Seven Years in Tibet Read online

  In Dushang, too, there were—when we came—no officials to whom we might have applied for leave to reside or travel. But this omission was soon to be rectified, for the officials were already on their way to find us. On the next day, we resumed our march with Kopp and myself in front, and Aufschnaiter and Treipel a little way behind us. Suddenly we heard the tinkling of bells, and two men on ponies rode up and summoned us in the local dialect to return to India by the same way as we had come. We knew that we should not do any good by talking, and so to their surprise we just pushed them aside. Luckily they made no use of their weapons, thinking no doubt that we too were armed. After a few feeble attempts to delay us, they rode away, and we reached without hindrance the next settlement, which we knew was the seat of a local governor.

  The country through which we passed on this day’s march was waterless and empty with no sign of life anywhere. Its central point, the little town of Tsaparang, was inhabited only during winter months, and when we went in search of the governor we learned that he was packing his things for the move to Shangtse, his summer residence. We were not a little astonished to find that he was one of the two armed men who had met us on the way and ordered us to go back. His attitude, accordingly, was not welcoming, and we could hardly persuade him to give us a little flour in exchange for medicine. The little medicine chest that I carried in my pack proved our salvation then, and was often to be of good service to us in the future.

  At length the governor showed us a cave where we could pass the night, telling us once more that we must leave Tibet, using the road by which we had come. We refused to accept his ruling and tried to explain to him that Tibet was a neutral state and ought to offer us asylum. But his mind could not grasp this idea, and he was not competent to make a decision, even if he had understood it. So we proposed to him that we should leave the decision to a high-ranking official, a monk whose official residence was in Thuling, only five miles away.

  Tsaparang was really a curiosity. I had learned from the books I had studied in the camp that the first Catholic mission station in Tibet had been founded here in 1624. The Portuguese Jesuit Antonio de Andrade had formed a Catholic community and is said to have built a church. We searched for traces of it but could not find any remains of a Christian building. Our own experience made us realize how difficult it must have been for Father Antonio to establish his mission here.

  The next day we marched to Thuling to lay our case before the monk. There we found Aufschnaiter and Treipel, who had followed a different route. We all visited the abbot of the cloister, who happened to be the official we wanted, but found him deaf to our prayers to be allowed to proceed on our way eastward. He agreed to sell us provisions only if we promised to go back to Shangtse, which lay on our road to India. There was nothing to do but agree, as we were without food.

  There was also a secular official in Thuling, but we found him even less accommodating. He angrily refused all our attempts to approach him and went so far as to arouse the hostility of the people against us. We had to pay a high price for some rancid butter and maggoty meat. A few faggots cost us a rupee. The only pleasant memory that we took with us from Thuling was the picture of the terraced monastery with its gold-pointed roof pinnacles gleaming in the sunlight and the waters of the Sutlej flowing below. This is the largest monastery in West Tibet, but it has a very deserted aspect and we heard that only twenty out of 260 were actually in residence.

  When we had finally promised to return to Shangtse, they gave us four donkeys to carry our baggage. At first we wondered at their letting us go without any guards and only accompanied by the donkey man, but we soon came to the conclusion that in Tibet the simplest method of supervision is to forbid the sale of provisions to strangers unprovided with a permit.

  The presence of the asses did not add to the pleasure of the journey. It took us a full hour to wade across the Sutlej because the beasts were so tiresome. We continually had to urge them on so as to reach the next village before dark. This place was called Phywang and had very few inhabitants, but looking up at the hillside we saw, as in Tsaparang, hundreds of caves.

  We spent the night here. Shangtse was a full day’s march distant. On our way there the next day, we had the most glorious views of the Himalayas to compensate us in some measure for the barren landscape through which we were driving our donkeys. On this stretch we first met the kiang, a sort of wild ass, which lives in Central Asia and enchants travelers by the gracefulness of its movements. This animal is about the size of a mule. It often shows curiosity and comes up to look at passersby—and then turns and trots off in the most elegant manner. The kiang feeds on grass and is left in peace by the inhabitants. Its only enemy is the wolf. Since I first saw them, these untamed, beautiful beasts have seemed a symbol of freedom.

