I Escaped
With A Broken Rib And Some Severe Bruises, But The Horse Was Drowned.
Mr. Redslob, Who Had Thought That My Life Could Not Be Saved, And The
Tibetans Were So Distressed By The Accident That I Made Very Light Of
It, And Only Took One Day Of Rest.
The following morning some men
and animals were carried away, and afterwards the ford was impassable
for a fortnight.
Such risks are among the amenities of the great
trade route from India into Central Asia!
The Lower Nubra valley is wilder and narrower than the Upper, its
apricot orchards more luxuriant, its wolf-haunted hippophae and
tamarisk thickets more dense. Its villages are always close to
ravines, the mouths of which are filled with chod-tens, manis,
prayer-wheels, and religious buildings. Access to them is usually up
the stony beds of streams over-arched by apricots. The camping-
grounds are apricot orchards. The apricot foliage is rich, and the
fruit small but delicious. The largest fruit tree I saw measured
nine feet six inches in girth six feet from the ground. Strangers
are welcome to eat as much of the fruit as they please, provided that
they return the stones to the proprietor. It is true that Nubra
exports dried apricots, and the women were splitting and drying the
fruit on every house roof, but the special raison d'etre of the tree
is the clear, white, fragrant, and highly illuminating oil made from
the kernels by the simple process of crushing them between two
stones.
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