Verdureless And Waterless Stretches, In Crossing Which Our Poor
Animals Were Two Nights Without Food, Brought Us To The Glacier-
Blue
waters of the Serchu, tumbling along in a deep broad gash, and
farther on to a lateral torrent which
Is the boundary between Rupchu,
tributary to Kashmir, and Lahul or British Tibet, under the rule of
the Empress of India. The tents were ready pitched in a grassy
hollow by the river; horses, cows, and goats were grazing near them,
and a number of men were preparing food. A Tibetan approached me,
accompanied by a creature in a nondescript dress speaking Hindustani
volubly. On a band across his breast were the British crown, and a
plate with the words 'Commissioner's chaprassie, Kulu district.' I
never felt so extinguished. Liberty seemed lost, and the romance of
the desert to have died out in one moment! At the camping-ground I
found rows of salaaming Lahulis drawn up, and Hassan Khan in a state
which was a compound of pomposity and jubilant excitement. The
tahsildar (really the Tibetan honorary magistrate), he said, had
received instructions from the Lieutenant-Governor of the Panjab that
I was on the way to Kylang, and was to 'want for nothing.' So
twenty-four men, nine horses, a flock of goats, and two cows had been
waiting for me for three days in the Serchu valley. I wrote a polite
note to the magistrate, and sent all back except the chaprassie, the
cows, and the cowherd, my servants looking much crestfallen.
We crossed the Baralacha Pass in wind and snow showers into a climate
in which moisture began to be obvious. At short distances along the
pass, which extends for many miles, there are rude semicircular
walls, three feet high, all turned in one direction, in the shelter
of which travellers crouch to escape from the strong cutting wind.
My men suffered far more than on the two higher passes, and it was
difficult to dislodge them from these shelters, where they lay
groaning, gasping, and suffering from vertigo and nose-bleeding. The
cold was so severe that I walked over the loftiest part of the pass,
and for the first time felt slight effects of the ladug. At a height
of 15,000 feet, in the midst of general desolation, grew, in the
shelter of rocks, poppies (Mecanopsis aculeata), blue as the Tibetan
skies, their centres filled with a cluster of golden-yellow stamens,-
-a most charming sight. Ten or twelve of these exquisite blossoms
grow on one stalk, and stalk, leaf, and seed-vessels are guarded by
very stiff thorns. Lower down flowers abounded, and at the camping-
ground of Patseo (12,000 feet), where the Tibetan sheep caravans
exchange their wool, salt, and borax for grain, the ground was
covered with soft greensward, and real rain fell. Seen from the
Baralacha Pass are vast snowfields, glaciers, and avalanche slopes.
This barrier, and the Rotang, farther south, close this trade route
practically for seven months of the year, for they catch the monsoon
rains, which at that altitude are snows from fifteen to thirty feet
deep; while on the other side of the Baralacha and throughout Rupchu
and Ladak the snowfall is insignificant. So late as August, when I
crossed, there were four perfect snow bridges over the Bhaga, and
snowfields thirty-six feet deep along its margin. At Patseo the
tahsildar, with a retinue and animals laden with fodder, came to pay
his respects to me, and invited me to his house, three days' journey.
These were the first human beings we had seen for three days.
A few miles south of the Baralacha Pass some birch trees appeared on
a slope, the first natural growth of timber that I had seen since
crossing the Zoji La. Lower down there were a few more, then stunted
specimens of the pencil cedar, and the mountains began to show a
shade of green on their lower slopes. Butterflies appeared also, and
a vulture, a grand bird on the wing, hovered ominously over us for
some miles, and was succeeded by an equally ominous raven. On the
excellent bridle-track cut on the face of the precipices which
overhang the Bhaga, there is in nine miles only one spot in which it
is possible to pitch a five-foot tent, and at Darcha, the first
hamlet in Lahul, the only camping-ground is on the house roofs.
There the Chang-pas and their yaks and horses who had served me
pleasantly and faithfully from Tsala left me, and returned to the
freedom of their desert life. At Kolang, the next hamlet, where the
thunder of the Bhaga was almost intolerable, Hara Chang, the
magistrate, one of the thakurs or feudal proprietors of Lahul, with
his son and nephew and a large retinue, called on me; and the next
morning Mr. - and I went by invitation to visit him in his castle, a
magnificently situated building on a rocky spur 1,000 feet above the
camping-ground, attained by a difficult climb, and nearly on a level
with the glittering glaciers and ice-falls on the other side of the
Bhaga. It only differs from Leh and Stok castles in having blue
glass in some of the smaller windows. In the family temple, in
addition to the usual life-size images of Buddha and the Triad, there
was a female divinity, carved at Jallandhur in India, copied from a
statue representing Queen Victoria in her younger days - a very
fitting possession for the highest government official in Lahul. The
thakur, Hara Chang, is wealthy and a rigid Buddhist, and uses his
very considerable influence against the work of the Moravian
missionaries in the valley. The rude path down to the bridle-road,
through fields of barley and buckwheat, is bordered by roses,
gooseberries, and masses of wild flowers.
The later marches after reaching Darcha are grand beyond all
description. The track, scaffolded or blasted out of the rock at a
height of from 1,000 to 3,000 feet above the thundering Bhaga, is
scarcely a rifle-shot from the mountain mass dividing it from the
Chandra, a mass covered with nearly unbroken ice and snowfields, out
of which rise pinnacles of naked rock 21,000 and 22,000 feet in
altitude.
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