Through deserts and oases of central Asia

by Ella Sykes; Sir Percy Sykes

This Central Asian scenery has a type of its own, quite different from the Swiss or Caucasian mountain scenes....

Here, though the mountains are higher, the glaciers, owing to the small snowfall, are much more puny, while below there is a picture of utter desolation that would be hard to match in any other part of the world.—St. George Littledale.

At the end of May we found it unpleasantly hot at Kashgar, with a temperature close on 100 degrees; so, early in June, we decided to start off on our tour to the Russian Pamirs, that hitherto jealously guarded district. It was a journey needing a considerable amount of forethought and preparation, because, once away from the Kashgar oasis, we should have to depend on what we had brought with us, save in the case of meat and milk. My brother inspected the tents, saw that a good supply of tent-pegs and horseshoes was laid in, and arranged for some eighteen ponies to carry the loads, which included large amounts of flour and barley. I had to calculate what quantities of tea, sugar, rice, tinned foods, compressed vegetables, dried fruits, jam, biscuits, candles, et cetera, would be required for seven weeks, had to make stout calico bags in which to put them, and had, moreover, to pack my store-boxes with judgement. For one thing, they must not be too heavy for the baggage animals, and for another, each box must contain a complete assortment of stores, in order that only one should need to be opened when we halted. The question of supplies haunted me for weeks, so afraid was I of forgetting some indispensable article; but my method of marking the boxes A, B, and so on, and then entering their contents in my note-book, proved my salvation later on, and made me realize that the more trouble one takes beforehand, the more successful a journey is likely to be. The fruit season had just begun with the apricots, and I had baskets of these stoned and laid out to dry in the sun on the roof, while Daoud made jam, salted and potted down butter, and baked bread and cakes to last for the first ten days. As we should camp at heights of ten to fourteen thousand feet, I took my warmest winter clothing, a thick astride habit, leather jacket and fur-lined coat, and ordered an addition to my bedding in the shape of a thick cotton-padded sleeping sack. To complete my equipment, Sir Aurel Stein insisted on giving me a pair of double-lined native boots, a gift that proved invaluable in camp at night, and my pith helmet and blue gauze veils were equally necessary to ward off sunstroke and to keep my face from being skinned when we rode during the heat of the day.

To be perfectly frank, I was by no means easy about this expedition, to which my brother looked forward with the eagerness of the sportsman. I have never had a good head for heights or for walking along the edge of precipices, and from the various books of travel that I had read it seemed that one ought to be possessed of unusual nerve and agility to negotiate the passes by which the Roof of the World must be reached. But I try to make it a rule to see only one lion in my path at a time and not to waste strength and courage in picturing what may after all turn out to be imaginary dangers, and naturally my blood was stirred at the thought that I was about to start upon an adventure vouchsafed to very few women. The Pamirs had always been a name to conjure with, and evoked visions of high uplands, galloping Kirghiz, wild sheep with great curled horns and an almost complete isolation from the world, and made me ashamed of my twinges of faint-heartedness, which, indeed, vanished for good and all when once we were on the road.

At last the day of our start arrived. The Russians, who interested themselves considerably in what they thought was a mad enterprise, were shocked that we had fixed on a Monday to begin our journey, and prophesied disaster. I made enquiries as to why this day should be regarded as a jour néfaste, and was told that, as it was the custom, among the lower classes at all events, to have a drinking-bout on Sunday, there were usually accidents in plenty on the first day of the working week. As our servants were all Mohamedans, bound by the tenets of their religion to touch no alcohol, we were not in danger from this cause, and the prognostications of our friends did not depress us in the slightest.

Besides ourselves and the servants, the party included Khan Sahib Iftikhar Ahmad the Head of the office, who was an Indian gentleman possessed of much varied information, and the sport-loving Indian Doctor.

Sir Aurel Stein, Mr. Bohlin and a group of Aksakals, or British Agents, whom my brother had just been entertaining on the occasion of the King’s birthday, rode out with us for two or three miles, their fine stallions squealing and trying to attack one another at intervals. When these men, who were clad in brilliantly coloured silk coats and snowy turbans, left us, we stopped on the bank of the Kizil Su to have a last cup of tea with our guest, who was staying behind in the Consulate in order to re-pack his priceless treasures and dispatch them to India. With the fording of the river I felt that we were really off, and all my housekeeping anxieties dropped from me like a garment; for, whatever might be my faults of omission or commission, it was useless to trouble about them, as I could now do nothing to repair them.

Our way led due south, and there was cultivation during the whole march, the barley turning yellow, the wheat in ear, and ploughing going on busily for the autumn crop of Indian corn. I rode astride on a native saddle. “Tommy,” as I called the sturdy white pony which was to be my second mount, had an unpleasant trick of stumbling that detracted from his merits as a steed; yet, to do him justice, he came down only once, and that was on the last march of the journey, and on a sandy road without a pebble.

A couple of days of riding and camping brought us to the oasis of Tashmalik, where we were separated from the cultivated area of Kashgar by a strip of stony desert varied by sand-dunes. In spite of the planting of tamarisks and reeds the sand was encroaching on the oasis, and a house and garden had been lately overwhelmed by this insidious foe, which the prevailing winds piled up in lofty mounds. Seeing this we could better understand Sir Aurel Stein’s explorations of cities that had been buried for centuries in the sand, which had also choked up the rivers by which their inhabitants had supported life.

The Beg of Tashmalik offered us tea, roast fowl, bread and hard-boiled eggs. The eggs had been coloured red, because white is the emblem of mourning in China, and the inhabitants of Turkestan copied this as well as many other customs from the dominant race. Our old host partook of tea with us, and I noticed that, when his bowl required refilling, his servant obligingly drank up what was left and then poured in fresh liquid and handed it to him.