Lunch with the Driver

West of Chengdu the plateau begins, and for this leg I have a driver: Yan, from Kangding, mid-twenties, endlessly amused, owner of a Land Cruiser and of opinions about every pass between here and Tibet, at lunch improbably elegant in a flowered dress against a room of menu posters. She ordered for us both with the two-word efficiency of a woman who has eaten here two hundred times.

The lazy susan turned, the rice arrived in a bamboo bucket, and we conducted our entire relationship through food and my forty words of Mandarin. She approves of how I eat, disapproves of how little, and narrates the mountains to me in slow clear sentences as if to a promising but limited student, which is accurate.

By the tea refill we had the itinerary settled: up and over, three thousand meters, marmots guaranteed, weather negotiable. I photographed us at the table because this is the true paperwork of travel: not the visa, the shared dishes.