The Vale of Kashmir is too well known to require description. It is
the 'happy hunting-ground' of the Anglo-Indian sportsman and tourist,
the resort of artists and invalids, the home of pashm shawls and
exquisitely embroidered fabrics, and the land of Lalla Rookh. Its
inhabitants, chiefly Moslems, infamously governed by Hindus, are a
feeble race, attracting little interest, valuable to travellers as
'coolies' or porters, and repulsive to them from the mingled cunning
and obsequiousness which have been fostered by ages of oppression.
But even for them there is the dawn of hope, for the Church
Missionary Society has a strong medical and educational mission at
the capital, a hospital and dispensary under the charge of a lady
M.D. have been opened for women, and a capable and upright
'settlement officer,' lent by the Indian Government, is investigating
the iniquitous land arrangements with a view to a just settlement.
I left the Panjab railroad system at Rawul Pindi, bought my camp
equipage, and travelled through the grand ravines which lead to
Kashmir or the Jhelum Valley by hill-cart, on horseback, and by
house-boat, reaching Srinagar at the end of April, when the velvet
lawns were at their greenest, and the foliage was at its freshest,
and the deodar-skirted mountains which enclose this fairest gem of
the Himalayas still wore their winter mantle of unsullied snow.
Making Srinagar my headquarters, I spent two months in travelling in
Kashmir, half the time in a native house-boat on the Jhelum and Pohru
rivers, and the other half on horseback, camping wherever the scenery
was most attractive.
By the middle of June mosquitos were rampant, the grass was tawny, a
brown dust haze hung over the valley, the camp-fires of a multitude
glared through the hot nights and misty moonlight of the Munshibagh,
English tents dotted the landscape, there was no mountain, valley, or
plateau, however remote, free from the clatter of English voices and
the trained servility of Hindu servants, and even Sonamarg, at an
altitude of 8,000 feet and rough of access, had capitulated to lawn-
tennis. To a traveller this Anglo-Indian hubbub was intolerable, and
I left Srinagar and many kind friends on June 20 for the uplifted
plateaux of Lesser Tibet. My party consisted of myself, a thoroughly
competent servant and passable interpreter, Hassan Khan, a Panjabi; a
seis, of whom the less that is said the better; and Mando, a Kashmiri
lad, a common coolie, who, under Hassan Khan's training, developed
into an efficient travelling servant, and later into a smart
khitmatgar.
Gyalpo, my horse, must not be forgotten--indeed, he cannot be, for he
left the marks of his heels or teeth on every one. He was a
beautiful creature, Badakshani bred, of Arab blood, a silver-grey, as
light as a greyhound and as strong as a cart-horse. He was higher in
the scale of intellect than any horse of my acquaintance. His
cleverness at times suggested reasoning power, and his
mischievousness a sense of humour. He walked five miles an hour,
jumped like a deer, climbed like a yak, was strong and steady in
perilous fords, tireless, hardy, hungry, frolicked along ledges of
precipices and over crevassed glaciers, was absolutely fearless, and
his slender legs and the use he made of them were the marvel of all.
He was an enigma to the end. He was quite untamable, rejected all
dainties with indignation, swung his heels into people's faces when
they went near him, ran at them with his teeth, seized unwary
passers-by by their kamar bands, and shook them as a dog shakes a
rat, would let no one go near him but Mando, for whom he formed at
first sight a most singular attachment, but kicked and struck with
his forefeet, his eyes all the time dancing with fun, so that one
could never decide whether his ceaseless pranks were play or vice.
He was always tethered in front of my tent with a rope twenty feet
long, which left him practically free; he was as good as a watchdog,
and his antics and enigmatical savagery were the life and terror of
the camp. I was never weary of watching him, the curves of his form
were so exquisite, his movements so lithe and rapid, his small head
and restless little ears so full of life and expression, the
variations in his manner so frequent, one moment savagely attacking
some unwary stranger with a scream of rage, the next laying his
lovely head against Mando's cheek with a soft cooing sound and a
childlike gentleness. When he was attacking anybody or frolicking,
his movements and beauty can only be described by a phrase of the
Apostle James, 'the grace of the fashion of it.' Colonel Durand, of
Gilgit celebrity, to whom I am indebted for many other kindnesses,
gave him to me in exchange for a cowardly, heavy Yarkand horse, and
had previously vainly tried to tame him. His wild eyes were like
those of a seagull. He had no kinship with humanity.
