At times we enjoyed superb views of the great snow-clad peaks towards which we were travelling, and these visions of remote and unearthly beauty compensated for the weary miles of stumbling over rounded boulders and pebbles. We were only able to go at a foot’s pace. The horses disliked the journey more than we did, because they got footsore; and Jafar Bai had to keep a vigilant eye upon their shoes, as the nails had a habit of dropping out.
On June 18 we camped, at a height of 13,000 feet, below the Katta Dawan, or Great Pass, by crossing which we should leave Chinese Turkestan and reach the Russian Pamirs, the goal of our journey.
CHAPTER VII
THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
I scaled precipitous mountain crags clad with snow: found my way through the scarped passes of the Iron Gates;—I have traversed the valley of Pamir.—Life of Hiuen Tsiang, Beal.
The Pamirs are both fertile and barren, both habitable and desolate, both smiling and repellent according to the point of view from which they are regarded. They are among the deliberate paradoxes of nature.—The Pamirs and the Source of the Oxus, Hon. George N. Curzon.
It was a thrilling thought that I was about to tread in the footsteps of some of the intrepid travellers in High Asia, such as the Buddhist monk, Hiuen Tsiang, Marco Polo, Wood, the first Englishman to enter the Pamirs, and many another whom the Red Gods called to feats of daring and endurance. But my lot was an extremely easy one compared with theirs; for, being the only woman of the party, I was guarded and protected in every possible way. Perhaps some of my readers may be a little vague as to the exact meaning of the word Pamirs. They are described by Sir Thomas Holdich, the eminent geographer, as “valleys reaching up in long slopes to the foot of mountain peaks,” and they are known by the Persian term of Bam-i-Dunia or Roof of the World.
On that June morning we were up at 5 A.M. and, although snow had fallen during the night, the day was fine and gave good hopes of a successful crossing of the pass. It was bitterly cold, but my leather coat was impervious to wind, a Shetland shawl swathed my pith-hat and neck, and I had besmeared both face and feet plentifully with vaseline and therefore felt prepared to meet whatever might befall.
When we had seen our baggage yaks loaded we walked up the narrow valley, down which ran a little stream with scanty grazing on its banks; but before long the stiff pull up the mountain side began, and we were obliged to mount. Our Kirghiz guide halted every few yards to let the panting horses take breath—in fact, the rarefied air on these heights seemed to try them almost as much as it would have exhausted us had we been forced to walk. We soon reached the snow-line, and our animals plunged and stumbled through freshly fallen snow on the narrow track where we moved along in single file. It seemed a long time, but in reality we reached the crest of the Katta Dawan in a couple of hours and found ourselves on a little plateau some 16,000 feet high. Clouds had been gathering during our climb and fine snow now began to fall fast, making us fear that we might be caught in a storm and possibly miss the track, which it needed the practised eye of the Kirghiz to discover. Fortunately the wind came to our rescue, sweeping the air clear at intervals, and I saw that we were in the midst of great white giants shouldering one another, a glacier lying to our left, shining in the fitful gleams of the sun. Ahead of us low green hills scantily flecked with snow opened out to give a glimpse of the intense blue of the Great Karakul Lake, a soft mist half revealing the landscape, and the whole making a picture of exquisite beauty that somewhat reminded us of the Highlands of Scotland. But it was no time to linger and enjoy the view, and we began the descent, soon dismounting as our horses floundered badly in the snow and I had no wish to be shot over Tommy’s head. Then followed an hour of struggling downwards during which I was sometimes up to the knee in the snow, and once or twice fell headlong, my thick clothing impeding me a good deal but saving me from hurt in my tumbles. Somehow we scrambled down at last into a long defile, and the falling snow turned into a chilly sleet that cut our faces. But nothing of that sort mattered, and as we drank hot tea from our thermos bottles I felt a glow of pride that not only was I the first Englishwoman to negotiate the Katta Dawan Pass, but that I was actually on that Roof of the World, which in my wildest day-dreams I had never imagined that I should visit.
It seemed an auspicious omen that almost as soon as we reached the Pamirs, Nadir discovered a small herd of ovis poli on the side of one of the mountains between which we were passing. Although there was not a head among them, they held out a promise of better things to come, and I was greatly interested in watching them through my glasses.