  Shangtse was another hamlet with only half a dozen houses built of weather-dried mud bricks and cubes of turf. We found the village no more hospitable than the others. Here we met an unfriendly official from Tsaparang, who had moved into his summer quarters. He would on no consideration allow us to proceed any farther into Tibet, but gave us the choice of traveling via Tsaparang or taking the western route over the Shipki Pass into India. Only if we agreed to one of these routes would he consent to sell us provisions.

  We chose the Shipki route, firstly because it was new country for us, and secondly because we hoped in our hearts to find some way out. For the moment we could buy as much butter, meat, and flour as we wanted. All the same we felt dejected at the un-enlivening prospect of landing once more behind the barbed wire. Treipel, who found nothing pleasant about Tibet, was ready to give up and to cease from further attempts to stay in this barren land.

  We spent the next day mostly in satisfying our appetites. I also brought my diary up to date and attended to my inflamed tendons, which had been caused by my forced night marches. I was determined to take any risk to avoid going back to confinement, and Aufschnaiter was of my way of thinking. The next morning we got to know the true character of the local governor. We had cooked meat in a copper pot, and Aufschnaiter must have been slightly poisoned, as he felt very ill. When I asked the governor to allow us to stay a little longer, he showed more ill will than ever. I quarreled with him violently, and to some effect, for he finally consented to supply Aufschnaiter with a horse to ride as well as putting two yaks at our disposal to carry our baggage.

  This was my first acquaintance with the yak. It is the regular Tibetan beast of burden and can live only in high altitudes. This long-haired species of ox needs a lot of training before you can make use of him. The cows are considerably smaller than the bulls and give excellent milk.

  The soldier who had accompanied us from Shangtse carried a letter for our safe conduct, and this entitled us to buy whatever provisions we needed. It also entitled us to change our yaks without payment at each halting place.

  The weather by day was pleasant and comparatively warm, but the nights were very cold. We passed a number of villages and inhabited caves, but the people took little notice of us. Our donkey driver, who came from Lhasa, was nice and friendly to us and enjoyed going into the villages and swaggering about. We found the population less mistrustful; no doubt it was the influence of our safe conduct letter. While we were trekking through the district of Rongchung, we found ourselves following Sven Hedin’s route for a few days, and as I was a great admirer of this explorer, lively memories of his descriptions were kindled in my mind. The terrain we traversed remained very much the same. We continued to cross plateaux, climb down into deep valleys, and climb painfully up the other side. Often these were so narrow that one could have called across them, but it took hours to walk across. These constant ups and downs, which doubled the length of our journey, got on one’s nerves, and we thought our own thoughts in silence. Nevertheless we made progress and had not to bother about our food. At one point, when we had the idea of changing our menu, we tried our luck at fishing. Having had no luck with the hook, we stripped and waded into the
clear mountain brooks and tried to catch the fish in our hands. But they seemed to have better things to do than to end up in our cooking pot.

  So we gradually approached the Himalaya range and sorrowfully the Indian frontier. The temperature had become warmer, as we were no longer so high up. It was just here that the Sutlej breaks its way through the Himalayas. The villages in this region looked like little oases, and around the houses there were actually apricot orchards and vegetable gardens.

  Eleven days from Shangtse, we came to the frontier village of Shipki. The date was June 9—we had been wandering about Tibet for more than three weeks. We had seen a lot, and we had learned by bitter experience that life in Tibet without a residence permit was not possible.

  We spent one more night in Tibet, romantically encamped under apricot trees whose fruit unfortunately was not yet ripe. Here I succeeded in buying a donkey for eighty rupees on the pretext that I would need a baggage animal for my things in India. In the interior of Tibet I could never have managed this, but near the frontier it was different and I felt that a baggage animal was absolutely essential to the successful accomplishment of my plans.

