The river Kyam-chu enters the Amchok-tso on the north side, and only 1¼ miles to the west of its muddy delta the Dongmo-chu flows out of the lake towards its confluence with the Raga-tsangpo in the east. Properly speaking, the Dongmo is only the continuation of the Kyam-chu, with the lake hanging like a bag on its right bank.
After the boat has been folded up, Muhamed Isa has to show us the way on horseback over the grass-grown sandhills. He guides me across the twenty shallow and treacherously swampy delta arms of the Kyam-chu. It is dark, but a beacon fire has been lighted in the camp, and the cakes of dung are heated to whiteness in the strong wind, and shine like electric light.
Next day I was up before the sun, in order to take an observation. The thermometer had sunk in the night to 0.3°, and the wind blew regularly as a trade-wind. It is pleasant to see the day dawn in the east, and life begin anew among the tents. The hired yaks have lain tethered during the night, and now they are allowed to wander freely over the pasture. Sleepy yawns are heard in the tents, and men come out and make up the fires; the jug bubbles in which the morning tea is stirred up with butter, and kettles are set on three stones over the fire. The puppies play in the open, and are glad that they have not to roll about to-day in a basket.
The days and months fly by to a chorus of storms, and spring still delays its coming. In the evening songs of the Ladakis I fancy I hear an undertone of home-sickness, and they rejoice at every day’s march which brings us a little further westwards. When we woke next morning, it blew as fresh as ever, and Robert had made himself a mask with Tibetan spectacles sewed into the eye-holes; he looked very comical in this contrivance, which was very appropriate in this land of religious masquerades.
The road, ascending the broad valley of the Pu-chu, led over open, slightly undulating ground to Serme-lartsa. Here old Guffaru was reported sick; he suffered from colic, and was well nursed. But late at night Robert came breathless to my tent to tell me the old man was dying. When I came to the tent the son, whose duty it was to keep the shroud ready, sat weeping beside his father, while the other men warmed their caps over the fire and applied them to the body of the patient. I ordered him a cold compress, but he asked me, to the intense amusement of others, just to go back to my tent again. Muhamed Isa laughed till he rolled over. Guffaru sat upright on his bed, moaned and groaned, and begged me to go away. I gave him a strong dose of opium, and next morning he was so brisk that he walked all the way, though a horse was at his disposal. The remains of Burroughs and Wellcome’s medicine chest had saved his life; he was thankful and pleased that his shroud was not required this time.
| 211. Manis on the Way to the Angden-la. |
On May 11 we mounted to the pass Lungring (17,697 feet) in a bitterly cold snowstorm, and descended the valley of the same name to the bank of the upper Raga-tsangpo. On the 12th we marched upstream; the valley is broad, and is bounded on the north by great mountains. The thermometer had sunk to −0.8°, and the storm was dead against us. Occasionally it abated so much that we could hear the footfalls of the horses on the detritus, but we were benumbed when we came to the camp. Thick snow fell all the afternoon. My puppies sat together in the tent door and growled at the falling flakes, but when they saw it was no use, they snapped at the flakes as though they were flies and pawed at them. Then they went back into the tent, lay on the frieze blanket in the corner, and let it snow on.
On the next day’s march we passed Kamba-sumdo, where the two head sources of the Raga-tsangpo unite; the one, coming from the west, is named Chang-shung, the other, from the south-west, Lo-shung, i.e. “Northern” and “Southern Valley.” The Chang-shung is the larger. The Lo-shung we had to cross twice, and found the bed full of stones connected by slippery ice. In the west a large snow-covered ridge appeared, the Chomo-uchong, or “High Nun,” which was discovered by Nain Sing. Ryder measured it and produced an exact map of it. Belts of snow descend from the white summits down the dark flanks. Other Tibetans called it Chōōr-jong (Illust. 212).
Still marching south-westwards we approached at an acute angle the great main road between Lhasa and Ladak, the so-called tasam. As though to show its importance a caravan was just at the time travelling westwards in three columns. It moved so slowly through the landscape that we had to watch the mountain spur behind to convince ourselves that the small black lines were moving at all. Soon afterwards we pitched our tents in Raga-tasam (16,234 feet), a station on the great high-road, where we came in contact with the route of the English expedition under Ryder and Rawling for the first time since leaving Shigatse. Whatever the immediate future had in store for me, it was above all things my desire to avoid this route as much as possible. For the map which Ryder and Wood had executed is the best that has been surveyed of any part of Tibet; I could add nothing new to it with my modest equipment. But if I passed to the north or south of their line of march, I could supplement their map with my own explorations. In this I actually so far succeeded that out of eighty-three days’ marches to Tokchen on the Manasarowar only two-and-a-half days’ march ran along their route.