Dragon Fire

Lhodrag, Tibet, China

They had been walking now for three days, but Major Choedrak knew the worst was still to come.

He had planned two routes out. The longer was to the south-west to Gangtok in Sikkim, 400 kilometres from Lhasa. In the old days, a single runner could do the journey in six days. With Togden, it could take them up to a month. This was the way Choedrak had wanted to go, because once in India he believed Togden would be safe. His second choice was to go due south to the tiny Kingdom of Bhutan, a journey they could do in five days, if they pushed it hard, which was what the men had been trained to do.

After escaping into the mountains south of Lhasa, Choedrak led the party south-west down the Yarlung Tsangpo Brahmaputra river valley to Chushul, a strategic town at the intersection of the four main highways linking central, western and southern Tibet. It also had a key bridge with a strong Chinese military presence around it. They crossed the bridge with false papers in the early morning of 4 May. Two hours later, SFF units in Chusul attacked Chinese military positions and blew up the bridge, cutting off the main route of pursuit. More units pinned down Chinese trying to cross the river by boat, holding them back until all the Tibetans were dead. As word of the battle in Chusul spread through the community, spontaneous uprisings broke out in all towns in southern Tibet. Hundreds were killed, but thousands of Chinese troops were tied up in crushing rebellions, giving Choedrak the precious space he needed for the escape.

Choedrak kept twenty men with him, putting ten ahead and ten behind at all times. The next centre after Chusul was Gongkar on the banks of Yarlung Tsangpo Brahmaputra, where the Chinese air force kept a squadron of SU-27 ground-attack aircraft. As they hurried south, Choedrak’s men fought skirmishes with approaching Chinese troops. Sometimes whole villages would turn out as human barricades across the road to stop armoured vehicles. Once, as they reached the pass in sight of the Yamdrok Tso lake, they heard small arms fire of close combat behind them. Chinese mortar shells killed two Tibetans in the party and wounded another, who took cyanide rather than be captured or delay the party more. It was then that Choedrak decided to strike out due south to seek sanctuary in Bhutan, which was less than 100 kilometres away. The mountain passes were higher, the weather fouler and the refuge less certain.

The Yamdrok Tso was considered by Tibetans to be sacred, a beautiful expanse of blue, grey and white water covering more than 750 square kilometres. They found communities so remote that they were able to rest for a few hours in warmth and recover their strength. When the villagers guessed who Togden was, they vowed that not one Chinese soldier would pass through while any man in the village was still alive. The party headed along a vast high-altitude depression towards the town of Nagartse, which was on the Lhasa — Gyantse highway. This had become the headquarters for the search operation to find Togden. They had another 1,800 metres to climb in freezing temperatures and nine passes to go through before reaching Bhutan.

Choedrak gave a wide birth to Nagartse and for a whole day it seemed the Chinese had lost them. But that morning the microlights had come, then the fighter planes, not hitting them, but slowing them down, making them hide out, unable to move around. After the first air attack Choedrak gave orders for them to shoot down the micro-lights, breaking their cover, but hitting two — and hopefully deterring more from coming. They had to reach Lhodrag, and then strike out south-west to Langdo, but if the weather closed in, it could be days away, or death on the mountain. The final few kilometres of the route which Choedrak had chosen were along the Monla Karchung glacier pass. It was one of the most awesome journeys a man could make.