Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang Bus

Dream of the Mountain Road

We're barely an hour out of Vangvieng when the bus blows an inside rear tyre. The trip to Luang Prabang is around six hours, we're only carrying one spare and we haven't even begun the climb into the hills of northern Vientiane province...

Long distance bus rides: I can't decide if I love or loathe them. I like them better than air travel because there's generally a lot more to see out the windows. There's also the occasional stop for food and drink which affords an opportunity to stretch the legs and breathe some fresh air. In a bus you pass through the landscape of your journey rather than skip over it as you would in an aircraft and the added stimulus usually proves a much better conversation starter than the endless blue of a 'plane window.

Not today. Amber and I have been separated due to the only available seats being at opposite ends of the bus. My companion seems reticent to use his English, even though it's far superior to my Lao (which at the moment only extends to "hello", "thank you" and "drinking water") so we both lapse into reverie as the landscape scrolls by outside.

The road is sealed but narrow and switchbacks through the peaks and bluffs of the range in an effort to hold to a specific contour. Our course follows river valleys, high above the water. The hairpin bends are many as the road kinks around the stream-carved canyons of the main valley's tributaries. Every now and then we climb to a ridgetop and cross into a new river's valley to maintain our intended course.

The afternoon dissolves into cameos: Women cut the pampas-like flowers of giant grasses for roofing material. Children thresh the seed out of them on the roadside. The verges lined with bundled grass. Sway-backed pigs scattering at the sound of the horn. Names of NGOs blazoned on new village water supply cisterns. The dense, haze-filled atmosphere that blues the nearest hills and limits the views the altitude would provide. The mountain. Phu Nampin, I think. We passed under its shadow hours ago and yet it's still with us. Its sunlit face now turned toward us as we ride the watershed encircling it.

Lives on Route 13. Kaiso, Phousida and Phachao. Pagnakha, Namming and Kiougna. Houses strung along the ridgelines on either side of the road. Almost all are made of woven bamboo bark and thatched grasses. Roofs that need renewing every year. Walls that might last two or three. The incongruity of satellite antennae. Surely the images relayed invade these dwellings like transmissions from another planet?

Plantings along the roadside. Trees? They're too small to tell, their presence only revealed by the tiny frames erected around each one. Not substantial enough to provide support or protection, the frames guard only against a careless footfall. Other trees. Wild trees in one steep valley blazing pink like cherry blossom... gone.

Glimpses. Fragments. No contact. No immersion.

It's not enough.

I want to walk this world. I want to breathe its air, not the recycled air-conditioned atmosphere of this bus. I want to hear the sounds of these mountains, not those of grinding gears and laboured engine.

I lapse into a daydream: Walking limits my experience to my physical location. I want to be this world. I want to know the view from every peak, the route of every trail. I would be every river - know the secret courses of water under the mountains and the convoluted galleries of every cavern. I want to see it through every eye, from those of the smallest jewelled insect on the underside of a leaf to those of the most farsighted eagle high overhead. I don't wanna be a tourist.

Back to the bus: The driver's companion chatters incessantly in his ear, occasionally erupting into fits of mirth. For over half the trip she's been silent, but ever since we stopped for lunch an hour ago she's been wildly voluble. He doesn't say much, but whenever she lapses into silence he utters a few quiet words that fire her up again. The woman in front of me is trying to read and rolls her eyes.

I look around. Amber and most of our fellow passengers are asleep. A few couples are engaged in hushed, sporadic conversation.

The man at my elbow remains silent, gazing out the window.

For him at least, the vignettes afforded by the window seem enough.