Next day, with Bullock, I went to pay an official visit to the Jongpen at Kharta Shiga. He had made great preparations to receive us, and had put up a large tent in which Chinese carpets and tables were set out with pots of flowers arranged all round. Soon after our arrival we were given a most copious meal: bowl after bowl of well cooked macaroni and mince with pickled radishes and chillies were set before us. After we had finished this meal, I induced the Jongpen and his young wife to be photographed. She had a most elaborate head-dress of coral and pearls, with masses of false hair on either side of her head. It was not becoming. Barely had we finished taking the photograph when another meal was put in front of us: this time it consisted of Tibetan dumplings and mince patties, of which I gave the Jongpen's little dog the greater part surreptitiously; I then hurried off before I should be compelled to eat a third meal.
On August 2 Mallory and Bullock started off with thirty-two coolies to explore the Eastern approaches to Mount Everest. It had been very hard to get any information about Mount Everest. The people knew the mountain by name, but told us that the only way to get near it was by crossing over the ridge to the South of the Kharta Valley, when we should find a big valley that would lead right up to Chomolungma. Where the Kharta River came from they could not tell me, and whether it took its source from the snows of Mount Everest they did not know. Tibetans' ignorance of any valleys outside their own was really extraordinary. I could seldom get any definite information about places outside their valley, and on asking two or three people, they would invariably give contradictory answers. It was the same as regards distance. They would tell you a place was one, two or three days' march away, but for shorter distances they had no time-table, and the nearest approach to this was a measurement by cups of tea. I remember one day asking a village yokel how far off the next village was, and he surprised me by answering, “Three cups of tea.” Several times afterwards I got the answer to a question about distance given me in cups of tea, and I eventually worked out that three cups of tea was the equivalent of about 5 miles, and was after that able to use this as a basis for measurements of distances.
Two or three hours after Mallory and Bullock had gone, Wollaston and Morshead arrived from their trip to Nyenyam. They had had bad weather the whole time. Here, too, the weather remained overcast and threatening, with a strong South wind, the mountains remaining covered in clouds above 16,000 feet. To the South of us rain fell steadily all day, but the rain did not come up as far as our camp. One afternoon Morshead, Wollaston and I went over to have tea with our hospitable Zemindar Hopaphema about a mile away from us. On this occasion he gave us pods of fresh peas and the red hips and haws of the wild rose as a kind of hors d'œuvre, followed by a junket served with pea flour. Then came bowls of hot milk with macaroni and minced meat, seasoned with chillies, together with potatoes and a kind of fungus that grew in the woods. After this meal, from which we suffered no ill effects, for our stomachs were getting accustomed to queer foods, he produced an old painted musical instrument with two sounding boards, on which he played and sang at the same time some old Tibetan love songs. Some of these had quite a catching and plaintive melody. He showed us also some Tibetan dances. Our interpreter, unfortunately, refused to give us a literal translation of some of the love songs, though he seemed very amused at them.
Another afternoon I rode with Wollaston some 5 miles up the Kharta Valley to the Gandenchöfel Monastery. This was situated in a delightfully sheltered spot surrounded by poplars and ancient gnarled juniper trees of great size. On arrival we were shown into a picturesque courtyard, the walls of which were covered with paintings depicting scenes from the life of Buddha. Cushions and tables had been arranged for our reception and placed on a verandah where, on arrival, we were given cups of tea and hot milk. The Head Lama presently came out and after taking some tea with us, proceeded to show us round his temple. This was a curious building, square in shape, and surmounted by a cupola. It was very solidly built of stone and was, they told us, about 500 years old. It was founded by a saint called Jetsun-Nga-Wang-Chöfel, who after a great flood which swept down the valley, destroying all the houses in it, had taken a large frog (which animal is believed to represent the Water God) and buried it under the centre pillar of the temple. With great reverence they showed us the spot under which this unfortunate frog had been immured in the centre of the shrine. This immolation of the frog had apparently not been completely efficacious in preventing the floods as two other floods had subsequently occurred, and two small Chortens had been erected to make quite certain that the frog could not get out again and cause more floods. The interior of the temple was very dark in spite of numerous butter lamps. As our eyes gradually became accustomed to the dim light, we made out three figures of Buddha—a large one in the centre and smaller ones on either side. On the pillars were figures of the saint who had founded the monastery. In this temple were also represented some Indian saints, but these were shown as dark figures, very black and very ugly. Tibetans always despise the Indian and they therefore represent him as quite black and with the ugliest features imaginable. Around the shrine were twelve great plaster figures—about 12 feet to 15 feet in height—the guardians of the shrine, figures monstrously ugly, and evidently made so in order to frighten away the evil-doer. Outside the sanctuary there was a curious passage in the thickness of the walls leading all round the building, in which were stencilled and painted curious representations of Buddha. In one of the side rooms there was a huge prayer wheel, which rang a bell every time it was turned; it contained, the priests told us, many million prayers. After visiting the shrine, I took a photograph of the monks with their long trumpets, their bejewelled clarionets and their drums. After our tour of inspection we were given further refreshment in the way of macaroni and meat in a small secluded garden where the monks used to walk reading the Scriptures and meditating.
On another day Wollaston and I made an excursion down to the gorges of the Arun. We first rode up the Kharta Valley, crossing the river by the first bridge, and then following the right bank of the river as far as we could go. After riding only a short way, we entered into a country and a scenery where we might have been a hundred miles away from Tibet. The change was extraordinarily sudden—a dense forest covered the hillsides, mostly of fir (Abies Webbiana) and birch, many of them fine old trees. The undergrowth consisted of rhododendrons, 8 feet to 10 feet in height and extremely difficult to get through. Besides these there were many larch and willow trees growing on the hillside, together with many new and delightful flowers. We went on until we were brought up by a series of perpendicular cliffs that descended 700 feet sheer down to the river below us. It was a grand sight from here to see the mighty Bhong-chu or Arun River, narrowed now to one-third of its former width, forcing its way in a series of rapids through these stupendous gorges covered with woods wherever the precipices allowed a tree to grow and with trees dipping their branches far below us in the flooded waters of the river. On the opposite side of the gorge we saw a small track wandering along the cliffs; the inhabitants told us it was impossible to get across the river lower down at this time of the year until you reach Lungdö, where there was a bridge some 20 miles lower down. Kharta now remained the base headquarters of the Expedition until it was time to return to India in October, and all the expeditions that we made up the Kharta Valley, or into the Kama Valley, were made from Kharta. The Jongpen there and Hopaphema did everything they could to assist us by giving us coolies and arranging for supplies to be sent up to the various camps.
Lamas of Kharta Monastery.