The Caterpillar Fungus





At the eastern end of the Tibetan plateau is a mountain once considered taller than Mt. Everest.
Solitary, draped in perpetual ice and snow, Minyak Gankar rears 1500m above its 6000m companions. To Tibetans, Minyak Gankar was the home of the wrathful Dharma protector Dorje Lutru. The mountain itself, wreathed in clouds, rarely seen, was his shining crystalline abode.



For centuries the merit making Buddhists of the eastern Tibetan plateau would come on pilgrimage to Minyak Gankar, circumambulating entire mountain massive in a torturous month-long kora. Today its infrequently accomplished. Roads, clear cutting and farming have obliterated most of the old trails, while the heart of the pilgrimage, Gankar Monastery, was razed by the Red Guards in the frenzy of the Cultural Revolution. Rebuilt in the 1980's, the gompa is still trying to reclaim itself.



We had also come to the Minyak Gankar region to walk on the pilgrim trail but we were pilgrims of a different sort. Tired of the crass commercialism of Lijiang or "Shangri-La" we yearned to see a slice of Tibetan life like in the old days. Unfortunately, after the the ravages of the twentieth century, it's hard to conceive what that traditional life may have been like. China, like the rest of the industrialized nations, has abandoned the world of Faith and Belief for a more material future. Those not on board are forever left behind. In truth we are not pilgrims but witnesses: witness to the dying of the sacred.



A half an hour's drive south of Kangding the road ends, petering out in a cart track running high above the river. There, along the trail, you can find the usual detritus of Chinese civilization: plastic Pepsi bottles, delaminated sneakers and garbage bags, not so much discarded as released from the hand when their usefulness had ended. Above us, the mountains loomed.



We passed a gravel pit and a half completed dam. Then, a turquoise colored kingfisher, dead, crumpled beside the trail. Its orange awl-like bill was as long as my finger. The air was filled with sadness, but I suppose really it must have been just me. When we came across a group of yaks bestride the trail they fled, their bells tinkling through the dense forest.



The air grew chill and the shadows longer as we ascended the valley through the late afternoon. Finally we paused to wait for our Chinese companions in a beautiful but rubbish strewn meadow. To the east, the enormous wedge of Chiburongi soared a thousand meters above diminutive herder's tents. To the west lay the Gyazi-La, a long day's climb away. We were in caterpillar country, and from the mountains above resounded the occasional cry of success when the Tibetan hunter captured his prey - the caterpillar fungus.



Sometime ago, while reading Sir Christopher Bonnington's "Tibet's Lost Mountain", I came across a delightful chapter where Bonnington's friend, Dr. Charles Wilson, described the life cycle of the caterpillar fungus. In this case, truth is stranger than fiction.



A caterpillar - whether of a moth or a butterfly I ca'nt say - crawls through decomposing leaves under the harsh Tibetan sun. Turning this way and that, finally it scents under the ground the mycelium of a fungus, and then it begins to burrow. (To most human mushroom eaters, the mushroom, ah! the mushroom! is all that matters. But in all reality the mycelium, the thin, strand like fungus living below the ground is the real creature. In some cases it stretches for hundreds of yards as a single entity below a grove of aspen trees. At other times it is the white webbing in a rotten log. But know this, the mushroom is only the fruit; the mycelium is the plant.) It is the mycelium the caterpillar craves, and once engorged it dies, poisoned. Wrapped in the embrace of the fungus the consumer becomes the consumed. Soon miraculously, a tiny brown tendril rises from the subterranean tomb of the caterpillar and pierces the ground; the mushroom!



It is this tiny centimeter high fruiting body the caterpillar hunter spies, and with a special tool he, or she, or in many cases children unearth the caterpillar from its tiny dirt encrusted sarcophagus.

Everywhere in eastern Tibet you can find men loitering on street corners, who when given the chance, furtively offering you a much folded baggie of caterpillars. For a nomad living outside the cash economy this is one of few sources of income.



I don't know what the scope of this whole operation is. How many caterpillars are harvested; does anyone know? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? A million? We were quoted fifteen yuan for a single caterpillar fungus - about two dollars. Some people get rich off of it. To the Chinese it's an elixir for the lungs and kidneys. To me, it's the craziest thing I've ever heard of.



