After a day of festivities and excessive eating, enlivened by most harmonious native music, and a visit from my friends the Raots, the proud wild men of the forest who had on a former occasion predicted my death when I visited their haunt, we travelled through the low and hot Kali valley. Here malarial fever was rampant, vermin and mosquitoes in swarms, and rinderpest raging. I was now going along the Nepalese frontier, the Kali River defining the boundary-line between the North-West Provinces of India and Nepal.
A Daramsalla
Type of mountain shelters in the Himahlyas, N.W. Nepal. On the highway to Tibet.
On entering Bhot, or Little Tibet, we again rose to greater altitudes, and were soon able to shake off the touch of fever which nearly all my men and [[31]]myself had contracted in going through the steamy, damp valley. At Sirka, since my former visit, a Christian church of stone had risen—the first one in British Tibet—the work of the untiring and self-sacrificing Miss Sheldon, an American lady doctor, who has for years done noble work among the Shokas,—Shoka, as you know, is the local name of the inhabitants of that particular section of Bhot. When I passed through, Miss Sheldon was busy putting on the roof of the church—an operation which I watched with admiration, mingled somewhat with concern, although I must confess a skilled mason could not have done it better. [[32]]
CHAPTER IV
Some miles farther on another surprise awaited me. A new trail was being cut along the rock to shorten the ups and downs of the old “Nerpani”—the “waterless trail”—or, rather, some of the worst parts of the old trail were being modified and straightened. The new trail was just as narrow and dangerous as the old one, in some places only a couple of feet or so wide, or even less, with a deep precipice beneath, and many parts, as with the older trail, were supported on crowbars thrust into the rock, some slabs of stone placed upon them making the path.
But one thing the new trail certainly did. It did away with some of the interminable flights of steps which were one of the most trying features of the old Nerpani. So that both the Government and the Shokas who subscribed most of the money [[33]]for the work, may be congratulated on the decided improvement of that highway into Tibet.
In former days it was almost impossible to take pack-animals across, except sheep,—and many of these always perished on each journey,—but by the new trail, when finished, this is feasible, although not easy.