After partaking of some gyatug, rice, and boiled mutton with the family, I asked permission to leave, and was escorted to the gate, where, mounting my pony, I bade them farewell.
The Lhasa high-road I found very similar to a rough Indian cross-road; in some places it is more than 20 feet wide, in others a mere trail, while in many places, where it runs between fields, it is also made to serve the purpose of an irrigation ditch. The Tibetan [[128]]Government pays very little, if any, attention to road-making, though, in such a dry climate, it would be easy to construct good ones, and it would be little trouble to keep them in repair. Thus far on my travels in Tibet I had seen no wheeled conveyances, and I now learnt that such things are unknown throughout the country.
Shortly after starting it began snowing heavily. As we rode on along the bank of the Nyang chu, Tsering-tashi pointed out to me the road to Phagri, the monastery of Na-ning, the ruins of Gyang-to, both formerly places of importance. Then we entered the rong, or defiles,[12] where used to live three tribes of herdsmen, the Gyangro, Ning-ro, and Gang-ro, who carried on a thriving trade in yak-tails (chowries), felt hats, felt, and blankets.
Crossing the river at Kudung zampa, we reached by dusk the village of Gobshi,[13] where the Lhacham had only preceded us a little. I found her very gloomy, for she had just learnt that there were in the house where she was now stopping five small-pox patients. I was asked to vaccinate her and her whole party; but, unfortunately, the lymph which I had asked for in India had not reached me before leaving Tashilhunpo; it was still at the Lachan barrier with Ugyen-gyatso.
May 13.—Gobshi, or “four gates,” is a large village of about fifty houses, half of it belonging to the Lhacham’s father-in-law. There are a few poplar and pollard willow trees growing in front of the village, and terraced fields planted with barley extend along the river banks. A little to the east of the village, in the hills beyond the confluence of the Nyang and Niro chu, there is a very ancient Bonbo lamasery, called Khyung-nag, or “Black Eagle” monastery, which in the fifteenth century was a place of pilgrimage famous throughout Tibet.
After leaving Gobshi, we passed by Kavo gomba, a Ningma religious establishment, and Tsering-tashi called my attention to the blue and red bands painted on the walls of the temple and dwellings of the lamas, telling me that these coloured stripes are characteristic of this sect.
Pushing on through a number of small villages, the road in some places extremely difficult and even dangerous, we forded the Nyang chu [[129]]at Shetoi,[14] took a short cut to the Ralung zamba, and by 3 p.m. reached the village of Ralung chong-doi, crossing once more the river by a wooden bridge before entering it.
Ralung[15] is one of the most sacred places in Tibet, for it is here that the great Dugpa school of red-hat monks originated, a school still influential with numerous adherents in Southern, Northern, and Eastern Tibet, and in Bhutan, which latter country is, in fact, called Dugpa owing to the preponderance of this sect. The Ralung-til, the head monastery of the Dugpa, is to the south-east of this village. This monastery owes its name to the fact that it is surrounded by mountains as the heart (mt’il) of a lotus is by the corolla.
May 14.—We left without even waiting for a cup of tea, as the Lhacham was desirous of reaching Nangartse the same day, and, in spite of my enfeebled condition, I was anxious to keep up with her party, for the country we had to traverse is infested by brigands.
After following up the river for a while, we ascended the Karo la,[16] a lofty plateau from which we could distinguish to the north-east the snow-covered slopes of the Noijin kang-zang (or Noijin norpa zang-po and Kang zang-po). The plateau of the Karo la is called Oma tang, or “milky plain,”[17] as is also the little hamlet near the summit of the pass. On this plateau, which is about five miles broad where we traversed it, there is fine grazing, and we saw numerous herds of yaks by the sides of the little streamlets which meander over its surface, the one flowing westward becoming the Nyang chu; the other flows to the east, and is called the Kharnang-phu chu, and along this the road led. On the summit of the pass I noticed a species of thorny shrub, the like of which I had not seen in any other part of Tibet; the thorns were quite long, and the stem and leaves of the plant of an ash grey colour.