In Gartok (14,656 feet) a new period began. This town is a turning-point in the chronicles of my journey. In the first place, I again came into contact with the outer world. Thakur Jai Chand, the British commercial agent, handed me immediately on my arrival a thick packet of letters, including a quantity from my dear home, and others from Lord and Lady Minto and their daughters, from Colonel Dunlop Smith, Younghusband, O’Connor, Rawling, and many other friends in Europe and Asia. Nothing, however, was heard of the heavy consignment I expected from Simla. But soon afterwards I heard from Dunlop Smith that all I had ordered was on the way and would arrive in due course, and meantime I had to wait in patience.

The Garpuns at once sent me presents as a token of welcome, with the usual polite phrases. They were of too great importance to visit me first, so next day I went to them. The elder was ill; the younger, a gentleman from Lhasa, thirty-five years of age and of distinguished appearance, received me most cordially in his simple Government buildings, and was so little angry at the liberties I had recently taken that he did not even ask me where I had been. It was an irony of fate that a letter in most friendly terms and most liberal in its concessions, which I now received from Lien Darin by the hand of the Garpun, had not reached me until it was too late. When Lien Darin received my letter from Raga-tasam, he immediately sent off two Chinamen fully authorized to come to an agreement with me about the route I was to take. “For I shall be glad to know,” said the Amban of Lhasa, “that you are travelling by the road that suits you.” He was quite convinced that my movements, whichever way I took, would give no cause for political complications. And he concluded with the words: “Now, I hope that you will have a successful and peaceful journey, and I will pray for your health and prosperity.”

How I regretted now that I had not stayed in Saka, and so much the more when the Garpun told me that the two Chinamen had arrived with an escort of four Tibetans only two weeks after we had left! But the Garpun was friendly disposed towards me; he was the most powerful man in western Tibet, and could still throw open all doors for me, if he dared and was willing to do so.

283. Old Woman.284. Lama in Chushut.
Sketches by the Author.

I was, indeed, pleased and thankful for the results which I had already been able to secure. Besides many other problems that had been solved, I had crossed the Trans-Himalaya by five passes, namely, the Sela-la, Chang-la-Pod-la, Angden-la, Tseti-lachen-la, and Jukti-la, of which the first four had been entirely unknown. But between the Angden-la and the Tseti-lachen-la I had been obliged to leave a gap of quite 330 miles in the exploration of the Trans-Himalaya. Of this region nothing was known but the summits Ryder had seen from his route, and which he and Wood had measured by observation. We also possessed some uncertain statements of Nain Sing’s journey in 1873, but his route lay to the north of the blank patch, and this blank represented an area of 5300 square miles. I could not return home without having done all that was humanly possible to traverse the unknown country by at least one route. Precisely there was the line forming the watershed between the Indian Ocean and the inland drainage of the salt lakes on the Tibetan plateau. There many lakes and rivers might be expected to exist, and there lay the large province of Bongba, of which so many hazy reports had reached our ears from its northern, eastern, and southern boundaries. But the greatest and most important question of all was: Does the Nien-chen-tang-la run right through Tibet in a westerly and north-westerly direction to the north of the Tsangpo and the upper Indus? No European and no pundit had hitherto ventured on this problem; but Hodgson, Saunders, and Atkinson had many years before laid down a hypothetical range on their maps of Tibet. Did it actually exist? Or was a labyrinth of ranges hidden under the white space, or a comparatively flat plateau, on which foundation isolated snowy peaks and chains were based? Hypotheses are absolutely worthless compared to proved facts. Such facts I would procure. I knew that if I did not succeed now in penetrating into the country which on the latest English map of Tibet (1906, Map 1) bears only the word “Unexplored,” one fine day another explorer would come and rob me of this triumph. And this thought I could not endure.

In Gartok my old friend from Leh, the rich merchant Gulam Razul, was staying (Illust. 272). I consulted him, and he was to be my delivering angel. He took a very sanguine view of our position, for the Garpun owed him 7000 rupees for goods delivered, and feared his influence; he could therefore put pressure on the Viceroy of western Tibet. He first tried stratagem, which, however, completely failed, for the Garpun replied he was too fond of his head to expose it to risk by assisting a European who had no permission to travel about the country. Then we tried gold, but the Garpun answered most theatrically: “If this house were of gold and you offered it to me, I would not take it. If you travel on forbidden roads, I will send armed men after you who will force you to return hither.”

He was incorruptible, and he was too strong for us. How sorry I was now that I had not proceeded eastwards when I was in enjoyment of complete freedom at the source of the Indus and in Yumba-matsen! But no, that was impossible, for my cash-box was then not full enough, I had only five men with me, and I could not have left the rest of my caravan to their own devices.

What if I went down into Nepal and came back again into Tibet by unguarded roads? No, that would not do, for snow would soon close the Himalayan passes. And if we tried to slink through to Rudok and thence make eastwards? No, Rudok swarmed with spies. And soon Gulam Razul learned also that the Garpun had sent orders throughout his territory to stop me in case I attempted to travel even to Ladak by any other than the main high-road.

Thus we planned this and that, and mused day and night, sometimes in my tent, sometimes in Gulam Razul’s, and waited for the consignment from Simla, heard bells jingle when couriers came from the east, saw one merchant after another return from the fair in Lhasa, met the serpun or gold commissioner who came from Tok-jalung, and felt the cold of autumn cut our skins more sharply as the thermometer fell to −11°.

Then in lonely hours I came to the resolution to return to Ladak and thence, as in the year before, penetrate into Tibet from the north, traverse the whole country once more, and cross the blank space. I knew very well that by this roundabout way it would take half a year to reach districts situated only a month’s journey from Gartok. A new caravan would be necessary, new dangers and adventures awaited us, and winter was before us with its Arctic cold. But it must be done in spite of everything. I would not turn back until the obstacles in my way became quite insuperable. To enter Ladak, a country under British protection, was a risk, and therefore I must make all haste to cross the frontier again. I could not avoid Rawling’s and Deasy’s country, but what did it matter? My aim was the unknown region, which I would try to explore by some route or other.