow of the fall.
He was dazed and this was his nightmare...out in the middle of nowhere...and injured....and apparently without functioning transportation.
Damn!
And yet, he was alive he was glade to note after taking a few moments to dust himself off and recover. He also took heart from the fact that, after about a day, though it looked terrible, Traveller could honestly tell Mr. Adventure, "Your foot is healing amazingly well, I'm pretty perfectly sure you're going to be okay."
But Traveller at this time had a different problem....he was not only injured and bleeding, but he was also without glasses and he was blind without glasses. But, checking himself over, he was alive, there was no arterial bleeding, and one way or another, he was going to make his way out of this.
In truth, for all of his immediate problems, Traveller felt better and less in danger than the other day when Mr. Adventure kind of begged, kind of insisted, they climb at least half way up Kuang Si waterfalls. 200 feet straight up according to Mr. Adventure, Traveller felt certain it was at least 300 feet.
"That's not possible," Mr. Adventure suggested, "That would be the same as a thirty story building, and half way isn't that high."
"Still," Traveller rejoined, "It's too damned high, a vertical fall to our death for sure," and, of course, as they were to discover, water would be cascading down on them on most of the ascent along a narrow, maybe 3 foot ledge....the lower Falls were touristy, Mr. A had a legitimate complaint, high up above everyone...that had possibilities.
But that was dangerous....Traveller had plead back to Mr. Adventure, "Nah, I don't want to do it, besides my back is kind of tweaked from all this rough road riding.”
Yet they did.
No, the Falls was more tough, though principally it was a psychological problem, that climb ....though, surveying his scene around himself....this was going to be difficult too, for sure.
What Traveller found worse was having to clean and dress his own wounds in a mountain stream, initially, and then more completely in his hotel....but it had to be done. He suspected that this also was largely a psychological problem....reaching up and cleaning one’s own cut and rasped open flesh...was just always unhappy for everyone, everywhere.
Traveller was fine and these wounds would heal....more problematic is that he couldn’t lift his right arm above the line of his shoulder....as physical therapy, stood next to a tree and using his fingers, spider-like, to get his arm up above his head.
He thought of his harpy, father like warnings he had given a motorcyclist who road the Australian Outback....but who was a motorcyclist, who at least knew what he was doing.
On the other hand, Traveller was resourceful, a coward maybe, but he wanted out of the fix he was in...and therefore there was a strong probability the would find one.