In addition, I had as escort an Afghan or Pathan, a soldier of the
Maharajah's irregular force of foreign mercenaries, who had been sent
to meet me when I entered Kashmir. This man, Usman Shah, was a stage
ruffian in appearance. He wore a turban of prodigious height
ornamented with poppies or birds' feathers, loved fantastic colours
and ceaseless change of raiment, walked in front of me carrying a big
sword over his shoulder, plundered and beat the people, terrified the
women, and was eventually recognised at Leh as a murderer, and as
great a ruffian in reality as he was in appearance. An attendant of
this kind is a mistake. The brutality and rapacity he exercises
naturally make the people cowardly or surly, and disinclined to trust
a traveller so accompanied.
Finally, I had a Cabul tent, 7 ft. 6 in. by 8 ft. 6 in., weighing,
with poles and iron pins, 75 lbs., a trestle bed and cork mattress, a
folding table and chair, and an Indian dhurrie as a carpet.
My servants had a tent 5 ft. 6 in. square, weighing only 10 lbs.,
which served as a shelter tent for me during the noonday halt. A
kettle, copper pot, and frying pan, a few enamelled iron table
equipments, bedding, clothing, working and sketching materials,
completed my outfit. The servants carried wadded quilts for beds and
bedding, and their own cooking utensils, unwillingness to use those
belonging to a Christian being nearly the last rag of religion which
they retained. The only stores I carried were tea, a quantity of
Edwards' desiccated soup, and a little saccharin. The 'house,'
furniture, clothing, &c., were a light load for three mules, engaged
at a shilling a day each, including the muleteer. Sheep, coarse
flour, milk, and barley were procurable at very moderate prices on
the road.
Leh, the capital of Ladakh or Lesser Tibet, is nineteen marches from
Srinagar, but I occupied twenty-six days on the journey, and made the
first 'march' by water, taking my house-boat to Ganderbal, a few
hours from Srinagar, via the Mar Nullah and Anchar Lake. Never had
this Venice of the Himalayas, with a broad rushing river for its high
street and winding canals for its back streets, looked so
entrancingly beautiful as in the slant sunshine of the late June
afternoon. The light fell brightly on the river at the Residency
stairs where I embarked, on perindas and state barges, with their
painted arabesques, gay canopies, and 'banks' of thirty and forty
crimson-clad, blue-turbaned, paddling men; on the gay facade and
gold-domed temple of the Maharajah's Palace, on the massive deodar
bridges which for centuries have defied decay and the fierce flood of
the Jhelum, and on the quaintly picturesque wooden architecture and
carved brown lattice fronts of the houses along the swirling
waterway, and glanced mirthfully through the dense leafage of the
superb planes which overhang the dark-green water. But the mercury
was 92 degrees in the shade and the sun-blaze terrific, and it was a
relief when the boat swung round a corner, and left the stir of the
broad, rapid Jhelum for a still, narrow, and sharply winding canal,
which intersects a part of Srinagar lying between the Jhelum and the
hill-crowning fort of Hari Parbat. There the shadows were deep, and
chance lights alone fell on the red dresses of the women at the
ghats, and on the shaven, shiny heads of hundreds of amphibious boys
who were swimming and aquatically romping in the canal, which is at
once the sewer and the water supply of the district.
Several hours were spent in a slow and tortuous progress through
scenes of indescribable picturesqueness--a narrow waterway spanned by
sharp-angled stone bridges, some of them with houses on the top, or
by old brown wooden bridges festooned with vines, hemmed in by lofty
stone embankments into which sculptured stones from ancient temples
are wrought, on the top of which are houses of rich men, fancifully
built, with windows of fretwork of wood, or gardens with kiosks, and
lower embankments sustaining many-balconied dwellings, rich in colour
and fantastic in design, their upper fronts projecting over the water
and supported on piles. There were gigantic poplars wreathed with
vines, great mulberry trees hanging their tempting fruit just out of
reach, huge planes overarching the water, their dense leafage
scraping the mat roof of the boat; filthy ghats thronged with white-
robed Moslems performing their scanty religious ablutions; great
grain boats heavily thatched, containing not only families, but their
sheep and poultry; and all the other sights of a crowded Srinagar
waterway, the houses being characteristically distorted and out of
repair. This canal gradually widens into the Anchar Lake, a reedy
mere of indefinite boundaries, the breeding-ground of legions of
mosquitos; and after the tawny twilight darkened into a stifling
night we made fast to a reed bed, not reaching Ganderbal till late
the next morning, where my horse and caravan awaited me under a
splendid plane-tree.
