Three Years in Tibet/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII.
The Sublime Himalaya.
It was in the beginning of the month of March, 1899, that, followed by a retinue of three men and one old dame, I bade farewell to my kind host and, seated on a snow-white pony, given me by my fatherly friend, left the Kāṣyapa Buḍḍha tower. I was not in good health that day, on account of fever and weakness, but I was obliged to start from Kātmāndu, for it was very dangerous for me to stay there any longer, as I was quite a stranger to the Nepālese, and they might find out my nationality, and stop me from proceeding further. So I took the assistance of the horse; and the good animal proved to be a splendid mountaineer, and carried me up steep ascents and down abrupt descents in perfect safety. We directed our course towards the north-west, through the British Residency, the most beautiful and clean quarter in Kātmāndu, and through Nagar-yon, a hill famous for a cave where Nāgārjuna, a great Boḍhi-Saṭṭva, used to meditate. We arrived at a village called Jittle-Pedee in the evening, and passed the night under the eaves of a shop-keeper's house.
The present Ruler of Nepāl is a Hinḍu, and keeps the caste system as rigidly as it is kept in India, where the people belonging to that religion do not allow a foreigner to enter their rooms, or to eat with them. Therefore we were obliged to pass the night outside a house, or under a rock, or in the forests. Here I must not omit some interesting things about my travels among the Himālayan mountains from Kātmāndu to the lake Mānasarovara through Nepāl. The country being extra-territorial, I believe no bold European or American had trodden this precipitous path before me; hence I would like to mention everything connected therewith, but as my object is Tibet, I cannot spend much space on the inner Himalayas of Nepāl. I shall only mention briefly what will be considered interesting by my readers in general.
On the third day of our departure from Kātmāndu, we travelled for more than forty miles, and arrived at a small trading town called Chunge, situated on the west bank of the Kirong river (Tirsuli Gandak). Just north of the town, on the bank of that river there is a pretty forest in which we slept well through the night, in a lonely spot, lulled by the rolling sounds of the mountain-rivers' grand music. Early on the following morning we started on the north-western path leading to Pokhra, although there is a short way, only five days' journey from the place to Kirong in Tibet; but there the officers of the frontier guard the passes against all strangers. In three days' journey after this we made about forty miles, passed the villages Bareng-Bareng and Sareng, and, crossing the river Agu, we arrived at a famous town, Algata. I have not met with any maps which mention this name. The town is situated on the west bank of the river which the natives called Buri-Gaṅgā (Buria Gandak); this river is crossed by an iron hanging bridge. The town itself is important on account of its trade with Tibet; I saw more than fifty people from Tibet and from Nishang—a northern frontier province of Nepāl. During the nine days after leaving Algata we passed many valleys, rocky mountains, streams, hill pastures, forests full of rhododendrons, and deep forests of fir, oak and pine, with the peaks of the snowy range in view. We also passed several villages—Nimareshi, Daramhaje, Rutel, Manicheka and Sātmuni.
We made a distance of something less than one hundred miles, and then reached a town called Pokhra. Pokhra looked like a town of villas at home, the site being chosen for the beauty of its natural scenery. Bamboo-covered ravines, flower-roofed heights, rich in green foliage, picturesque because of a rushing and winding stream, itself set in the midst of high mountains — such were the characteristic features of Pokhra. The stream I speak of has its source in the Machipusa (fish-tail) peak, and its waters are milky white, probably on account of their carrying in them particles of mountain clay. In all my travels in the Himalayas I saw no scenery so enchanting as that which enraptured me at Pokhra. Another thing notable about that place was that it was the cheapest spot in Nepal for all kinds of commodities. Twenty-five sens bought, for instance, four sho of rice there; while, in other places, that amount would buy only two sho and a half at the most. At Pokhra I made a rather long stay of six days, as I had to have a tent made before I proceeded further, and twenty-five rupees bought for me one made to order, and large enough for cooking inside also.
After leaving Pokhra we turned due north, and the ascent became very steep, so steep at places that I had to get off my horse, send the animal by a round-about way through the valleys, and myself go afoot for half-a-day. On one occasion I was proceeding on horseback on a narrow path that ran along a very high precipice, when, deeply engrossed as I was in thought about the near future, I found myself all of a sudden thrown down to the ground, before I had had time to free myself from a branch of a tree, which had caught me by the neck and caused the disaster, assisted by the horse's movement onward. Very fortunately my horse came to a halt just then, and as I never let go my hold of the bridle, I narrowly escaped from rolling a thousand fathoms down a craggy precipice, to reach the bottom a mangled carcass! Realising the danger I was in, I hastily tried to pick myself up, but in vain; for evidently I had struck my hip very hard in my fall, and could not raise myself up. Consequently I had to requisition the hacks of my two servants in turn, thus making an ascent of about a mile to the top of the mountains we were crossing over. On reaching the top, I found the pain too great to permit the continuance of my journey, and I camped there for two days, during which time my diligent application of some camphor tincture, which I had with me, to the injured parts, gradually relieved me of my suffering. On resuming our journey, now down the mountain, I could not help being profoundly impressed with the power of impenetrable solitude, for the path lay through a valley where nature, in her wildest seclusion, reigned supreme. My sense of loneliness was heightened by the note of the cuckoo, which now and then broke the oppressive silence, and an uta then came to me thus:
In tortuous paths my lonely way now lies
Among rough mountain tracks and scenes all wild;
The rocks and giant trees in silence stand,
With naught to break the silent depths around
Except the solitary cuckoo's notes,
That makes the awful silence more profound.