The Early Winter Traffic Chiefly Follows Along River
Beds, Then Nearly Dry, While Summer Caravans Have To Labour Along
Difficult Tracks At Great Heights, Where Mud And Snow Avalanches Are
Common, To Climb Dangerous Rock Ladders, And To Cross Glaciers And
The Risky Fords Of The Shayok.
Nubra is similar in character to
Ladak, but it is hotter and more fertile, the mountains are loftier,
the gonpos are more numerous, and the people are simpler, more
religious, and more purely Tibetan.
Mr. Redslob loved Nubra, and as
love begets love he received a hearty welcome at Digar and everywhere
else.
The descent to the Shayok River gave us a most severe day of twelve
hours. The river had covered the usual track, and we had to take to
torrent beds and precipice ledges, I on one yak, and my tent on
another. In years of travel I have never seen such difficulties.
Eventually at dusk Mr. Redslob, Gergan, the servants, and I descended
on a broad shingle bed by the rushing Shayok; but it was not till
dawn on the following day that, by means of our two yaks and the
muleteers, our baggage and food arrived, the baggage horses being
brought down unloaded, with men holding the head and tail of each.
Our saddle horses, which we led with us, were much cut by falls.
Gyalpo fell fully twenty feet, and got his side laid open. The
baggage horses, according to their owners, had all gone over one
precipice, which delayed them five hours.
Below us lay two leaky scows, and eight men from Sati, on the other
side of the Shayok, are pledged to the Government to ferry
travellers; but no amount of shouting and yelling, or burning of
brushwood, or even firing, brought them to the rescue, though their
pleasant lights were only a mile off. Snow fell, the wind was strong
and keen, and our tent-pegs were only kept down by heavy stones.
Blankets in abundance were laid down, yet failed to soften the
'paving stones' on which I slept that night! We had tea and rice,
but our men, whose baggage was astray on the mountains, were without
food for twenty-two hours, positively refusing to eat our food or
cook fresh rice in our cooking pots! To such an extent has Hindu
caste-feeling infected Moslems!
The disasters of that day's march, besides various breakages, were,
two servants helpless from 'pass-poison' and bruises; a Ladaki, who
had rolled over a precipice, with a broken arm, and Gergan bleeding
from an ugly scalp wound, also from a fall.
By eight o'clock the next morning the sun was high and brilliant, the
snows of the ravines under its fierce heat were melting fast, and the
river, roaring hoarsely, was a mad rush of grey rapids and grey foam;
but three weeks later in the season, lower down, its many branches
are only two feet deep. This Shayok, which cannot in any way be
circumvented, is the great obstacle on this Yarkand trade route.
Travellers and their goods make the perilous passage in the scow, but
their animals swim, and are often paralysed by the ice-cold water and
drowned.
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