The Mountains Of The Region,
Which Are From 20,000 To 23,000 Feet In Altitude, Are Seldom
Precipitous Or Picturesque, Except The Huge Red Needles Which Guard
The Lachalang Pass, But Are Rather 'monstrous Protuberances,' With
Arid Surfaces Of Disintegrated Rock.
Among these are remarkable
plateaux, which are taken advantage of by caravans, and which have
elevations of from 14,000 to 15,000 feet.
There are few permanent
rivers or streams, the lakes are salt, beside the springs, and on the
plateaux there is scanty vegetation, chiefly aromatic herbs; but on
the whole Rupchu is a desert of arid gravel. Its only inhabitants
are 500 nomads, and on the ten marches of the trade route, the bridle
paths, on which in some places labour has been spent, the tracks, not
always very legible, made by the passage of caravans, and rude dykes,
behind which travellers may shelter themselves from the wind, are the
only traces of man. Herds of the kyang, the wild horse of some
naturalists, and the wild ass of others, graceful and beautiful
creatures, graze within gunshot of the track without alarm, I had
thought Ladak windy, but Rupchu is the home of the winds, and the
marches must be arranged for the quietest time of the day. Happily
the gales blow with clockwork regularity, the day wind from the south
and south-west rising punctually at 9 a.m. and attaining its maximum
at 2.30, while the night wind from the north and north-east rises
about 9 p.m. and ceases about 5 a.m. Perfect silence is rare. The
highly rarefied air, rushing at great speed, when at its worst
deprives the traveller of breath, skins his face and hands, and
paralyses the baggage animals. In fact, neither man nor beast can
face it. The horses 'turn tail' and crowd together, and the men
build up the baggage into a wall and crouch in the lee of it. The
heat of the solar rays is at the same time fearful. At Lachalang, at
a height of over 15,000 feet, I noted a solar temperature of 152
degrees, only 35 degrees below the boiling point of water in the same
region, which is about 187 degrees. To make up for this, the mercury
falls below the freezing point every night of the year, even in
August the difference of temperature in twelve hours often exceeding
120 degrees! The Rupchu nomads, however, delight in this climate of
extremes, and regard Leh as a place only to be visited in winter, and
Kulu and Kashmir as if they were the malarial swamps of the Congo!
We crossed the Toglang Pass, at a height of 18,150 feet, with less
suffering from ladug than on either the Digar or Kharzong Passes.
Indeed Gyalpo carried me over it stopping to take breath every few
yards. It was then a long dreary march to the camping-ground of
Tsala, where the Chang-pas spend the four summer months; the guides
and baggage animals lost the way and did not appear until the next
day, and in consequence the servants slept unsheltered in the snow.
News travels as if by magic in desert places.
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