On the following day we had a long pull of many miles up to the Thung La, a pass of 18,000 feet, from which we had hoped for fine views over the surrounding country. A driving storm of snow blotted out the views and covered the ground, so that nothing was to be seen but little clumps, a few inches high, of poppies of the most heavenly blue. Going down the steep track beyond the pass I was stopped by hearing the unfamiliar note of a bird, so it seemed: the cry was almost exactly that of a female peregrine when its eyrie has been disturbed, but coming from a labyrinth of fallen rocks it could not be. Tracking the note from one rock to another, I came suddenly within a few yards of a large marmot, which sat up and waved her tail at me; she called again and two half-grown young ones appeared close by; then all dived into a burrow. These marmots are larger and far less timid of mankind than the marmots of the Alps.
A few miles below the pass the valley widened into an almost level bottom of half a mile or more, with steep bare limestone hills on either side. Here and there were small hamlets, where the inhabitants used the water of the river to irrigate their fields of barley and of blazing golden mustard, whose sweetness scented the valley in the sunshine. Like most of the butter, which is made in vast quantities in Southern Tibet, the mustard seed produces oil for monastery lamps. At one place we came across a spring, almost a fountain, bubbling out of the foothill, of clearest sparkling mineral water that would be the envy of Bath or of Marienbad; in a few yards it had become a racing stream a dozen feet in width.
Four days of leisurely walking down the valley brought us to the village of Nyenyam, where the whole population, a most unpleasant-looking crowd of four or five hundred people, came out to stare at us. A few only were Tibetans; the majority were obviously of Indian origin, calling themselves Nepalese, but without any of the distinctive features of that race. We had received some weeks earlier a cordial invitation from the Jongpens of Nyenyam to visit the place, and we were accordingly much disappointed to find that no person of authority came out to welcome us. A Jongpen, it should be said, is an official appointed by the Lhasa authorities to administer a district and collect revenues: in a place of any importance, as at Nyenyam, there are often two, the idea being that one will keep an eye on the other and prevent him from over-enriching himself. We visited these worthies, whom we found dressed in priceless Chinese silk gowns and cultivating the extreme fashion of long nails on all their fingers, in strange contrast to the squalor and dilapidation of their dwelling, and were annoyed to find that they denied all knowledge of the invitation. The bearer of the message was produced and lied manfully in their cause; the name of Nyenyam was not, as it happened, mentioned in our passport, and we were made to look somewhat foolish. Finally the Jongpens said (with their tongues in their cheeks and reminding us of a vulgar song) that they were very glad to see us, but they hoped that we would go. They then went out of their way to give us false information about the local passes and made our prolonged stay in the place impossible by discouraging the traders from dealing with us.[15]
Nyenyam, though more squalid and evil-smelling than any place in my experience, is of some importance as being the last Tibetan town before the frontier of Nepal is reached. It is well placed on a level terrace above the junction of the Pö Chu with an almost equally big river flowing from the glaciers of the great mountain mass of Gosainthan. Immediately below the town the river enters the stupendous gorge that cuts through the heart of the Himalaya to the more open country of Nepal, 8,000 feet below. To the West of Nyenyam rises a great range of mountains culminating in the beautiful peaks of Gosainthan, which we had hoped to visit, and somewhere to the East lay the mysterious sacred mountain of Lapche Kang. Our friends the Jongpens assured us that there was no direct route to Lapche, that we must go back the way by which we had come, and so on; but we were weary of their obstructions and made up our minds to find a way to the holy places.
So far our transport animals had been the yak, or the cross-bred ox-yak, a stronger beast; we were now going through country where only coolies could carry loads. We retraced our steps a few miles up the valley to a village ruled over by a friendly woman, the widow of the late headman. True, she demanded for the coolies an exorbitant wage, which we cut down by about a half, but she pressed into our service every able-bodied person in the neighbourhood, young and old, men and women. They have a fair and simple way of apportioning the loads. All Tibetans, men and women alike, wear long rope-soled boots with woollen cloth tops extending toward the knee, where they are secured by garters, long strips of narrow woven cloth. When all the loads are ready, each person takes off one garter and gives it to the headman, who shuffles them well and in his turn hands them over to some neutral person who knows not the ownership of the garters. He lays one on the top of each load, and whose garter it is must carry the load without any further talk. It is amusing to watch the excitement in their faces as the garters are dealt out, and to hear the shrieks of delight of the lucky ones and the groans of the less fortunate. It makes one feel weak and ashamed to see a small girl of apparently no more than fourteen years shouldering a huge tent or an unwieldy box, until one remembers that they begin to carry almost as soon as they can walk and are accustomed to far heavier loads than ever they carry for us.
Our path led us up a steep side-valley from the Pö Chu, ascending over a vast moraine to the foot of a small glacier about two miles in length. Here I saw a rare sight: a Lämmergeier (bearded vulture) came sailing down in wide circles and settled on the ice barely a hundred paces from us, where he began to peck at something—a dead hare perhaps, but it was impossible to see or to approach nearer over the crevasses. The Lämmergeier, vulture though it is, is one of the noblest birds in flight that may be seen: hardly a day passes in the high mountains without one or more swooping down to look at you, sometimes so near that you can see his beard and gleaming eye; but to see one on the ground is rare indeed. The long-tailed aeroplane at a very great height resembles the Lämmergeier more than any other bird.
We struggled up the glacier, inches deep in soft new snow, crossed crevasses by means of rotten planks which gravely offended our mountaineering sense, and came through dense fog to our pass at its head. Here began the sacred mountain of Lapche Kang, and on the rocks beside the pass, and on many of the pinnacles high up above the pass as well, were cairns of stones supporting little reed-stemmed flags of prayers. Some of our party had brought up from below such little flags, which they planted where their fancy prompted. As we went down on the other side we came to countless little “chortens,” miniature temples, and, where the ground was level for a space, to long walls of stones, each one inscribed with the universal Buddhist prayer om mani padme hum.
Yaks are most satisfactory beasts of burden; if their pace is slow—it is seldom more than two miles an hour—they go with hardly a halt, cropping a tuft of grass here and there, until daylight fails. But the Tibetan coolie is of quite another nature; he (or she) starts off gaily enough in the morning, but very soon he is glad to stop for a gossip or to alter the trim of his load, and then it is time to drink tea, and again at every convenient halting-place more tea, not the liquid that we are accustomed to drink, but a curious mixture of powdered brick-tea, salt, soda and butter, of a better taste than one would suppose. So on this occasion it was long after noon when we had crossed the pass, and when the day began to fade in a drenching cloud of rain, the Tibetans found shelter in some caves, and persuaded us to camp. An uneven space among rocks just held our tents; we dined off the fragrant smoke of green rhododendron and soaking juniper, and we slept (if at all) to the roar of boulders rolling in the torrent-bed a few feet from where we lay.
But it was well that we had not stumbled on in the dark. In the morning light we walked over grassy “alps” still yellow with sweet-scented primulas, and the steep sides of the narrowing valley below were bright with roses, pink and white spiræas, yellow berberis and many other flowers. Soon it became evident that we were approaching a place of more than ordinary holiness; every stone had its prayer-flag, and the tops of trees, which began to appear here, were also decorated. Great boulders were defaced with the familiar words engraven on them in letters many feet in height. In a little while we came to a small wooden hut filled from floor to roof with thousands of little flags brought there by pilgrims; the posts and lintel of the door were smeared with dabs of butter, and the crevices of the walls were filled with little bunches of fresh-cut flowers. Outside was a rude altar made of stones from the river-bed, where a Lama was burning incense and chanting prayers.
