A journey to better understanding
World traveller Antonia Bolingbroke-kent recalls past triumphs and her latest trip, which took her to one of the planet’s least explored places
After you graduated from Edinburgh University you drove a tuk tuk a world record breaking 12,500 miles from Thailand to the UK. Do you still love tuk tuks and what is your favourite mode of transport?
Oh yes, I definitely still love tuk tuks: even after bumping half way across the world in Ting Tong, our hot pink mean machine. Not only are they a blast to drive but they seem to bring smiles to people’s faces wherever you go. When my friend Jo and I were driving through places like Kazakhstan and Siberia people couldn’t believe what they were seeing and would regularly almost drive us off the road in their efforts to take photos, say hello and give us presents. As for what my favourite mode of transport is now – I would say it’s neck-a-neck between tuk tuks and motorcycles. Tuk tuks have a higher comedy value, but motorbikes give you that wind in your face exhilaration and are slightly more practical.
What is it about solo journeys through remote regions that so fascinates you?
There’s something extraordinarily liberating about casting yourself into the unknown, alone, and seeing what happens. And the wilder and more remote, the better. In our normal lives we’re surrounded by familiar people, and convenience, and comfort – we rarely test ourselves, or work out something challenging without asking a friend or the internet. But when you’re alone, miles from help or the nearest telephone signal, you have to work things out for yourself and, in doing so, it’s remarkable what hidden talents you discover. Travelling alone is also far more immersive – without the distractions of others you whole-heartedly engage with your surroundings and the people you meet.
This latest adventure takes you deep into a Himalayan valley held sacred by Buddhists. What was it like to see the effects of development there first hand?
According to the teachings of the Guru Rinpoche, an 8th century Tantric sorcerer credited with introducing Buddhism to Tibet, this area – known as Pemako – is an enchanted place that will provide refuge to the faithful at a distant time of calamity. And indeed, during the two weeks I spent walking through this remote valley on the Tibetan border, I heard many mysterious stories from the Buddhist tribes who lived there. But now a road is being built through the valley, and there is no doubt it will change it hugely. Although some of the younger villagers welcomed the idea, none of the older people wanted it, feeling it would link Pemako to the outside world and allow its magic to leak out. I was lucky to see it when I did.
Everyone in the West is obsessed by achieving “Happiness”. What can the contented people of Pemako teach us?
It’s hard to convey this without sounding glib, but I was really struck by how happy the people who lived in tribal communities in the farthest reaches of Pemako appeared to be. They lived hard lives in an extremely remote area, but their existences were the antithesis of our fast-paced, mechanised, materialistic, western existences – a life that’s become so driven by artificial wants. Life here was real. It was about food, shelter, family, community, togetherness. It was about need, not greed. It was about living with nature, the seasons and the cycle of night and day. People produced their own naturally organic food, breathed pure mountain air, spent the majority of their time outside and were free from the tyranny of the sedentary, screenaddicted lifestyles so many of us now lead. Being with them really made me wonder where we’ve gone wrong.
Who was Ursula Graham Bower, whose footsteps you traced?
Ah Ursula, my heroine. Described by Time magazine in 1945 as a ‘pert, pretty... Roedean-educated debutante, rally driver, traveller and anthropologist’, Ursula travelled to northeast India in 1937 and ended up captaining a tribal guerrilla force against the advancing Japanese during the war. The only female guerrilla commander in the history of the British Army, her ‘Bower Force’ proved so effective that the Japanese put a price on her head, and many downed Allied pilots owed her their life. In 1946 she and her new husband, a tea planter turned colonel, spent a year amongst the Apatani and Nyishi tribes in what is now Arunachal Pradesh, with Ursula writing a fabulous book, The Hidden Land, about their time there. She was gutsy, glamorous, brilliantly funny and totally unflappable – I’d have adored to meet her.
Tell us about the British legacy in the region, specifically the “Inner Line Permit system”?
The British annexed this corner of northeast India from the Burmese in
Their existences were the antithesis of our fast-paced, mechanised, materialistic, western existences
1826, and were soon making a great deal of money from tea, oil and coal production in the Brahmaputra Valley. Rather inconveniently however, the mountainous tracts surrounding the valley were home to numerous marauding tribes and, in 1873, fed up of decades of raiding, the British introduced the Inner Line Permit. Designed to prohibit movement between the valley and the encircling mountains, it was essentially a peace deal with the tribal populations of the hills, a clever way of saying: ‘You stop interfering with our business interests and we won’t meddle in your affairs.’ After independence Nehru, India’s first prime minister, kept the system in place and to this day you need a Restricted Area Permit to enter Arunachal Pradesh. Several tribal people I met there told me that if it wasn’t for us ‘Britishers’ their cultures would have been swamped by