MY FIRST MISSION TO BHUTAN
commanding at Chumbi, took thirteen hours between Champitang and Chongu, a distance of ten miles, and had to abandon his transport; and two days later my party found the bodies of two coolies out of a batch going to work on the Am-mo-chhu Survey, who had perished from exposure to the cold on the top of the Natu-la.
We finally left Gangtak on March 29, travelling for the first six miles over an excellent road, which during the late expedition to Lhasa was widened sufficiently for wheeled traffic, and for the remaining distance to Karponang, our first halting-place, over a good mule road. Karponang was the first stage for the coolies carrying supplies over the Natu-la during the Lhasa Expedition, and we put up for the night in the small, inconvenient huts still standing, glad to get out of the wet and gloom which had come down as the day waned. This part of the road is particularly beautiful in fine weather, which we fortunately had the next morning, for the road winds gradually up through forest-clad hills, with white magnolia and scarlet rhododendron in full bloom, and the sides of the road were carpeted with primulas in every shade of mauve and purple; but this year the feathery foliage of the blue bamboo was missing, and replaced by melancholy, dried-up sticks, for the bamboos had flowered and seeded the year before and then died. We crossed some fine precipices on the older and more difficult track, from which we had a magnificent view over a sea of hills stretching in one uninterrupted panorama to the plains of India, perfectly distinct in the clear atmosphere only to be met with at this time of the year after rain. As we mounted higher we came to snow, at first not very deep, and the mules had no difficulty in getting through it, but from Lagyap onwards the whole country was a smooth white sheet, and it was impossible to realise that Tani-tso was a lake. By the afternoon the usual blizzard commenced, and drove the drifting snow through the chinks in the plank walls of our miserable huts, the smoke down the chimneys, and reduced
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