The questions it brings to mind are many, but paramount among them is how can a species of butterfly (or moth) survive when its intermediary stage gorges itself till death in such numbers that it supports a bizarre health industry? When I first read Dr. Wilson's account Yasha cried out "What was God thinking?" As usual, I didn't have an answer.



As we climbed higher, day by day, to the Gyazi- La, our Chinese companions lagged farther and farther behind. They pursued the Caterpillar fungus as eagerly as the caterpillar pursued the fungus itself, and the Tibetans in turn pursued them. They came down from the hills when we were camped at night, or in the morning, or when we were struggling towards the pass. The Chinese (and we all know their reputation!) haggled, dickered, accepting one caterpillar and rejecting the next. I couldn't tell if it was a game or in earnest. At one point we saw a Chinese women, usually the friendliest of companions, throw a five yuan note back into the face of an astonished herder. Hard bargaining I guess.



Impatient, we crossed the pass and watched mist roll into the giant granitic amphitheater below Mt Grosvenor. To the south, the bulk of Minyak Gankar remained hidden; only the summit, the spire of Dorje Lutru's crystal mansion, sailed serenely above the clouds.



We walked for another day, far ahead of the Chinese, through a valley devoid of trees. Only yaks, yaks everywhere. Then we came to Yulong-xi, the village where we would stay for the night.



To our Han Chinese companions Tibet must have seemed like a rude border country, and it's people, the Tibetans, ignorant peasants, counterrevolutionaries... or worse. Certainly there may be an objective basis for their judgements. Taking my turn being last, I straggled up the hill to an imposing Tibetan house. Looking more like a fort than a house it was two stories of wood and packed mud. Small gaily painted windows were the only bit of color or ornamentation in it's impassive dun colored face. In the muddy courtyard a Tibetan mastiff strained at it's chain - I gave it a wide berth. Then there was a frantic shout and two of the Chinese women burst from the house, their hands covering their mouths. Like most Tibetan dwellings the ground floor was the stable, and reeking pools of horse and yak pee congealed in the dimly lit interior. Coupled with the odor from the "dry toilet", the outhouse hanging from the second floor of the house that discharged directly onto the ground outside, the smell could only be called appalling.



Upstairs was our host family, huddled around an iron stove. Slowly they kneaded by hand tsampa in a bowl of butter tea. The Chinese, taking no mind, swiftly set up their propane stove. They chopped and diced vegetables and pork, steamed a massive amount of rice in their new pressure cooker, unwrapped their pickle relish, opened a couple of bottles of beer, and over an excellent meal proceeded to examine their now considerable bags of caterpillar fungus. It was an impressive performance of cultural superiority.

But cultural superiority is a tricky thing. It doesn't revolve around wet toilets or dry toilets, or whether you wipe with water, paper or dirt. The Tibetans, feeding yak dung into their stove, gave us a little lesson of this later that night.

The Chinese were in their sleeping bags, napping on the floor. I was sitting, my sleeping bag around my waist, when our host walked up to me, squatted down, and closely examined the medallion around my neck. It was a picture of my teacher, a Tibetan lama. When I explained who he was, and that I was a Buddhist just like him (a claim I really couldn't substantiate), he silently unlocked an elaborate cabinet and removed a well worn picture album. There were faded pictures of him with various monks, pictures of Tibetan deities, a picture of the young Karmapa. Then he showed me his prize possession: a dog eared photo of the Dalai Lama.
"Oh yes!" I said, "We've seen the Dalai Lama many time and have volunteered at his teachings! He even touched me on the top of my head!"

Yasha explained through sigh language that she had some Mani pills - Tibetan herbal medicine that had been blessed by His Holiness himself - that she kept in a silk purse. Suddenly we were surrounded by a ring of unwashed faces blazing with yearning and devotion. There wasn't a word spoken. They held out their hands, imploring, and Yasha quietly placed three pills in each hand. But even then they wouldn't leave. They stood in a group, three or four women, several men and children, and they stared at us simply because we had seen the Dalai Lama and they hadn't. I felt very small and unworthy. I looked at myself and saw the expensive sleeping bag, the Patagonia shirts and Mountain Hardware tent and saw that we had everything that they lacked. And yet they had the one thing we didn't have, the one thing that we've been looking for and couldn't find, and that's Faith.

The next morning we left the Chinese behind and proceeded on our own, up towards a mountain pass. Eventually we would reach the monastery at the foot of the icefall, and then we would bow at Dorje Lutru's crystal feet.