CHAPTER XXXIII

THE RAGA-TSANGPO AND THE MY-CHU

On April 3 we journeyed steadily along the way to the west by smiling villages and small convents, and again we approached the bank of the Tsangpo, at a place where a swaying rope-bridge is stretched between two loose blocks on the banks. Here the river forms rapids, and above this point it is only 50 yards broad, often still less, and the valley above the Yeshung expansion is narrow and confined. From the village Pusum, where we encamp, is seen the mountain Nayala, one of the fixed points in Ryder's triangulation. His and Rawling's expedition travelled to the south of the Tsangpo, and it would be two months more before I should first come in contact with their route. The river will rise a month longer in consequence of the melting of ice in the higher parts of its course in the distant west.

The village Pusum lies on a steep terrace above the river. Cones of detritus descend to the bank, and steep mountains rise on the southern side. The valley is narrow and quite straight, so that Pinsoling, the end of the next day's march, can be seen from Pusum; it is perched on its rocky promontory like a castle on the Rhine. The path passes over steep disagreeable slopes of pebbles. Only grey and red granite, with black schist, is seen both in the solid rock and in the débris.

Almost immediately south of Chagha, a village of a couple of stone houses in a grove of old willows, the monastery and dzong of Pinzoling appear on the right bank. The river is narrow, and the bank full of round granite boulders a yard in diameter, so the necessary material for a bridge is at hand. Two huge pyramids of stone are erected on the banks, and two smaller ones behind them. Two thick chains are stretched between them, which pass on to the smaller pyramids, and are made fast again to them. Between the chains a network of ropes is stretched like a hammock, and on this narrow planks are laid; on these passengers walk, using the chains as hand-rails. The Pinzoling bridge has not been used for three years; any one who wants to cross to Pinzoling from Chagha must go upstream to Ladse-dzong and make use of the ferry there. I inquired how old the bridge was. "As old as the monastery," was the answer. "And how old is the monastery?" A villager answered at random, "A thousand years." Another said that this was an exaggeration, for the monastery had been founded two hundred and fifty years ago by a lama named Yitsyn Tara Nara. Two hundred monks belong to the monastery of Pinzoling, but half of them had gone on their travels. An official of the dzong, with the title of Dsabo, lived in Chagha, and examined our passport (Illustration 180).

The river was at its lowest level, but during high-water it is said to come up to the chains of the bridge, which seems to me improbable, for they hang fully 6 feet above the surface of the water at their lowest part. A channel remains open in the middle of the river even in cold winters. Boats reach the side valley in which Shigatse lies in four to five days, but during the summer in two or three days, for then the river flows down with tremendous velocity. It is considered less dangerous to travel in a high flood, for then the boats glide smoothly over boulders and sandbanks, and it is said that a man is very seldom drowned, or a boat's cargo lost.

Black and dark-purple mountains rise around the village, their surface only visible in some places in strips between belts of drift-sand; they are like tiger skins. Near a ridge to the south-west lies a large dune as though it were attached to it.

The order of the day for April 5 was that Muhamed Isa with the hired animals and the baggage should encamp at the point where the Raga-tsangpo flows into the upper Brahmaputra. The rest of us rode up to a small pass, Tsukchung-chang, on a spur of the mountains which extends to the bank of the main river. From the summit there is a grand view over the main valley and its stream, which meanders over gravel and sand in two arms. Below we caught sight of mule caravans, mere specks, but their bells filled the valley with their noise. The way runs headlong down to the valley bottom so that we had to engage extra men to carry the baggage, with which the horses could not clamber down the precipitous slopes. Large dark fish swam in a stopped-up arm of the river, and here sat Shukkur Ali with his rod. Sand-dunes ten feet high are a common occurrence, and on the steep side, turned from the wind, that is, the east side, pools are often formed.

To the south-west opens a large portal with shelving mountains in the background and short side valleys, the whole forming a beautiful scene. Through this portal the Brahmaputra comes down towards the Raga-tsangpo, but this river is known here in its lowest course by the name Dok-chu, while the main river is known as the Dam-chu (= Tamchok). At the confluence no tents were to be seen, and Muhamed Isa told me afterwards that he could not stay there as the country was quite barren. We therefore rode up the Dok-chu valley to the village Tangna, consisting of ten stone houses. The inhabitants cultivate peas, wheat, and barley, but cannot count with certainty on a harvest.

