I had entrusted a letter to my friend at Darjeeling, as well as others to my folks at home, on the occasion of his going down to Calcutta on business. Along with his letter Saraṭ Chanḍra Ḍās sent me a number of the Mahāboḍhi Society’s journal, which contained an account of an unsuccessful attempt by a Buḍḍhist of my nationality to enter Tibet, and a well-meant note of his in pencil to the effect that I must not lose my life by exposing myself to too much danger. So far so good; but next something which was not so good happened. The Tukje man, my whilom messenger, had apparently formed an opinion of his own about my personality, and set the quiet village of Malba astir with rumors about myself. Chanḍra Ḍās was an official of the English Government, with a salary of 600 rupees a month, and, as such, a very rare personage among Bengālīs; and it was with this person that I corresponded; ergo, the Chinese Lama (myself) must be a British agent in disguise, with some secret mission to execute. So went the rumor, and the public opinion of Malba had almost come to the conclusion that it was undesirable to permit such a suspicious stranger in the village, when Adam Naring, who by that time had come home, sought to speak to me in secret, with indescribable fear written on his face. Poor honest soul! What he said to me, when by ourselves, was of course to the effect that if there were any truth in the rumor, he and his folks would be visited with what punishment heaven only knew. I had expected this for some time past, and had made up my mind how to act as soon as Naring approached me on the subject. I turned round and, looking him squarely in the face, said: “If you promise me, under oath, that you will not divulge for three full years to come what I may tell you, I will let you into my secret; but if you do not care to do so, we can only let the rumor take care of itself, and wait for the Nepāl Government to take any steps it may deem fit to take.” I knew Adam Naring was a man of conscience, who could be trusted with a secret: he signified his willingness to take an oath, and I placed before him a copy of the sacred Scripture and obtained from him the needed promise.
Producing next my passport, given me by the Foreign Office in Japan, which had on it an English as well as other translations of the Japanese text, I showed it to my host, who understood just enough English to follow out the spelling of some words in that language, and explained to him the real object of my journey into Tibet. I did more. I said to him that now that he possessed my secret, he was welcome to make of it what use he liked; but that I believed him to be a true and devoted Buḍḍhist, and that it behoved him well to assist me in my enterprise by keeping silence, for by so acting he would be promoting the cause of his own religion. In all this, I told my host nothing but truth, and truth triumphed; for he believed every word I said and approved of my adventure. Then we talked over the route I was to take, and it was arranged at the same time that I should restart on my journey in June or July.
This taking of my host into my confidence seemed to have greatly appeased his mind; withal, I did not think it right for me to tax his hospitality by prolonging my stay at his residence, and immediately after the above incident I moved into the temple of the village, where, nevertheless, I remained the object of his unswerving friendship, in that he provided for me, while there, all travelling requisites, from wearing apparel to provisions, which altogether made luggage weighing about seventy-five pounds. At my request he also secured for me a guide and carrier, who was to convey my packages as far as Khambuthang, or the ‘land of Genii,’ in the valley of Dhavalagiri, while my part of the load was to consist only of my collection of religious works. Thus equipped, I left Malba on June 12th, 1900. By taking the direct route, the North-west Steppe of Tibet may be reached from Malba in ten days, but as I was to take in my way places sacred to Buḍḍhist pilgrims, besides making other observations, I set aside twenty-three days for the journey, which I began by traversing trackless wilds for three days. At my departure I made an uta:
My roof will be the sky; my bed, the earth;
The grass my downy pillow soft at night;
Thus like the hovering clouds and wandering streams,
These lonely wilds alone I must traverse.
Once on the road, I found, however, that the sentiment of this effusion applied more to what I had come through than to what followed, for there was for days nothing but snow for my bed and rock for my pillow.
CHAPTER XI.
Tibet at Last.
After leaving Malba my route lay north-west, up a gradual ascent along the banks of the river Kālīgaṅgā. We walked, however, only two and a half miles on the day of our departure, the rain preventing our further progress. Starting at about seven o’clock on the following morning, we made a climb of about five miles up a narrow path, the bed of which consisted of pointed stones and rocks of various degrees of sharpness, and then refreshed ourselves with a light repast. On resuming our ascent the incline became very steep and, the atmosphere growing rarer and rarer, we could proceed no more than six miles or so before fatigue overcame us, and at three in the afternoon we put up in a village called Dankar, where I was obliged to stay and recuperate myself during the whole of the next day. On the 15th we faced due north, and five miles of a sharp ascent brought us to a glacier valley which we crossed, and continued a climb of still steeper incline for about four miles, after which we emerged on a somewhat wide foot-path. At 11 A. M. we stopped for a rest. Not a drop of water was obtainable thereabouts, but espying some herbs growing from under a light layer of snow in a crevice of a rock, I pulled them up by the root, and, on chewing them, found that the root tasted quite sour. With the help of this herb-root we made a little lunch of buckwheat biscuits.
It was all ascent in the afternoon, and a very tortuous task it was; now picking our foot-hold from rock to rock up a craggy precipice—Mukhala Climb, where it made my head swim to look down into the cañon a thousand feet below—now trusting my dear life to my staff, when caught in a sand avalanche, if I may be allowed that expression for the places where the thaw had caused the snow and rock to slide down, leaving bare a loose sandy surface, which gave way under one’s foot. As for my guide-carrier, he hopped, and skipped, and balanced, and leaped, with the agility and sureness of a monkey, his staff playing for him the part of a boat-hook in a most skilful hand, and, in spite of his seventy-five pounds’ burden, he was so much at home on the difficult ascent, that he was ever and anon at my side to help me out of dangerous plights into which I would frequently fall, with my staff stuck fast between two rocks, or while I involuntarily acted the rôle of a ball-dancer on a loosened boulder. To add to the misery, with each step upward the air grew rarer and my breath shorter, making me feel a scorching sensation in the brain, while burning thirst was fast overcoming me—a morsel of snow, now and then taken, being utterly insufficient to quench it. Many a time I had almost fallen into a faint, and then my chronic tormentor, rheumatism, began to assert itself. I could go no further; I wanted to lie down on the snow and sleep for a long rest. But as often as I wished to do so, I had a warning from my guide that a rest then would be sure death for me, because, as he said, the air thereabouts was charged with a poisonous gas, and I would soon succumb to its effect; he was innocent of the knowledge of atmospheric rarity. I knew full well the weight of this warning, and I struggled on with what was to me at that time a superhuman effort. By the time we had finished wading across the sharp slope of the treacherous sand, and landed upon a rock-paved flat, even that effort failed me; I came to a halt in spite of myself, and also of the guide, who said that water was obtainable a little distance below. Finding me really helpless, the man went down and fetched me some water, which I took with a restorative drug. In a little while I felt better, and during the rest thus obtained I liberally applied camphor-tincture over the smarting parts of my hands, which had more or less suffered from the rigorous exercise they had had in the use of the mountaineering staff. In the meantime night fell and, picking our way by the uncertain star-light and the reflexion from the snow, we made a sharp descent of some four miles, at the bottom of which we came upon Sanda, a hamlet of about ten cottages, in one of which we lodged for the night.
Sanda
