Beyond Tsal-pa-nang the road led over a sandy plain, while crossing which we scared up several rabbits (hares?). Proceeding eastward for several miles, we came to the large village of Jang hog, or “Lower Jang,” then to Jang toi, or “Upper Jang,”[37] where the beauty of the country so greatly charmed me, each cluster of houses surrounded by groves of willows and poplars, and the fields a mass of flowers, that I called a halt, and, spreading my rug under a willow tree, we made some tea, and my companions indulged in a good long drink of chang.
From Jang toi, following a narrow trail overhanging the Kyi chu, we came to Nam. Beyond this little hamlet the path leads over a confused mass of rocks and boulders along the river bank; it is called gag lam, or “narrow road,” and a false step would throw one amidst the quicksands on the river’s bank, or into its eddying waters. I was not surprised to be told that the two elephants sent to the Grand Lama by the Sikkim rajah had had great difficulty in getting [[145]]by this place. After a tedious journey of about three miles through the sand and over the rocks, we got sight of the famous village of Netang,[38] where the great saint and Buddhist reformer, Atisha, or Dipankara, died.
An old woman led us to the Jya khang, where we were most hospitably received, and though there were other travellers stopping in it, we were accommodated for the sum of a tanka in a well-ventilated outer room, the inner ones being reserved for officials, particularly Chinese. Netang has about forty or fifty houses, all built closely together, but many are only miserable hovels.
May 30.—We were off at an early hour, as to-day we wanted to reach Lhasa. The hamlets of Norbu-gang and Chumig-gang, through which we passed, had a number of fine substantial houses belonging to civil officers (Dung-khor) of Lhasa, and around them were gardens and groves of trees. Leaving these places behind, we travelled for some miles over a gravelly plain, the river some distance on our right.
When near a gigantic image of the Buddha, cut in low relief on the face of a rock, Potala and Chagpori came in sight, their gilt domes shining in the sun’s rays. My long-cherished wish was accomplished—Lhasa, the sacred city, was before me.
Four miles over a fairly good road now brought us to the Ti chu zamba, a large and handsome stone bridge about 120 paces long and eight broad, beneath which flowed a rivulet coming from the hills to the north-west, where stands the monastery of Tsorpu, founded by Karma Bagshi, one of the two celebrated lamas who resided at the Imperial court of China in the time of the Emperor Kublai.
The Ti chu zamba is in the lower part of the big village of Toilung, around which are numerous hamlets, each amid a little grove of pollard willows. The adjacent plain, watered as it is by the Kyi chu and the Ti (or Toilung) chu, is extraordinarily fertile. The country around was everywhere cultivated, and the barley, wheat, and buckwheat were in many places already a foot high.
The road now became alive with travellers, mostly grain-dealers or argol-carriers, on their way to the city with trains of yaks, ponies, mules, and donkeys with jingling bells. [[146]]
We halted for breakfast in a small grove in front of the village of Shing donkar, belonging to Sa-wang Ragasha, one of the senior Shape of Lhasa. We could hear from where we sat the voices of lamas chanting prayers, and I learnt from an old woman who brought my men some chang, that there were some eighteen Dabung lamas reading prayers for the recovery from small-pox of the foreman (shinyer) of the farm.
About a mile from Sing donkar we came to Donkar, which is considered as the first stage for persons travelling officially from Lhasa.[39] Then we passed by Cheri, where is the city slaughter-house; and here, strange as it may seem, the Kashmiris come to buy meat, for most of those living at Lhasa are so lax in their observance of the Mohammedan laws about butchering that they will eat yaks killed by Tibetans, even though they have been put to death by wounds of arrows or knives in the stomach.