I would on no account miss seeing the confluence of the two rivers, and therefore ordered my men to descend the Dok-chu valley next day to this point. But the escort would not hear of it. It was clearly stipulated in the passport that we must not go backwards and forwards as we liked, but must march straight to Ladak. At last they yielded under the condition that the excursion should not last more than one day.

In the morning Muhamed Isa took the boat and the oars down to the river, while ropes, stakes, axes, poles, and provisions were carried by Ladakis down to the confluence by the way we had come the day before. On arriving at the bank I found the boat already put together, and took my seat in it with a Tibetan who was familiar with the river and handled the oars as skilfully as though he had done nothing else all his life, but he was accustomed to steer his own boat between the banks at Tangna, and knew the channel downstream.

Our voyage through the rapids is exciting and adventurous. The fall of the river is by no means uniform, but changes from place to place, roaring rapids alternating with deep quiet basins. Large and small boulders have fallen into the river from the mountain flanks and sometimes it seems impossible to get through them. But the oarsman knows how to steer the boat. We hear the roar of the next rapid from a distance, and keep a sharp look-out in front. Some of our Ladakis run along the path on the bank and warn us of serious dangers.

The boat rushes flying downstream. The boatman sits silent with his teeth clenched and his feet firmly planted against the bottom, and grasps the oars so tightly in his horny hands that the knuckles become white. We had passed successfully several rapids and were gliding pleasantly over a reach of smooth water, when we heard the warning roar of the next rapids, this time louder than ever, and two Ladakis stood shouting and gesticulating. I got up in the boat and saw that the Dok-chu split into two arms, and that the water dashed foaming among dark sharp-edged boulders. The place looked impassable, the intervals between the boulders seemed much too narrow for the boat, which might any moment have its bottom torn by treacherously hidden stones; over some of these the water poured in bright-green hillocks, and then was scattered into foaming spray. "I shall be glad if all goes well," I thought, but I left the boatman to his own devices. We were soon in the sucking current, which endures no resistance, and flew quicker and quicker towards the two rapids. With powerful strokes the oarsman forced the boat to enter the left branch. The Ladakis stood speechless on the bank, and waited till we were wrecked to wade into the rapids and rescue us. Now we dashed towards the first block, but the boatman guided his boat into the deepest water and let it slip down a small waterfall, after which we received a thrust from the other side. Now the channel became broader but also shallower, and we grazed the bottom, fortunately only with the keel and without springing a leak. The current was strong enough to carry us away over stones and rubbish.

After a while the two arms re-unite and the river becomes smooth and deep. The boatman has never changed countenance, and now he helps on with the oars. We are on the north side of the valley, and just at the bend where the river turns southwards the water rages and boils more furiously than ever, and here the undaunted boatman declares that we can go no farther. I hold my breath at the sight of the white foaming water which breaks over the threshold of the fall; the boat will be carried away in a second by the suction of the water and will be infallibly capsized. But just at the right moment the boatman steers our nutshell aside into a bay with a back current, and we are able to land. The Ladakis hurry up, draw the boat ashore, and set it afloat again below the waterfall.

Now we float pleasantly past the steep rocky walls of the southern bank, where the depth is sometimes 5 feet, and sometimes less than a foot. I have a pole and help to hold off the boat from the bank. Again we are carried to the northern side of the valley and dance and rock through a series of small lively rapids, usually quite deep enough. Now and then we graze the bottom, but the wooden keel resists the thumps. Below a gigantic boulder lying in the middle of the stream is a sucking whirlpool, into which we nearly stumble, but we get past safely, and at last arrive at the point where the Dok-chu pours its snow-fed waters into the flood of the Brahmaputra.

The tributary here forms a delta with two branches between gravelly banks 5 feet high. A post was driven in on the left bank of the main arm, to which we fastened one end of a rope, with the other end I rowed over to the right bank, where the rope was fastened to another post. The breadth was 59 yards. Then I measured the depth at eleven points at equal distances apart, and found that it did not exceed 3-1/3 feet. The velocity was measured on the surface, half-way down, and at the bottom, with Lyth's current meter. Taking the breadth and the average velocity we arrive at the discharge, which in the two arms of the Dok-chu amounted to 1165 cubic feet per second.

