The high road

Another early start, too early and without coffee as a sleepless gut gurgling night plummets into the early streets in search of a tuk tuk to the southern bus station. Arriving, and securing tickets to Phonsavan, I look at the time 0715 and the bus isn't at 0830 but 0900, wrong information gathered, only half an hour early but that's the morning caffeine injection and I feel tired, the restless night weighing heavily, a churning stomach warning me of the risk of food. It's good to be on the road again.

The bus station's not busy, maybe we could have risked a later arrival but then the risk of a full bus, another night in Luan Praban. Maybe it's already a night too many, maybe it's time to move regardless of destination; time passes but the visa is fixed, already it feels too short, distorted by the ethereal presence of aj. But that's another tale, a song fallen by the side of the road.

But, for now I sit drinking a really bad coffee, the sun rising hazily above tree topped hills; women carrying baskets upon a bamboo pole selling fried river moss and dried bean pods, small groups chatting, scattered, waiting as a few other travellers gather around buses, impatient for journeys to resume in the warming air.

A half full minibus, pulling out of the station, out of town, the rising road winding once again through villages, rising hills transformation into mountains, rising into scattered viewpoints, opaque air clinging to the land below and beyond. 

Below us the resumation of concrete  pillars and the raised straight lines of embankments foreshadowing the railway to come, stretching down from the north, tunneling through the hills as it dissects the landscape in sharpened geometry, strangely precise in this meandering land.

A couple of hours into the journey we're waved down by a figure stood frantic in the middle of the road, warned of an accident ahead, a road block, the cabin of a tanker disconnected from its load, the smell of fuel from a shattered tank, two others in the convoy waiting behind it as figures scurry, trying to clear the way, traffic bunched up in both directions, no way past, no way back, caught static upon this narrow band of winding tarmac. We pull in to the side of the road watching as attempts are made to manoeuvre it, allow the flow of traffic to resume. From the edge of the road I look down, remember that it's a mountain pass, gazing upon the valley floor far below...


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