For the next five days we marched up the Sind Valley, one of the most
beautiful in Kashmir from its grandeur and variety. Beginning among
quiet rice-fields and brown agricultural villages at an altitude of
5,000 feet, the track, usually bad and sometimes steep and perilous,
passes through flower-gemmed alpine meadows, along dark gorges above
the booming and rushing Sind, through woods matted with the sweet
white jasmine, the lower hem of the pine and deodar forests which
ascend the mountains to a considerable altitude, past rifts giving
glimpses of dazzling snow-peaks, over grassy slopes dotted with
villages, houses, and shrines embosomed in walnut groves, in sight of
the frowning crags of Haramuk, through wooded lanes and park-like
country over which farms are thinly scattered, over unrailed and
shaky bridges, and across avalanche slopes, till it reaches
Gagangair, a dream of lonely beauty, with a camping-ground of velvety
sward under noble plane-trees. Above this place the valley closes in
between walls of precipices and crags, which rise almost abruptly
from the Sind to heights of 8,000 and 10,000 feet. The road in many
places is only a series of steep and shelving ledges above the raging
river, natural rock smoothed and polished into riskiness by the
passage for centuries of the trade into Central Asia from Western
India, Kashmir, and Afghanistan. Its precariousness for animals was
emphasised to me by five serious accidents which occurred in the week
of my journey, one of them involving the loss of the money, clothing,
and sporting kit of an English officer bound for Ladakh for three
months. Above this tremendous gorge the mountains open out, and
after crossing to the left bank of the Sind a sharp ascent brought me
to the beautiful alpine meadow of Sonamarg, bright with spring
flowers, gleaming with crystal streams, and fringed on all sides by
deciduous and coniferous trees, above and among which are great
glaciers and the snowy peaks of Tilail. Fashion has deserted
Sonamarg, rough of access, for Gulmarg, a caprice indicated by the
ruins of several huts and of a church. The pure bracing air,
magnificent views, the proximity and accessibility of glaciers, and
the presence of a kind friend who was 'hutted' there for the summer,
made Sonamarg a very pleasant halt before entering upon the supposed
seventies of the journey to Lesser Tibet.
The five days' march, though propitious and full of the charm of
magnificent scenery, had opened my eyes to certain unpleasantnesses.
I found that Usman Shah maltreated the villagers, and not only robbed
them of their best fowls, but requisitioned all manner of things in
my name, though I scrupulously and personally paid for everything,
beating the people with his scabbarded sword if they showed any
intention of standing upon their rights. Then I found that my clever
factotum, not content with the legitimate 'squeeze' of ten per cent.,
was charging me double price for everything and paying the sellers
only half the actual price, this legerdemain being perpetrated in my
presence. He also by threats got back from the coolies half their
day's wages after I had paid them, received money for barley for
Gyalpo, and never bought it, a fact brought to light by the growing
feebleness of the horse, and cheated in all sorts of mean and
plausible ways, though I paid him exceptionally high wages, and was
prepared to 'wink' at a moderate amount of dishonesty, so long as it
affected only myself. It has a lowering influence upon one to live
in a fog of lies and fraud, and the attempt to checkmate a fraudulent
Asiatic ends in extreme discomfiture.
I left Sonamarg late on a lovely afternoon for a short march through
forest-skirted alpine meadows to Baltal, the last camping-ground in
Kashmir, a grassy valley at the foot of the Zoji La, the first of
three gigantic steps by which the lofty plateaux of Central Asia are
attained. On the road a large affluent of the Sind, which tumbles
down a pine-hung gorge in broad sheets of foam, has to be crossed.
My seis, a rogue, was either half-witted or pretended to be so, and,
in spite of orders to the contrary, led Gyalpo upon a bridge at a
considerable height, formed of two poles with flat pieces of stone
laid loosely over them not more than a foot broad. As the horse
reached the middle, the structure gave a sort of turn, there was a
vision of hoofs in air and a gleam of scarlet, and Gyalpo, the hope
of the next four months, after rolling over more than once, vanished
among rocks and surges of the wildest description. He kept his
presence of mind, however, recovered himself, and by a desperate
effort got ashore lower down, with legs scratched and bleeding and
one horn of the saddle incurably bent.