Where the two streams unite the Dok-chu is rapid and tumultuous, the Brahmaputra slow, deep, and quiet. Its breadth was 50 yards and its maximum depth 15.3 feet; the bed is therefore narrow and very deeply excavated. The discharge amounted to 2966 feet in the second, or two and a half times that of its tributary the Dok-chu.

When I had finished this work, our friends Tso Ting Pang and Lava Tashi accompanied me on a short excursion down the main stream, and then we landed on a promontory where our men lighted a fire and served up the best provisions we had, namely, hard-boiled eggs, slices of cold chicken, and milk. A cordial and mixed party, a Swede among Tibetans, Chinamen and Ladakis, we partook of our late dinner amidst the grandest, and most boldly sculptured landscape conceivable. While the others smoked their pipes and sipped their greasy tea, I drew a sketch of the mighty gate of solid granite through which the Brahmaputra rolls its volumes of water on its way to the east, to the valley of the Dihong and the plains of Assam. We should have liked to stay here longer, watching how moment after moment the insatiable stream gathers in its abundant tribute from the Dok-chu, but it was growing dark and we had a long way to go back, so we packed up our boat and stowed it on hired horses with the other baggage, mounted into the saddle, and rode up the valley. As had often happened before, we were to-day overtaken by the darkness. Rabsang went in front with a Tibetan on either side, and all three bellowed as loud as they could. All were in excellent spirits, it was so fresh and pleasant under the twinkling stars, and the merry singers, accompanied by the jingle of the bells on the Chinese horses, awoke a shrill echo in the recesses of the mountains. At a dangerous place near a village, where the road runs above the river over a ledge built up of stones, men came to meet us with paper lanterns, and soon after we sat resting in our tents after a hard but very instructive day's work. Next day we marched gently up the Dok-chu valley in a north-westerly direction, a charmingly beautiful road, where one would like to dismount repeatedly to enjoy conveniently the wild mountain scenery.

But now I cannot loiter; one page after another of my journal must be turned over if I am ever to come to an end of my description of this journey on which so many hard experiences and disagreeable adventures awaited us.

We ride through rubbish and coarse sand, the weathering products of the grey granite, and pass a succession of transverse valleys and several picturesque villages. One of these, Machung, is finely situated at the foot of steep rocks on the northern side of the valley, from which an oval block has fallen down and stands like a gigantic egg in the sand, a pedestal waiting for an equestrian statue. On its eastern side, smoothly polished by wind and weather, a regular tricolour is painted, white in the middle, red on the left and blue on the right, but neither Bonvalot nor Dutreuil de Rhins has left this memorial behind, for no traveller has ever been in the neighbourhood. It is the inhabitants of the village who have made this flag, and beside the tricolour is another symbolical painting, a white cross on a black field. Near the village some gnarled trees are reflected in a pool. The villagers stand staring at the corners and in the house-doors, and a man offers my servants a drink of _chang_ from a wooden bowl. The rocks are sculptured into singular forms; the granite is in vertical dykes and stands in perpendicular crags in the valley. We often pass by _mani_ cists, for we are in a country where monasteries are numerous and the whole road is adorned with religious tokens. At every cist the road divides, for no one, except adherents of the Pembo sect, omits to pass it on the left, the direction in which the prayer mills revolve. On the tops of many of the rocks are seen ruins of walls and towers, a proof that the valley in bygone times was more densely peopled. At two places sheltered clefts in the rock harbour some stunted juniper trees. On the northern side of the valley the river has at some time polished the base of the granite wall, and on the smooth surface two rock drawings have been executed. They consist of outlines of Buddha pictures, and are very artistically drawn. The western has two others beside it, now scarcely traceable, and below them all kinds of ornamentation, tendrils, and designs are hewn in the granite. We encamped just above this spot in a very picturesque and interesting expansion of the valley at the village Lingö.

