As I turned northwards in an effort to quietly slip over the border into remotest Tibet through valleys rumoured to have once contained the perfect symmetry between bounty and seclusion, I felt an intrepid peacefulness. The last feint mechanical burrs only served to anchor the peace, as did the shades and colours in front of me. I was going off-road now towards Sunsera, and apart from the occasional stretch of mud, seasonally navigable by non-existent four-wheel drives, it would be a couple of weeks until I witnessed a road again. It was with relief that I headed towards the grassy highlands, a sense of finally being without direction, mapless and painless.

While I tried to figure out what I could add to my oatmeal to fool myself dinner was different to lunch, I was startled to see a teenage boy shadowing my path. Wearing red, he paused every time I shot a glance in his direction. I couldn’t work out where he was going, unless the catchpool of the last village I’d seen extended farther than I thought due to the emptiness of the land. I romantically convinced myself that he was the last in an unbroken line of pilgrims to Zhang Zhung.

I knew fuck all about this ancient land, bar that it had once been a cradle of rest for the zig-zagging thoughts of pilgrims, but I’d vague memories of a nutty uncle telling me of Kyunglung being the last remaining proof of the land everyone was looking for. It was still gnawing at me that instead of blowing through Puh and into China from India, I had to come all the way around to sneak in from the rear to avoid trigger-happy protectors of the motherland. With these minor annoyances swirling around my cranium, I lolled northwards towards the border and into the Burang region, wondering if Red Boy was going to get close enough to initiate some awkward sign language. But he was beginning to lag, no doubt curious as to what the long-faced if now brown stranger was up to. In my ignorance, I assumed he may have copped me for a blended Central Asian.

The funny thing about being stalked, whether by phone or by highland, is when it suddenly stops you’re left with a feeling of rejection that you try to rationalize away as being weirded out. Maybe it’s a weaker version of the universal pain of disconnection, or the death of the utopian stalker fantasy. When I turned to look back at the rolling hills behind me, I saw Red Boy waving from the safe distance of a mountain away. I smiled, assuming somehow he could detect it, and held my hand up. Then I turned around and headed north, guessing at which mountain in the distance contained the imaginary line men get hung up on.