Mr. Maconochie of the Panjab Civil Service, and Dr. E. Neve of the C.
M. S. Medical Mission in Kashmir, accompanied me from Sonamarg over
the pass, and that night Mr. M. talked seriously to Usman Shah on the
subject of his misconduct, and with such singular results that
thereafter I had little cause for complaint. He came to me and said,
'The Commissioner Sahib thinks I give Mem Sahib a great deal of
trouble;' to which I replied in a cold tone, 'Take care you don't
give me any more.' The gist of the Sahib's words was the very
pertinent suggestion that it would eventually be more to his interest
to serve me honestly and faithfully than to cheat me.
Baltal lies at the feet of a precipitous range, the peaks of which
exceed Mont Blanc in height. Two gorges unite there. There is not a
hut within ten miles. Big camp-fires blazed. A few shepherds lay
under the shelter of a mat screen. The silence and solitude were
most impressive under the frosty stars and the great Central Asian
barrier. Sunrise the following morning saw us on the way up a huge
gorge with nearly perpendicular sides, and filled to a great depth
with snow. Then came the Zoji La, which, with the Namika La and the
Fotu La, respectively 11,300, 13,000, and 13,500 feet, are the three
great steps from Kashmir to the Tibetan heights. The two latter
passes present no difficulties. The Zoji La is a thoroughly severe
pass, the worst, with the exception perhaps of the Sasir, on the
Yarkand caravan route. The track, cut, broken, and worn on the side
of a wall of rock nearly 2,000 feet in abrupt elevation, is a series
of rough narrow zigzags, rarely, if ever, wide enough for laden
animals to pass each other, composed of broken ledges often nearly
breast high, and shelving surfaces of abraded rock, up which animals
have to leap and scramble as best they may.
Trees and trailers drooped over the path, ferns and lilies bloomed in
moist recesses, and among myriads of flowers a large blue and cream
columbine was conspicuous by its beauty and exquisite odour. The
charm of the detail tempted one to linger at every turn, and all the
more so because I knew that I should see nothing more of the grace
and bounteousness of Nature till my projected descent into Kulu in
the late autumn. The snow-filled gorge on whose abrupt side the path
hangs, the Zoji La (Pass), is geographically remarkable as being the
lowest depression in the great Himalayan range for 300 miles; and by
it, in spite of infamous bits of road on the Sind and Suru rivers,
and consequent losses of goods and animals, all the traffic of
Kashmir, Afghanistan, and the Western Panjab finds its way into
Central Asia. It was too early in the season, however, for more than
a few enterprising caravans to be on the road.
The last look upon Kashmir was a lingering one. Below, in shadow,
lay the Baltal camping-ground, a lonely deodar-belted flowery meadow,
noisy with the dash of icy torrents tumbling down from the snowfields
and glaciers upborne by the gigantic mountain range into which we had
penetrated by the Zoji Pass. The valley, lying in shadow at their
base, was a dream of beauty, green as an English lawn, starred with
white lilies, and dotted with clumps of trees which were festooned
with red and white roses, clematis, and white jasmine. Above the
hardier deciduous trees appeared the Pinus excelsa, the silver fir,
and the spruce; higher yet the stately grace of the deodar clothed
the hillsides; and above the forests rose the snow mountains of
Tilail, pink in the sunrise. High above the Zoji, itself 11,500 feet
in altitude, a mass of grey and red mountains, snow-slashed and snow-
capped, rose in the dewy rose-flushed atmosphere in peaks, walls,
pinnacles, and jagged ridges, above which towered yet loftier
summits, bearing into the heavenly blue sky fields of unsullied snow
alone. The descent on the Tibetan side is slight and gradual. The
character of the scenery undergoes an abrupt change. There are no
more trees, and the large shrubs which for a time take their place
degenerate into thorny bushes, and then disappear. There were
mountains thinly clothed with grass here and there, mountains of bare
gravel and red rock, grey crags, stretches of green turf, sunlit
peaks with their snows, a deep, snow-filled ravine, eastwards and
beyond a long valley filled with a snowfield fringed with pink
primulas; and that was CENTRAL ASIA.