  Our donkey man left us here and took his animals with him. “Perhaps we shall meet again in Lhasa,” he said with a smile. He had spoken to us enthusiastically about the pretty girls and good beer to be found in the capital. Our road wound up to the top of the pass, where we reached the frontier, but there were no frontier posts, Tibetan or Indian. Nothing but the usual heaps of stones and prayer flags, and the first sign of civilization in the shape of a milestone that said: SIMLA 200 MILES.

  We were in India once more, but not one of us had the intention of staying long in this land in which a wire-fenced camp was waiting to receive us.

  3

  Into Tibet

  My plan was to seize the first opportunity to slip over the frontier again into Tibet. We were all of us convinced that the minor officials we had hitherto encountered were simply not competent to decide about our case. This time we had to approach some higher authority. To find what we wanted, we should have to go to Gartok, the capital of Western Tibet, which was the seat of the governor of the region.

  So we marched down the great, much-used trade road a few miles till we came to the first Indian village. This was Namgya. Here we could stay without arousing suspicion, as we had come from Tibet and not from the plains of India. We passed ourselves off as American soldiers, bought fresh supplies, and slept in the public resthouse. Then we separated. Aufschnaiter and Treipel went down the trade road that flanked the Sutlej, while Kopp and I drove our donkey into a valley that ran in a northerly direction toward a pass that led over into Tibet. As we knew from our maps, we had first to go through the Spiti Valley, which was inhabited. I was very glad that Kopp had attached himself to me, as he was a clever, practical, and cheerful companion, and his vein of Berlin wit never petered out.

  For two days we tramped upward on the bank of the Spiti River; then we followed one of the nearby valleys, which would clearly bring us over the Himalayas. This region was not well marked on our maps, and we learned from the natives that we had already passed the frontier when we crossed a certain bridge known as Sangsam. During all this part of our journey, we had on the right of us Riwo Phargyul, a beautifully shaped peak more than 22,000 feet high on the crest of the Himalayas. We had reached Tibet at one of the few places where Tibetan territory extends into the Himalaya range. Of course we now began to be anxious and to wonder how far we should get this time. Luckily no one knew us here, and no unkind official had warned the people against us. When questioned, we said we were pilgrims bound for the holy mountain of Kailas.

  The first Tibetan village we reached was called Kyurik. It consisted of two houses. The next, Dotso, was considerably larger. Here we ran into a number of monks—more than a hundred of them—in quest of poplar trunks, which they were going to carry over the pass to Trashigang and there use for one of the monastery buildings. This monastery is the largest in the province of Tsurubyin, and the abbot is at the same time the highest secular officer. We began to fear that our journey might come to a premature end when we met this dignitary. However, when he questioned us, we said we were the advance party of a large European force that had obtained official permission to enter Tibet from the central government at Lhasa. He appeared to believe us, and much relieved, we continued our journey. We had a grueling climb to the top of a pass called by the Tibetans Bud-Bud La. This pass must be over 18,000 feet high. The air was unpleasantly rarefied, and the ice tongues of a neighboring glacier projected over the route.

  On the way we met a few Bhutias, who also wanted to go into the interior. They were nice, friendly people, and they invited us to share their fire and drink a cup of rancid butter tea with them. As we had pitched our camp near them, they brought us in the evening a tasty dish of nettle spinach.

  The region through which we were traveling was completely unpopulated, and during the next eight days of our march, we met only one small caravan. I have a vivid recollection of one person whom I encountered on this stretch of road. This was a young nomad, muffled in a long sheepskin coat and wearing a pigtail, as all Tibetan men who are not monks do. He led us to his black tent made of yak’s hair, where his wife was waiting for him. She was a merry creature, always laughing. Inside the tent we found a treasure that made our mouths water—a haunch of venison. Our host gladly sold us a portion of the meat for an absurdly low price. He begged us to say nothing about his hunting, or he would get into trouble. Taking of life, whether human or animal, is contrary to the tenets of Buddhism, and consequently, hunting is forbidden. Tibet is governed on a feudal system, whereby men, beasts, and land belong to the Dalai Lama, whose orders have the force of law.

