The sun had set when we rode home, but the crests of the eastern mountains still glowed as in a rain of transparent gold. In the gently rippling water-channels the wild-geese gathered, screaming, for their spring migration, and the shadows of evening fell over the wide fields of Yeshung.
| 180. Bridge to the Monastery Pinzoling (on the right). |
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE RAGA-TSANGPO AND THE MY-CHU
On April 3 we journeyed steadily along the way to the west by smiling villages and small convents, and again we approached the bank of the Tsangpo, at a place where a swaying rope-bridge is stretched between two loose blocks on the banks. Here the river forms rapids, and above this point it is only 50 yards broad, often still less, and the valley above the Yeshung expansion is narrow and confined. From the village Pusum, where we encamp, is seen the mountain Nayala, one of the fixed points in Ryder’s triangulation. His and Rawling’s expedition travelled to the south of the Tsangpo, and it would be two months more before I should first come in contact with their route. The river will rise a month longer in consequence of the melting of ice in the higher parts of its course in the distant west.
The village Pusum lies on a steep terrace above the river. Cones of detritus descend to the bank, and steep mountains rise on the southern side. The valley is narrow and quite straight, so that Pinsoling, the end of the next day’s march, can be seen from Pusum; it is perched on its rocky promontory like a castle on the Rhine. The path passes over steep disagreeable slopes of pebbles. Only grey and red granite, with black schist, is seen both in the solid rock and in the débris.
Almost immediately south of Chagha, a village of a couple of stone houses in a grove of old willows, the monastery and dzong of Pinzoling appear on the right bank. The river is narrow, and the bank full of round granite boulders a yard in diameter, so the necessary material for a bridge is at hand. Two huge pyramids of stone are erected on the banks, and two smaller ones behind them. Two thick chains are stretched between them, which pass on to the smaller pyramids, and are made fast again to them. Between the chains a network of ropes is stretched like a hammock, and on this narrow planks are laid; on these passengers walk, using the chains as hand-rails. The Pinzoling bridge has not been used for three years; any one who wants to cross to Pinzoling from Chagha must go upstream to Ladse-dzong and make use of the ferry there. I inquired how old the bridge was. “As old as the monastery,” was the answer. “And how old is the monastery?” A villager answered at random, “A thousand years.” Another said that this was an exaggeration, for the monastery had been founded two hundred and fifty years ago by a lama named Yitsyn Tara Nara. Two hundred monks belong to the monastery of Pinzoling, but half of them had gone on their travels. An official of the dzong, with the title of Dsabo, lived in Chagha, and examined our passport (Illustration 180).
The river was at its lowest level, but during high-water it is said to come up to the chains of the bridge, which seems to me improbable, for they hang fully 6 feet above the surface of the water at their lowest part. A channel remains open in the middle of the river even in cold winters. Boats reach the side valley in which Shigatse lies in four to five days, but during the summer in two or three days, for then the river flows down with tremendous velocity. It is considered less dangerous to travel in a high flood, for then the boats glide smoothly over boulders and sandbanks, and it is said that a man is very seldom drowned, or a boat’s cargo lost.