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. The region is the 'abode of snow,' and glaciers of great
size fill up every depression. Humidity, vegetation, and beauty
reappear together, wild flowers and ferns abound, and pencil cedars
in clumps rise above the artificial plantations of the valley. Wheat
ripens at an altitude of 12,000 feet. Picturesque villages,
surrounded by orchards, adorn the mountain spurs; chod-tens and
gonpos, with white walls and fluttering flags, brighten the scene;
feudal castles crown the heights, and where the mountains are
loftiest, the snowfields and glaciers most imposing, and the greenery
densest, the village of Kylang, the most important in Lahul as the
centre of trade, government, and Christian missions, hangs on ledges
of the mountain-side 1,000 feet above Bhaga, whose furious course can
be traced far down the valley by flashes of sunlit foam.
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