  I found I was able to make myself understood by these pleasant companions, and the feeling that my knowledge of the language was improving gave me great pleasure. We arranged to go hunting together the next day, and meanwhile made ourselves at home in the tent of the young couple. The nomad and his wife were the first cheerful and friendly Tibetans we had met, and I shall not forget them. The highlight of our host’s hospitality consisted in his producing a wooden bottle of barley beer. It was a cloudy, milky liquid that bore no resemblance to what we call beer, but it had the same effect.

  The next morning the three of us went hunting. Our young friend had an antediluvian muzzle loader and in a breast pocket carried leaden bullets, gunpowder, and a quick match. When we saw the first flock of wild sheep he managed laboriously to light the quick match by using a flint. We were anxious to know how this museum piece of a gun would function. There was a report like thunder, and by the time I had got clear of the smoke, there was no sign of a sheep to be seen. Then we saw the flock galloping away in the distance; before they vanished over the rocky ridge, some of them turned around to eye us with a mocking glance. We could only laugh at our own discomfiture, but in order not to return with empty hands, we picked wild onions, which grow everywhere on the hillsides and which go so well with venison.

  Our friend’s wife apparently was used to her husband’s bad luck in the hunting field. When she saw us returning without any game, she received us with screams of laughter, and her slit eyes almost disappeared in her merriment. She had carefully prepared a meal from the game her husband had killed a few days before and now got down enthusiastically to cooking it. We watched the operation and were somewhat astonished when she slipped off the upper half of her great fur mantle, around the waist of which she wore a bright colored belt, without a trace of shyness. The heavy fur had hindered her movements, so she stripped to the waist and carried on happily. Later on we often encountered similar examples of natural simplicity. It was with real regret that we parted from this friendly couple, when fully rested and with our bellies full of good fresh meat we set out on our way. As we traveled we often saw the black forms of wild yaks grazing far away on the mountainside. The sight of them prompted our donkey to make a bid for independence: he das
hed through a widish stream and before we could reach him had shaken our packs off his back. We followed him, cursing and swearing, and eventually caught him. Then, as we were busy drying our things on the farther side of the water, two figures suddenly came into view. We recognized the first at once from his regular, slow, mountaineer’s stride—it was Peter Aufschnaiter, with a hired bearer. It may be thought that such a meeting in such a place sounds farfetched, but it is only by certain valleys and passes that one comes over the mountain ranges, and we and Peter had chosen the most well-trodden route.

  After warm greetings Aufschnaiter began to tell us what had happened to him in the interval. On June 17, he had parted from Treipel, whom he left riding into India on a horse, meaning to pass himself off as an Englishman. He bought the horse with the last of his money. Aufschnaiter himself had been ill, but when he had recovered had followed us. He had on the way heard some of the latest war news to which, though we were living in another world, we listened greedily.

  At first Aufschnaiter did not want to go with us to Gartok, as he believed that we would be turned out of the country again. He thought it would be wiser to press straight on into Central Tibet and join up with the nomads there. Finally we all went on together, and Aufschnaiter and I were not to part company again for years. We knew that if everything went smoothly we needed about five days to get to Gartok. We had to cross another high pass, the Bongru La. Camping these days was no pleasure. It was very cold by night at 17,000 feet!

  Small incidents provided variety. Once it was the spectacle of a fight between wild asses. The combatants were two stallions, probably fighting for the lordship over the mares in the herd. Chunks of turf flew, and the earth shook under their hoofs. The duelists were so absorbed in their struggle that they did not notice us onlookers. Meanwhile the mares, greedy for sensation, danced around, and the arena was often hidden in a thick cloud of dust.