We halted for breakfast, iced our cold tea in the snow, Mr. M. gave a
final charge to the Afghan, who swore by his Prophet to be faithful,
and I parted from my kind escorts with much reluctance, and started
on my Tibetan journey, with but a slender stock of Hindustani, and
two men who spoke not a word of English. On that day's march of
fourteen miles there is not a single hut. The snowfield extended for
five miles, from ten to seventy feet deep, much crevassed, and
encumbered with avalanches. In it the Dras, truly 'snow-born,'
appeared, issuing from a chasm under a blue arch of ice and snow,
afterwards to rage down the valley, to be forded many times or
crossed on snow bridges. After walking for some time, and getting a
bad fall down an avalanche slope, I mounted Gyalpo, and the clever,
plucky fellow frolicked over the snow, smelt and leapt crevasses
which were too wide to be stepped over, put his forelegs together and
slid down slopes like a Swiss mule, and, though carried off his feet
in a ford by the fierce surges of the Dras, struggled gamely to
shore. Steep grassy hills, and peaks with gorges cleft by the
thundering Dras, and stretches of rolling grass succeeded each other.
Then came a wide valley mostly covered with stones brought down by
torrents, a few plots of miserable barley grown by irrigation, and
among them two buildings of round stones and mud, about six feet
high, with flat mud roofs, one of which might be called the village,
and the other the caravanserai. On the village roof were stacks of
twigs and of the dried dung of animals, which is used for fuel, and
the whole female population, adult and juvenile, engaged in picking
wool. The people of this village of Matayan are Kashmiris. As I had
an hour to wait for my tent, the women descended and sat in a circle
round me with a concentrated stare. They asked if I were dumb, and
why I wore no earrings or necklace, their own persons being loaded
with heavy ornaments. They brought children afflicted with skin-
diseases, and asked for ointment, and on hearing that I was hurt by a
fall, seized on my limbs and shampooed them energetically but not
undexterously. I prefer their sociability to the usual chilling
aloofness of the people of Kashmir.
The Serai consisted of several dark and dirty cells, built round a
blazing piece of sloping dust, the only camping-ground, and under the
entrance two platforms of animated earth, on which my servants cooked
and slept. The next day was Sunday, sacred to a halt; but there was
no fodder for the animals, and we were obliged to march to Dras,
following, where possible, the course of the river of that name,
which passes among highly-coloured and snow-slashed mountains, except
in places where it suddenly finds itself pent between walls of flame-
coloured or black rock, not ten feet apart, through which it boils
and rages, forming gigantic pot-holes. With every mile the
surroundings became more markedly of the Central Asian type. All day
long a white, scintillating sun blazes out of a deep blue, rainless,
cloudless sky. The air is exhilarating. The traveller is conscious
of daily-increasing energy and vitality. There are no trees, and
deep crimson roses along torrent beds are the only shrubs. But for a
brief fortnight in June, which chanced to occur during my journey,
the valleys and lower slopes present a wonderful aspect of beauty and
joyousness. Rose and pale pink primulas fringe the margin of the
snow, the dainty Pedicularis tubiflora covers moist spots with its
mantle of gold; great yellow and white, and small purple and white
anemones, pink and white dianthus, a very large myosotis, bringing
the intense blue of heaven down to earth, purple orchids by the
water, borage staining whole tracts deep blue, martagon lilies, pale
green lilies veined and spotted with brown, yellow, orange, and
purple vetches, painter's brush, dwarf dandelions, white clover,
filling the air with fragrance, pink and cream asters,
chrysanthemums, lychnis, irises, gentian, artemisia, and a hundred
others, form the undergrowth of millions of tall Umbelliferae and
Compositae, many of them peach-scented and mostly yellow. The wind
is always strong, and the millions of bright corollas, drinking in
the sun-blaze which perfects all too soon their brief but passionate
existence, rippled in broad waves of colour with an almost
kaleidoscopic effect. About the eleventh march from Srinagar, at
Kargil, a change for the worse occurs, and the remaining marches to
the capital of Ladakh are over blazing gravel or surfaces of denuded
rock, the singular Caprifolia horrida, with its dark-green mass of
wavy ovate leaves on trailing stems, and its fair, white, anemone-
like blossom, and the graceful Clematis orientalis, the only
vegetation.
