| 39. Tikze-gompa, Monastery in Ladak. Sketch by the Author. |
On August 15, exactly twenty-one years had elapsed since I started on my first journey in Asia. What would the next year bring? the culminating point of my career or a retrogression? Would opposition still continue, or would the Tibetans prove more friendly than Europeans? I knew not: the future lay before me as indistinct as the Indus valley, where dark masses of cloud swept over the mountains and the rain beat on the tent canvas. We let it rain, and rejoiced to think that, if the precipitation extended far over Tibet, the pasturage would be richer and the springs would flow more freely.
After a short march we come to the village Rambirpur, reconstructed thirty years ago, and to the right of the road the small monastery Stagna-gompa stands on a pinnacle of rock. On the left bank is seen the village Changa, and a little higher up the well-hidden, small, and narrow valley where the famous temple of Hemis lies concealed. Thunder rumbles over its mountains as though the gods stormed angrily on their altar platform.
At a corner where a small, shaky, wooden bridge spans the Indus, stand some more long mani ringmos; they are covered with well-cut stone flags, on which the letters are already overgrown by a weathered crust, and stand out dark against the lighter chiselled intervals. Former kings of Ladak caused them to be constructed as a salve to their consciences, and to gain credit in a future life. They are a substitute for the work of the Lamas; every one is at liberty to propitiate the divine powers by this means. Thus the monks acquire a revenue, and every one, travellers and caravans included, rejoices at the pious act, while the stone slabs speak in their silent language of bad consciences and manifold sins, in rain and sunshine, by day and night, in cold and heat.
Now we leave the Indus for good and all. “Farewell, thou proud stream, rich in historical memories. Though it costs me my life I will find some day thy source over yonder in the forbidden land,” I thought, as, accompanied by jamadars and chaprassis of the Kashmir state and some of my men, I turned the rocky corner into the side valley through which the road runs up past the monasteries Karu and Chimre to the Chang-la Pass. The road now becomes worse; every day’s journey it deteriorates, sometimes changing into an almost imperceptible footpath, and at last it disappears altogether. The great road to Lhasa along the Indus and to Gartok was closed to us.
Our company makes a grand show; a sheep is killed every evening, and the pots boil over the fires in the centre of the various groups which have combined into messes. I make no attempt to learn the names of my new servants; coolies and villagers are always moving about among them, coming and going, and I scarcely know which are my own men. It must be so in the meantime; the time will soon come for me to know them better, when all outside elements are removed. A melancholy air is heard in the darkness; it is the night watchmen who sing to keep themselves awake.
At Chimre we are at a height of 11,978 feet, and we ascend all the day’s journey to Singrul, where we find ourselves 16,070 feet above sea-level. The road keeps for the most part to the stony barren slopes on the left side of the valley, while the brook flows nearer to the right side, where bright green fields appropriate so much of its water that little is left to flow out of the valley. A path to Nubra follows a side valley on the right. In Sakti we wander in a labyrinth of narrow passages and alleys between huts and chhortens, boulders and walls, mani ringmos and terraces which support cultivated patches laid out in horizontal steps. Above us is seen the Chang-la, and we are quite giddy at the sight of the road that ascends to it with a tremendously steep gradient (Illustration 42).
Tagar is the last village before the pass; here I had halted twice before. Its wheat-fields extend a little distance further up the valley and then contract to a wedge-shaped point, continued by a narrow winding strip of grass along the central channel of the valley bottom. The sections of the caravan climb higher and higher, some are already at the goal, and we have overtaken the hindermost. The path runs up steeply between huge blocks of grey granite, so that our Ladakis have to take care that the boxes do not get banged.
| 40. Masked Lamas in the Court of Ceremonies in Hemis-gompa (Ladak). |
| 41. Group of Masked Lamas in Hemis-gompa. (Taken by a photographer in Srinagar.) |