SARAT CHANDRA CROSSING THE DONKHYA PASS.
Crossing the Yaru la, we made for Kurma, before reaching which place we experienced some difficulty in crossing the broad bed of the frozen river.[70] Near the village we saw in the fields several wild asses (kyang), some wild goats (ragyo), and wild sheep (nao). At Kurma we put up in the house of a doctor, an acquaintance of Phurchung, who had brought him a quantity of medicines the amchi had the year past commissioned him to buy at Darjiling. Our supply of meat being exhausted, Ugyen bought a sheep’s carcass (pagra). When the sheep get very fat, the people, for fear of losing any of the fat by skinning them, roast the whole as they would a pig.[71] [[43]]
December 7.—Leaving Kurma early in the morning, we arrived at Iago[72] by 6 p.m., where we got accommodations in the house of a rich farmer, paying him a tanka as room-rent (nala). I had been feeling very badly all day, but Phurchung whispered to me to let no one know I was ill, as sick men are not admitted into people’s dwellings in this country.
December 8.—By 10 a.m. we reached Tamar,[73] in the valley of the Re chu, here thickly dotted with hamlets. Numerous flocks of pigeons and swallows were picking worms and grain in the fields, and Ugyen told me that the pigeons were a serious nuisance to the people, for they are not allowed to kill them, animal life being held sacred.
We passed the foot of the hill on which the Regyinpai lamasery[74] is situated, and by 2 p.m. came to Labrang dokpa; but finding all the houses closed, we continued on to the Nambu la,[75] crossing which we reached the village of Nambu, where we stopped in the house of a friend of Phurchung.
December 9.—We arose by 3.30 in the morning, and put on our best clothes, for to-day we were to enter Tashilhunpo. Travellers were more numerous now; we met several parties of traders with yaks and donkeys or laden sheep going to or coming from Shigatse. The day was cold, and there was a light wind blowing. I alternately rode and walked, and though I was by this time greatly reduced in flesh by the hardships I had had to encounter, I was in high spirits at the success which had so far attended me. Not so Ugyen: he was ill, and fretted fearfully, his appearance was repulsive, and his language to the Tang-lung men, whose ponies we rode, was most abusive, but they bore patiently with him. At 9 o’clock we passed through Chuta, and an hour later came to the village of Jong Luguri,[76] where I was [[44]]most kindly received by my former host of 1879, Lobdon puti. I ate a couple of eggs and drank a few cups of tea; then, reloading our ponies, we paid our bill (jaltse) and set out for Tashilhunpo, where we arrived by half-past four, entering it by the small western entrance marked by two chortens.[77] [[45]]
[1] On the origin of Darjiling as a sanatorium, see Hooker, ‘Himalayan Journals,’ (1854) i. 115. [↑]
[2] Hooker, op. cit., ii. 37, mentions seeing a troop of large monkeys in the Lamteng valley (alt. 9000 feet) in Sikkim. Ibid., p. 108, he says that in the most snowy part of Sikkim (near the Tunkra la) “large monkeys are also found on the skirts of the pine forests, and a curious long-tailed animal, Ailurus ochraceus, peculiar to the Himalaya, something between a diminutive bear and a squirrel.” Large monkeys are also found in Eastern Tibet at about 9000 feet alt.—(W. R.) [↑]
[3] Called Chung by the Lepchas. Though not divided into castes, they belong to several tribes. All consider themselves as the earliest inhabitants of the Tambur valley, though they have a tradition of having originally emigrated from Tibet. See Hooker, op. cit., i. 137. [↑]