When we reached the lake my companions eagerly collected the deposit, put it in skin-bags and fastened it to the back of the yaks. They told me that the soda was to be mixed with tea.
We then went on over several low undulating hills, and finally reached the lower course of the river Chema Yungdung, where I had narrowly escaped drowning a short time before. As the season was now well advanced, the river was much shallower and we were able to cross it with comparative ease. I indeed could do so with perfect security, for I was carried on a yak’s back.
We were travelling all these days at the rate of about twenty-five miles a day, and I should hardly have been able to make such good progress had it not been for the fact that I could ride every now and then on a yak. What distressed me most was bivouacking in the open, where sleep was out of the question in the cold autumn nights and on ground covered with snow. After proceeding some twenty-five miles to the south-east, on the following day we reached the Brahmapuṭra, known in this region as Martsan-gi-chu or Kobei-chu, according to the districts which it traversed. The lordly river was quite shallow and could be crossed without trouble, and I did so as before on the yak’s back. We found some tents by the bank of the river where we were allowed to pass a night—quite a cheering change after so many nights of bivouacking.
It was a moonless night, but the sky was full of stars, which threw their twinkling rays on the water of the river. The vast range of the Himālayas was clearly silhouetted, so as to make its sharp outline perceptible. The majestic scene inspired me with poetic fervor:
Like to the Milky Way in Heaven at night,
With stars begemmed in countless numbers decked,
The Brahmaputra flashes on the sight,
His banks, fit haunt for Gods, appear
In gorgeous splendors from the snowy height.
The following day I had to part from my companions, who were going to a destination different from mine, and so I was again thrown on my own wits and my own legs for continuing my journey. After having travelled for so many days with the help of other people, I now had to travel alone with nothing but my back on which to carry my effects, and my journey on the following day was a cheerless and fatiguing one. The load weighed heavily on my back, and the time I occupied in taking rest was perhaps longer than that spent in actual progress. At last I was so much exhausted that I could hardly move my limbs.