After Gulam has brought in the last brazier I undress myself, put on my large woollen dressing-gown, set myself a while right over the fire to get a little heat into my body before I creep into my lair of fur, and smile to hear the yellow dog, who is lying outside, and barks and snarls at the increasing cold in the angriest and most comical tones. No wonder he is enraged, for the thermometer falls in the night to −12.8°. Then I hear a singular squeaking in Gulam’s tent. We had already anticipated a happy event, and now I inquired whether there was an addition to the Puppy family. Four small puppies had again come into the world. They had waited for the very coldest night we had yet experienced. Gulam had contrived a cage of frieze rugs in which Puppy lay, licking her young ones. Two of the tiny animals were of the female, two of the male sex; the former were drowned, for we thought that the others would grow stronger if they monopolized all the milk and heat that would otherwise have been divided among four. I sat by the hutch and studied the interesting group till I was so stiff with cold that I could hardly walk back to my tent. Next morning the tiny curs were going on splendidly; one of them whined in quite the orthodox fashion, and no doubt thought what a grim cold country fate had launched him into. We determined to take good care of them, for they would be pleasant companions for me. Up here they would at any rate be immune from the sickness which had carried off their elder sisters. Kunchuk had to carry them against his bare skin to keep them warm. Half-way Mamma Puppy was allowed to occupy herself for a while with her little ones, though these did not seem quite to understand the milk business.
We had a bad march on December 17. No shouts of encouragement were heard, but the caravan moved on slowly and apathetically. Within half an hour our feet were benumbed and lost all feeling. I wound the ends of my bashlik like a visor several times round my face up to the eyes, but the breath turned it into a thick crust of ice which froze to my moustache and beard, which I had allowed to grow since leaving Gartok to suit my intended Mohammedan disguise. All the men put on their furs. Dust and soil flew about, and our faces had a singular appearance.
At a place where a Yarkand caravan was encamped, we turned to the right up a very narrow valley, in which the floor, covered with bright milky-white ice, looked like a marble pavement between the rocky walls. Fortunately the Yarkand men had strewn sand over the ice, but still it did not prevent several of our animals from falling, so that they had to be loaded again.
When we at length camped in Long the temperature was at zero even at three o’clock. A second large Yarkand caravan, on the homeward journey, was halting here. The leaders asked us to travel with them over the Karakorum, but I refused, with the excuse that we could make only short day’s marches. Observation by any who might tell the Chinese in Yarkand that I had again passed over into Tibet was exactly what I must avoid above everything.
Here lay a poor man, both of whose feet had been frost-bitten on the Karakorum, so that the flesh and toes actually fell off. He crawled up to our camp and wept over his disastrous fate. He had been engaged with the Yarkand caravan we had met first, but as he had become incapable of work owing to his wounds, the barbarous merchant had dismissed him in the midst of the wilds and left him behind. In such a case it is hard to know what to do. We could not cure him, and to take him with us or give up a part of the caravan for him was out of the question. He said himself that he would crawl to Shyok, but how was he to get across the river? I let him warm himself at our fire, drink tea and eat, and on the 18th, when we went on after 56½° of frost in the night, I gave him tsamba for several days, matches, and a sum of money which would enable him to hire a horse from a caravan travelling to Shyok.
This day’s march took us eastwards to a place called Bulak (the spring); it should properly have been called Guristan (the graveyard), for here lay at least twenty dead horses. During a ride of two hours I had counted sixty-three carcases of horses; it is wonderful that trade on this caravan route, the highest in the world, can be profitable.
From there the route ran up the narrow fissured Murgu valley, at first up and down over hills, where numbers of dead horses, which had once been strong and fat, showed us the way. Then we descended a break-neck path into the deep valley, where spring water at the bottom formed cracked domes of ice. Then on the slopes of the left flank we climbed again up a zigzag path; the snow became deeper and was piled up, especially on the path, so smooth that if the horses had made a false step we should have been lost beyond recovery. The landscape was magnificent, but it could not be properly enjoyed when the temperature about one o’clock was only 0.3°. And then again we went down headlong to the valley bottom, where we passed over a natural bridge of rock improved by the hand of man. Our direction had been east, but now we diverged more and more to the north and north-west.
The snow becomes deeper, the sun sinks, the shadows creep up the reddish-yellow hills, the wind is stronger, and one thinks: If this lasts much longer I shall freeze. At last we halt at the foot of a terrace on the right side of the valley, where the sheep are driven into a cave to keep them warm in the night. I slip down from the saddle with all my limbs numbed, and long for a fire. Not a trace of organic life was to be seen at camp No. 283. The horses and mules were tethered so that they stood in a close pack.
At this unlucky camp I made the first discovery on this new journey through Tibet. Abdul Kerim came to me at the fire and said:
“Sahib, we have barley for eight to ten days more; but in that time we shall reach Shahidulla, where we can get everything.”