Temple at Lapche Kang.
We passed through the village, a tiny hamlet of a dozen houses, and came to the celebrated temple of Lapche. A square stone wall, about 60 yards each way, on the inner side of which are sheds to shelter pilgrims, encloses a roughly paved courtyard where stands the temple, a plain square building of stone with a pagoda-like roof surmounted by a burnished copper ornament. There is nothing remarkable about the temple excepting the hundred and more prayer wheels set in the wall at a convenient height for the pilgrims to turn as they walk round the building. Inside are countless Buddhas, the usual smell of smoky butter-lamps, and an effigy of the saint. The whole place is dirty and dishevelled, in the supposed care of one old woman and a monk, and nobody would believe that this is one of the most famous places in the country and that every year hundreds of Buddhists from India and from all parts of Tibet make pilgrimage to it.
Mila Respa, poet and saint and (it is said) a Tibetan incarnation of Buddha, spent his earthly life in this mountain valley, living under rocks and in caves, where the faithful may see his footprints even now. He seems to have been not lacking in a sense of humour. He was walking with a disciple on the mountain one day, when they found an old yak's horn lying in the path. Mila Respa told the disciple to pick it up and take it with him. The disciple refused, saying that it was useless, and passed on without noticing that the saint himself had picked up the horn and put it under his cloak. Soon afterwards a mighty storm descended on them—whether or not it was caused by the saint is not known. He took the horn from under his cloak and crept inside it. “Now,” said he, when he was safely sheltered from the rain, “you see that nothing in the world is useless.”
We stayed for two days at Lapche Kang, picking flowers and enjoying the beauty of the place, in spite of the clouds which swept up from the South and filled the valley from early morning onwards. To a naturalist it was a tantalizing place; there were many unfamiliar birds that we had not seen in Tibet, but in such a sacred place I dared not offend the people by taking life, and I even had some qualms in catching butterflies. One of the prettiest sights I saw was a wall-creeper, like a big crimson-winged moth, fluttering over the temple buildings in search for insects.
Having found Lapche Kang, where no European had before penetrated, and having placed it on the map, our next object was to go over the ranges Eastward to the Rongshar Valley, the head of which had been visited by members of the Expedition a few weeks earlier. This was accomplished in two long days of rather confused climbing over two passes of about 17,000 feet, crossing sundry glaciers and stumbling over moraines, and nearly always in an impenetrable fog. Our views of mountains were none at all, but the beauty of the flowers at our feet was almost compensation for that. Among many stand out two in particular, both of them primulas. One was ivory-white, about the bigness of a cowslip, with wide open bells and the most delicate primrose scent: the other carried from four to six bells, each as big as a lady's thimble, of deep azure blue and lined inside with frosted silver.[16]
As we went down the last steep slope into the Rongshar Valley, the clouds parted for a few moments, and across the valley and incredibly high above our heads appeared the summit of Gauri-Sankar,[17] one of the most beautiful of Himalayan peaks, blazing in the afternoon sun. It was a glorious vision, but it rather added to our regret for the views of peaks that we might have seen. The next morning at daybreak the whole mountain was clear from its foot in the Rongshar River (10,000 feet) up through woods of pine and birch, to rhododendrons and rocks, and so by a knife-edged ridge of ice to its glistening summit. It recalled to me the Bietsch-horn more than any other Alpine peak, a Bietsch-horn on the giant scale and seemingly impassable to man.
Gauri-Sankar.