Immediately beyond the monastery the summit of Kailas is lost to view, but soon a bit of it is seen again through a gap. We passed twelve pilgrims, and soon after a second party resting on a slope. They put on solemn faces and do not talk with one another, but murmur prayers, walking with their bodies bent, and leaning on a staff—frequently, too, without a staff. How they have longed to come here! And now they are here and walk round the mountain, which is always on their right. They feel no weariness, for they know that every step improves their prospects in the world beyond the river of death. And when they have returned to their black tents in distant valleys, they tell their friends of all the wonders they have seen, and of the clouds, which sail like the dragon ships of old below the white summit of Gangri.
Small conical cairns are everywhere. Tsering never omits to take up a stone from the margin of the road and lay it as his contribution on every such votive pile, and thereby he does a good deed, for he makes the way less rough for those who come after him. The sun looks out through a gap, and throws a bright yellow light into the valley, which otherwise is in shadow. The icy peak again appears much foreshortened. Several tributaries come in from the sides, and towards evening the river rises, containing quite 280 cubic feet of water.
A man from Gertse has been going round the mountain for twenty successive days, and now has just accomplished his tenth circuit. Dunglung-do is a very important valley junction, where three valleys converge—the Chamo-lung-chen from the north, 70° W., the Dunglung from the north, 5° W., and the third, called in its upper course Hle-lungpa, which we ascend. We now have granite on both sides. Kailas turns a sharp edge to the north, and from here the peak resembles a tetrahedron more than ever. Again the mountain is concealed by an elevation of the ring which girdles it as Monte Somma encircles Vesuvius. The main river swells up towards evening; the other two are spanned by bridges. Numbers of boulders lie all about. All is granite, and therefore the mountain forms are rounder and more lumpy (Illust. 267).
At length we see the monastery Diri-pu in front of us, standing on the slope on the right side of the valley. A huge block of granite beside the path up to it bears the usual sacred characters, and there also are long manis, streamers, and cairns. All the pilgrims we have overtaken in the course of the day turn into the monastery, where they can pass the night free of charge. The convent is crammed full after the arrival of a party of pilgrims belonging to the Pembo sect. These, of course, wander round the mountain in the reverse direction, and the orthodox cast contemptuous glances at them when they meet. I prefer to pitch my tent on the roof, where the luggage of the pilgrims is piled up. Here also there is a fine view of Kailas, raising its summit due south. With a temperature of 40° at nine o’clock it is cold and disagreeable, for a strong wind blows, and my tent, consisting only of the camera-stand covered with a linen cloth, is too small to allow of a fire being lighted (Illust. 268).
Since I had been successful in fixing the positions of the sources of the Brahmaputra and Sutlej, my old dream of discovering the source of the Indus was revived, and all my aspirations and ambition were now concentrated on this object. When I now learned from the monks that the point where the famous river issues forth from the “Mouth of the Lion” was only three days’ journey to the north-east beyond a lofty pass, everything else seemed of trifling consequence compared to an advance into the unknown country in the north. We held a council of war; we had provisions only for two days more, and we had not brought enough money with us, and, moreover, the state of affairs in Khaleb was too uncertain to allow of greater hazards. I therefore decided to carry out my original plan in the meantime and complete the pilgrimage, and afterwards make the source of the Indus the object of a fresh excursion from Khaleb, or, if the worst came to the worst, from Gartok.
| 271. The Gova by whose Help the Source of the Indus was discovered (seated) and Tibetans at Kailas. |
On September 4 we take leave of the monks of Diri-pu, cross by a bridge the river which comes down from the pass Tseti-lachen-la in the Trans-Himalaya, from the other side of which the water flows to the Indus, and mount in an easterly direction over rough steep slopes thickly bestrewn with granite boulders. On our right is the river which is fed by the glaciers of Kailas; it is quite short, but is very full of water. The path becomes still steeper, winding among immense blocks of granite, and leads up to the first hump, after which the ground is a little more even to the next break. Here we have a splendid view of the short truncated glacier which, fed from a sharply defined trough-shaped firn basin, lies on the north side of Kailas. Its terminal, lateral, and medial moraines are small but distinct. Eastwards from Kailas runs off an exceedingly sharp, pointed, and jagged ridge, covered on the north side with snow, and belts of pebbles in the snow give all this side a furrowed appearance. From all corners of the ice mantle and the snowfields foaming brooks hurry down to the river. On our left, northwards, the mountains consist of vertical fissured granite in wild pyramidal forms. Kailas is protected on the north by immense masses of granite, but the mountain itself is in all probability of conglomerate, as shown by the nearly horizontal bedding plainly perceptible in the projecting ledges, sharply marked snow-lines, and belts of ice. The summit rises above this sea of wild mountains like a mighty crystal of hexagonal form.
A party of poor women and children climbed wearily up to the pass. An elderly man, who was now making his ninth circuit, made no objection to join our party; he knew the country and could give information about it. On another rise in the ground, called Tutu-dapso, we saw hundreds of votive cairns, 3 feet high—quite a forest of stone pyramids—like innumerable gravestones in a churchyard (Illust. 270).
Slowly and laboriously we climbed up this arduous pass, one of the most troublesome on the whole journey. Thicker and thicker lay the boulders, exclusively of granite in all possible varieties, some pink and some so light a grey as to be almost white. Between two boulders lay a suspicious-looking bundle of clothes. We examined it, and found that it contained the body of a man who had collapsed in making the tour of the mountain of the gods. His features were rigid, and he seemed poor and emaciated. No one knew who he was, and if he had any relations they would never learn that his pilgrimage had launched him into new adventures among the dark mazes of the soul’s migrations.
Our old man stops at a flat granite block of colossal dimensions, and says that this is a dikpa-karnak, or a test-stone for sinners. A narrow tunnel runs under the block, and whoever is without sin, or at any rate has a clear conscience, can creep through the passage, but the man who sticks fast in the middle is a scoundrel. I asked the old man whether it might not happen that a thin rogue would wriggle through while a fat, honest fellow might stick fast; but he answered very seriously that stoutness had nothing to do with the result of the trial, which depended only on the state of the soul. Evidently our honest Ishe was not certain which way the balance of his conscience inclined, for, before we were aware, we saw him disappearing under the block, and heard him puffing, panting, and groaning, scratching with his hands and trying to get a foothold behind. But when he had floundered about inside long and vigorously, he was at last obliged to call for help in a half-strangled voice. We laughed till we could hardly keep on our feet, and let him stay a while in his hole because of his manifest sinfulness. Then the two other men dragged him out by the legs, and he looked extremely confused (and dusty) when he at length emerged again into the outer world, an unmasked villain. The old man told us that a woman had become so firmly fixed that she had actually to be dug out.