Tibetan Dancing Woman.
Above the camp at Teng was a very well situated monastery, which Noel afterwards photographed. Soon after our arrival during the afternoon, the Dzongpen from Kharta Shika arrived to meet us. He was reported at first to be very suspicious of the party, and such, indeed, appeared to be the case. However, after a long conversation, and having presented him with pictures of the Dalai Lama and of the Tashilumpo Lama, as well as with the ubiquitous Homburg hat, he became much more confidential, and we finished up very good friends. He also told us that on the following day he would bring down some Tibetan dancers and acrobats to give us a performance.
The rapidity with which the whole party seemed to recover at Kharta was perfectly wonderful. Everybody was in first-class health and spirits, especially all our porters, and that night their high spirits were not only due to the atmospheric conditions, but were taken into them in a manner they thoroughly approved of and of which they had been deprived for some time. However, after all their very hard work and the wonderful way in which they had played up, it is not altogether to be wondered at if they did occasionally “go on the spree” on their way back.
So attractive was the whole country, and so strong was the call of the Kama Valley, that we were all very soon anxious to get a move on again. Tejbir was still not quite recovered, and would be all the better for further rest, so he was detailed with one of the other Gurkhas, Sarabjit, to stay behind and take charge of our camp and spare equipment. The rest of us all set to work and planned an advance into the Kama Valley, and, we hoped also, an exploration of it, both towards the snows up and to the Popti La, which is the main road into the valley of the Arun, and, if possible, up the great Arun Gorge itself. But this year’s monsoon never gave us a chance of carrying out more than a small portion of that programme. We were now living in an entirely different climate. We had many showers of rain, which were hailed with delight by the people of the country, as their crops were now fairly well advanced. The crops at Kharta consist chiefly of peas and barley, as usual, but there is a certain amount of other grain and vegetables to be obtained from the gardens.
Having arranged the transport, we started our caravan off to Kharta Shika. Norton had issued a large-hearted invitation for us to lunch with him at the mouth of the Arun Gorge. Previously Norton and Geoffrey had explored, while they were waiting, the country round as far as they could go on horseback, and Norton had discovered at the mouth of a gorge an alp like those on the Kashmir Mountains, surrounded with a forest which he described as equal to a Southern Himalayan forest, and we positively must go and see it, and climb up the hillsides and look down into the gorge itself.
We all accepted his invitation with the greatest alacrity. On the afternoon of the day before starting, the Dzongpen, as he had promised, produced us his acrobats and dancers, and we had a very hilarious afternoon. They were not particularly good either as actors or as acrobats, but they danced with prodigious vigour, and it was altogether great fun. Before all the dances and the little plays they covered their faces with masks of an extremely primitive kind. They failed at most of their tricks once or twice before accomplishment, and these failures were invariably greeted both by the spectators and by the actors with shrieks of laughter.
On the following day (June 19) we all set off, the luggage proceeding direct to Kharta Shika under the charge of the interpreter and the Gurkhas, while we switched off to Norton’s alp. It really was delightful, and though the forest was rather a dwarfed forest, it contained several kinds of fir trees, birch, and rhododendron scrub, and, after Tibet, was in every way quite charming. We climbed up the hillsides and suddenly came round the corner on to great cliffs diving straight down into the Arun Valley, and we could see further down how enormously the scale of the mountains increased. It was a most attractive gorge, but on our side it appeared to be almost impossible to have got along, so steep were the hillsides. On the far bank, that is, the true left bank, the East bank, there was a well-marked track, and it appears that lower down it crosses to the right bank and then continues on the right bank to the junction with the Kama Chu. Later on Noel and Morris were able to explore and photograph the greater part of the gorge. We all sat on the top of the cliffs and indulged in the very pleasant amusement of rolling great rocks into the river a thousand feet below us—always a fascinating pursuit, especially when one is quite certain that there is no one in the neighbourhood. The lunch did not turn up for some time, when an exploring party discovered that our porters, who had been detailed to carry it, had dropped in at a village and visited the Barley Mow, and could hardly get along at all in consequence; finally, however, the lunch was rescued and an extremely pleasant time passed. It was absolutely epicurean: Gruyère cheese, sardines, truffled yaks, and, finally, almost our last three bottles of champagne. It was intended to be an epicurean feast—and it was so.
By the evening we arrived in Shika, and found our camp pitched in beautiful grassy fields high above the village of Shika. The Dzongpen was very anxious to entertain the whole party, but we were rather lazy and did not want to go down to his village, which was some way off, but promised him that we would pay him a visit on our return from Kama. The Dzongpen, however, imported his cooks and full outfit and gave us a dinner in our own tent, himself sitting down with us and joining in. He was a plump and very well dressed little man, and by now had completely recovered his confidence in us. He was, however, very anxious that we should do no shooting, and this anxiety of his was no doubt very largely occasioned by the fact that he had only arrived from Lhasa about a fortnight before our arrival. We were to reach in two marches Sakiathang, in the Kama Valley, where Colonel Howard-Bury and his party had encamped the year before. Our first march led us over the Samchang La to a camp called Chokarbō. It was a steep and rough walk over the pass, but knowing the wonderful capacity of the Tibetan pony, several of the party took ponies with them. It was necessary both for Geoffrey and for Norton to rest their feet as much as possible until completely cured, and so on arrival at Chokarbō they took their ponies on over our next pass, the Chog La, which is no less than 16,280 feet, and down into the Kama Chu. This is a very rough road indeed.
We had here reached the most perfect land of flowers, and in the low land which lies between the Samchang La and our camp at Chokarbō we found every description of Alpine flora, reinforced by rhododendrons—the very last of the rhododendrons. We also found several kinds of iris.