Crossing a raging affluent of the Dras by a bridge which swayed and
shivered, the top of a steep hill offered a view of a great valley
with branches sloping up into the ravines of a complexity of mountain
ranges, from 18,000 to 21,000 feet in altitude, with glaciers at
times descending as low as 11,000 feet in their hollows. In
consequence of such possibilities of irrigation, the valley is green
with irrigated grass and barley, and villages with flat roofs
scattered among the crops, or perched on the spurs of flame-coloured
mountains, give it a wild cheerfulness. These Dras villages are
inhabited by hardy Dards and Baltis, short, jolly-looking, darker,
and far less handsome than the Kashmiris; but, unlike them, they
showed so much friendliness, as well as interest and curiosity, that
I remained with them for two days, visiting their villages and seeing
the 'sights' they had to show me, chiefly a great Sikh fort, a yak
bull, the zho, a hybrid, the interiors of their houses, a magnificent
view from a hilltop, and a Dard dance to the music of Dard reed
pipes. In return I sketched them individually and collectively as
far as time allowed, presenting them with the results, truthful and
ugly. I bought a sheep for 2s. 3d., and regaled the camp upon it,
the three which were brought for my inspection being ridden by boys
astride.
The evenings in the Dras valley were exquisite. As soon as the sun
went behind the higher mountains, peak above peak, red and snow-
slashed, flamed against a lemon sky, the strong wind moderated into a
pure stiff breeze, bringing up to camp the thunder of the Dras, and
the musical tinkle of streams sparkling in absolute purity. There
was no more need for boiling and filtering. Icy water could be drunk
in safety from every crystal torrent.
Leaving behind the Dras villages and their fertility, the narrow road
passes through a flaming valley above the Dras, walled in by bare,
riven, snow-patched peaks, with steep declivities of stones, huge
boulders, decaying avalanches, walls and spires of rock, some
vermilion, others pink, a few intense orange, some black, and many
plum-coloured, with a vitrified look, only to be represented by
purple madder. Huge red chasms with glacier-fed torrents, occasional
snowfields, intense solar heat radiating from dry and verdureless
rock, a ravine so steep .and narrow that for miles together there is
not space to pitch a five-foot tent, the deafening roar of a river
gathering volume and fury as it goes, rare openings, where willows
are planted with lucerne in their irrigated shade, among which the
traveller camps at night, and over all a sky of pure, intense blue
purpling into starry night, were the features of the next three
marches, noteworthy chiefly for the exchange of the thundering Dras
for the thundering Suru, and for some bad bridges and infamous bits
of road before reaching Kargil, where the mountains swing apart,
giving space to several villages. Miles of alluvium are under
irrigation there, poplars, willows, and apricots abound, and on some
damp sward under their shade at a great height I halted for two days
to enjoy the magnificence of the scenery and the refreshment of the
greenery. These Kargil villages are the capital of the small State
of Purik, under the Governorship of Baltistan or Little Tibet, and
are chiefly inhabited by Ladakhis who have become converts to Islam.
Racial characteristics, dress, and manners are everywhere effaced or
toned down by Mohammedanism, and the chilling aloofness and haughty
bearing of Islam were very pronounced among these converts.
The daily routine of the journey was as follows: By six a.m. I sent
on a coolie carrying the small tent and lunch basket to await me
half-way. Before seven I started myself, with Usman Shah in front of
me, leaving the servants to follow with the caravan. On reaching the
shelter tent I halted for two hours, or till the caravan had got a
good start after passing me. At the end of the march I usually found
the tent pitched on irrigated ground, near a hamlet, the headman of
which provided milk, fuel, fodder, and other necessaries at fixed
prices. 'Afternoon tea' was speedily prepared, and dinner,
consisting of roast meat and boiled rice, was ready two hours later.
After dinner I usually conversed with the headman on local interests,
and was in bed soon after eight. The servants and muleteers fed and
talked till nine, when the sound of their 'hubble-bubbles' indicated
that they were going to sleep, like most Orientals, with their heads
closely covered with their wadded quilts. Before starting each
morning the account was made out, and I paid the headman personally.
The vagaries of the Afghan soldier, when they were not a cause of
annoyance, were a constant amusement, though his ceaseless changes of
finery and the daily growth of his baggage awakened grave suspicions.
