Clear rivulets trickle across the road, the valley contracts and its contours become bolder and more pronounced; the granite ceases and is replaced by fine-grained crystalline schist. In the district of Tong, where several villages stand high above the river, we encamp below the monastery Lun-ganden-gompa (Illustration 176), in which 21 monks of the Gelugpa sect live, and, as usual, a prior of Kanpo rank dwells in the Labrang. We paid them a visit, but preferred the lovely view over the valley to the images of the gods in the darkness. The brethren are maintained partly by the Tashi Lama, and obtain the rest of their food from the produce of their fields, for the convent has large glebe lands. A blind man, who was not of the fraternity, sat like a machine at the prayer mill, turning it for the monks, and complained of his hard lot. The Gova, the district chief, of Tong rules over several villages in the neighbourhood, and lives like a prince in his solid house.
On April 10 we continued along the course of the My-chu, past villages and convents hitherto unknown. The villages stand just below the mouths of side valleys where the water can be most effectively applied to irrigation. A caravan of about 100 yaks, driven by men and women and some carrying riders, had been at Tok-jalung and had sold there tsamba from Tong; they had spent three months on their return from those gold-diggings in western Tibet. They follow a route through the mountains where there is suitable pasture for yaks. Thus the produce of the soil in the more favoured parts of the country reaches the nomads, who give in exchange for it wool, hides, and salt. After a short march we bivouacked in Ghe, which has nineteen houses. An angdi (musician) scraped and plucked a two-stringed instrument (Illustration 185), while his wife danced before us.
| 185. Strolling Musicians. |
Here our escort from Shigatse turned back, after handing our passport to four other men, the chief of whom was the Gova of Tong. They had done us excellent service, so I gave them good testimonials and presents. They were satisfied and would pray for my prosperity till their lives’ end. I felt particular sympathy for one of the Tibetans who had lost his two sons in the battle at Guru; the one was twenty-three years old, and the other twenty-five, and the father could not understand why they had fallen, for they had done nothing wrong.
Next day the escort, jingling like a sledge party, accompanies us up the My-chu, which retains the same character. Granite and schists alternate. The river tosses about, though it has occasionally quiet reaches. In the background of the side valleys are often seen great mountains lightly covered with snow, and at their entrances villages with stone houses and fields where only barley and peas are grown, seldom wheat. The black tents we see occasionally belong to merchants who are on their way from or to western Tibet. Bridges cross the affluents, flat slabs of stone on a pair of beams between rather high slightly overhanging piers of stone. The religious stone heaps are still numerous; one has caused a sand-dune to be formed. Wild ducks, wood pigeons, and partridges occur here, and the latter, sorely against their will, make acquaintance with Tsering’s kitchen. In the village Sir-chung the population is large, for here several routes and side valleys converge. Among the crowds of spectators was a young woman so extraordinarily pretty that I took two photographs of her. She was twenty years old and was named Putön (Illustration 186).
The day following we visited the adjacent monastery Lehlung-gompa, where the twenty-six monks belong to some heterodox sect, for they recognize neither Tsong Kapa nor the Tashi Lama; the prior had shut himself up in his dwelling sunk in deep speculations. A lama and three inhabitants of the neighbouring village Nesar had died the day before, so our Tibetan escort warned us not to go up to the monastery lest we should catch the infection, and when we nevertheless went, they begged to be allowed to stay behind. This dreary dilapidated monastery stood proudly on its point of rock, pretty far up a side valley which descends from the left to the My-chu. From its flat roof we had a splendid view and could make out the topography of the My-chu valley. A novelty to us was a row of stuffed yaks, hard as wood and dry as bone, with their horns, hoofs, and hides, hung up on the ceiling of a verandah. None of the monks could remember when they had been hung up. They looked very old, and apparently were for the same purpose as the four ghostly kings and the painted wild animals, that is, to scare away evil spirits.
Below the monastery twenty-four manis stand close together in a row like a parish boundary on a topographical map. All the way up these sacred structures are so numerous that they even outnumber those near Leh. The country assumes a more alpine character, and the valley becomes wilder and more desolate; but some trees form a small thicket at Lehlung-gompa. At length we ride over a pebble terrace, perhaps 130 feet above the stream, which now pours over small falls and murmurs pleasantly among boulders. The caravan has pitched its tents in the narrow valley on the bank of the My-chu and not far from the side valley Kathing. Most of the luggage has been carried by Tibetans, for no pack animals were to be had, and now some hundred black-headed fellows sit in groups by their fires among the large boulders.
Here we were at a height of 13,875 feet, and therefore had only mounted up 1175 feet from Shigatse (12,700 feet). But the air was cooler; the night before we had noted 23 degrees of frost.
| 186. The Handsome Woman, Putön. |