This Is Shergol, The First Village Of Buddhists,
And There I Was 'among The Tibetans.'
CHAPTER II - SHERGOL AND LEH
The chaos of rocks and sand, walled in by vermilion and orange
mountains, on which the village of Shergol stands, offered no
facilities for camping; but somehow the men managed to pitch my tent
on a steep slope, where I had to place my trestle bed astride an
irrigation channel, down which the water bubbled noisily, on its way
to keep alive some miserable patches of barley. At Shergol and
elsewhere fodder is so scarce that the grain is not cut, but pulled
up by the roots.
The intensely human interest of the journey began at that point. Not
greater is the contrast between the grassy slopes and deodar-clothed
mountains of Kashmir and the flaming aridity of Lesser Tibet, than
between the tall, dark, handsome natives of the one, with their
statuesque and shrinking women, and the ugly, short, squat, yellow-
skinned, flat-nosed, oblique-eyed, uncouth-looking people of the
other. The Kashmiris are false, cringing, and suspicious; the
Tibetans truthful, independent, and friendly, one of the pleasantest
of peoples. I 'took' to them at once at Shergol, and terribly faulty
though their morals are in some respects, I found no reason to change
my good opinion of them in the succeeding four months.
The headman or go-pa came to see me, introduced me to the objects of
interest, which are a gonpo, or monastery, built into the rock, with
a brightly coloured front, and three chod-tens, or relic-holders,
painted blue, red, and yellow, and daubed with coarse arabesques and
representations of deities, one having a striking resemblance to Mr.
Gladstone.
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