The swashbuckler marched four miles an hour in front of me with a
swinging military stride, a large scimitar in a heavily ornamented
scabbard over his shoulder. Tanned socks and sandals, black or white
leggings wound round from ankle to knee with broad bands of orange or
scarlet serge, white cambric knickerbockers, a white cambric shirt,
with a short white muslin frock with hanging sleeves and a leather
girdle over it, a red-peaked cap with a dark-blue pagri wound round
it, with one end hanging over his back, earrings, a necklace,
bracelets, and a profusion of rings, were his ordinary costume; and
in his girdle he wore a dirk and a revolver, and suspended from it a
long tobacco pouch made of the furry skin of some animal, a large
leather purse, and etceteras. As the days went on he blossomed into
blue and white muslin with a scarlet sash, wore a gold embroidered
peak and a huge white muslin turban, with much change of ornaments,
and appeared frequently with a great bunch of poppies or a cluster of
crimson roses surmounting all. His headgear was colossal. It and
the head together must have been fully a third of his total height.
He was a most fantastic object, and very observant and skilful in his
attentions to me; but if I had known what I afterwards knew, I should
have hesitated about taking these long lonely marches with him for my
sole attendant. Between Hassan Khan and this Afghan violent hatred
and jealousy existed.
I have mentioned roads, and my road as the great caravan route from
Western India into Central Asia. This is a fitting time for an
explanation. The traveller who aspires to reach the highlands of
Tibet from Kashmir cannot be borne along in a carriage or hill-cart.
For much of the way he is limited to a foot pace, and if he has
regard to his horse he walks down all rugged and steep descents,
which are many, and dismounts at most bridges. By 'roads' must be
understood bridle-paths, worn by traffic alone across the gravelly
valleys, but elsewhere constructed with great toil and expense, as
Nature compels, the road-maker to follow her lead, and carry his
track along the narrow valleys, ravines, gorges, and chasms which she
has marked out for him. For miles at a time this road has been
blasted out of precipices from 1,000 feet to 3,000 feet in depth, and
is merely a ledge above a raging torrent, the worst parts, chiefly
those round rocky projections, being 'scaffolded,' i.e. poles are
lodged horizontally among the crevices of the cliff, and the roadway
of slabs, planks, and brushwood, or branches and sods, is laid
loosely upon them. This track is always amply wide enough for a
loaded beast, but in many places, when two caravans meet, the animals
of one must give way and scramble up the mountain-side, where
foothold is often perilous, and always difficult. In passing a
caravan near Kargil my servant's horse was pushed over the precipice
by a loaded mule and drowned in the Suru, and at another time my
Afghan caused the loss of a baggage mule of a Leh caravan by driving
it off the track. To scatter a caravan so as to allow me to pass in
solitary dignity he regarded as one of his functions, and on one
occasion, on a very dangerous part of the road, as he was driving
heavily laden mules up the steep rocks above, to their imminent peril
and the distraction of their drivers, I was obliged to strike up his
sword with my alpenstock to emphasise my abhorrence of his violence.
The bridges are unrailed, and many of them are made by placing two or
more logs across the stream, laying twigs across, and covering these
with sods, but often so scantily that the wild rush of the water is
seen below. Primitive as these bridges are, they involve great
expense and difficulty in the bringing of long poplar logs for great
distances along narrow mountain tracks by coolie labour, fifty men
being required for the average log. The Ladakhi roads are admirable
as compared with those of Kashmir, and are being constantly improved
under the supervision of H. B. M.'s Joint Commissioner in Leh.
Up to Kargil the scenery, though growing more Tibetan with every
march, had exhibited at intervals some traces of natural verdure; but
beyond, after leaving the Suru, there is not a green thing, and on
the next march the road crosses a lofty, sandy plateau, on which the
heat was terrible--blazing gravel and a blazing heaven, then fiery
cliffs and scorched hillsides, then a deep ravine and the large
village of Paskim (dominated by a fort-crowned rock), and some
planted and irrigated acres; then a narrow ravine and magnificent
scenery flaming with colour, which opens out after some miles on a
burning chaos of rocks and sand, mountain-girdled, and on some
remarkable dwellings on a steep slope, with religious buildings
singularly painted. This is Shergol, the first village of Buddhists,
and there I was 'among the Tibetans.'