Part of the inhabitants of Lingö migrate in summer with their herds, six or seven days' journey northwards, for the soil round Lingö is very poor and the harvest cannot be depended on. The Dok-chu cannot be crossed here in summer except by boat; in the winter it freezes over, but seldom so firmly that the ice will bear. The interesting point about this expansion is that the Dok-chu, or Raga-tsangpo, coming from the west, here unites with our old friend the My-chu, which discharges 534 cubic feet a second. I had the day before calculated 1165 feet as the discharge of the Dok-chu, so the difference of 631 cubic feet is the volume of water brought down by the Raga-tsangpo, and consequently the My-chu is only a tributary. On the other hand the Dok-chu pours through several delta arms with rapids into the My-chu which lies lower and flows more gently, and by this test the My-chu should be the main river; it is all a question of choice.

We had another fine day on April 8, 52.5° in the shade at one o'clock. We were to make a closer acquaintance with the My-chu, a river we had hitherto known only from hearsay, but we had more knowledge of its eastern tributaries which we had crossed on our journey south. As usual we change our baggage horses in almost every village at which we encamp, and Robert pays the hire to the villagers, that the escort may not have an opportunity of putting it into their own purses, at any rate not in our presence. Generally the caravan marches a little in advance, while two villagers come with me and give me information about the country.

Immediately beyond Lingö we turn into the My-chu valley, riding northwards, and now leave behind the westerly valley of the Raga-tsangpo. Right at the turn we come to a colossal cone of round blocks of granite, among which the path winds up and down in zigzags, sometimes transformed to a staircase, which laden animals cannot possibly pass. We therefore take with us some peasants from the village to help in carrying the baggage. We have the river on our left, deep and sluggish. The fallen boulders of grey granite contrast strongly with the dark-green water in which whole shoals of black-backed fishes swim and rise. On a surface of granite is a Buddhist rock-drawing half obliterated by time. Then follows one _mani_ after another. A smith is housed in a cave with a vaulted roof blackened with soot, and sheltered by a small screen of stones, and offers his services to travellers. High up on a rocky terrace stands Gunda-tammo, a small nunnery, and below a chain bridge between two stunted pyramids spans the river. It is only for foot passengers. The river bed is deeply excavated between its bank terraces, and two strips of clear green ice yet remain. The bed is as regular as a canal. On a rocky wall at the entrance of a side valley a face 6 feet in diameter is painted in black, with eyes, nose, and mouth in red.

The farther we go up the more frequently we are reminded that we are on a hallowed road leading from one temple to another, a sacred way of the monks, a pilgrim route on which "Om mani padme hum" is murmured more repeatedly than on ordinary roads. Sometimes boulders and cliffs are painted red, sometimes cairns are heaped beside the way, now we see chimney-like monuments with bundles of rods decked with streamers, then again long _mani_ mounds, one of them nearly 400 feet long. Two blocks lying on the road are covered all over with raised characters--a formidable piece of work. We are also in a great commercial artery, more frequented than the bank of the Tsangpo. We constantly meet caravans of yaks and mules, mounted men and foot-passengers, monks, peasants, and beggars. They salute me politely, scratching their heads with their right hands, while they hold their caps in their left, and putting their tongues far out of their mouths, and they call out to me: "A good journey, Bombo!"

Clear rivulets trickle across the road, the valley contracts and its contours become bolder and more pronounced; the granite ceases and is replaced by fine-grained crystalline schist. In the district of Tong, where several villages stand high above the river, we encamp below the monastery Lun-ganden-gompa (Illustration 176), in which 21 monks of the Gelugpa sect live, and, as usual, a prior of Kanpo rank dwells in the Labrang. We paid them a visit, but preferred the lovely view over the valley to the images of the gods in the darkness. The brethren are maintained partly by the Tashi Lama, and obtain the rest of their food from the produce of their fields, for the convent has large glebe lands. A blind man, who was not of the fraternity, sat like a machine at the prayer mill, turning it for the monks, and complained of his hard lot. The Gova, the district chief, of Tong rules over several villages in the neighbourhood, and lives like a prince in his solid house.

On April 10 we continued along the course of the My-chu, past villages and convents hitherto unknown. The villages stand just below the mouths of side valleys where the water can be most effectively applied to irrigation. A caravan of about 100 yaks, driven by men and women and some carrying riders, had been at Tok-jalung and had sold there _tsamba_ from Tong; they had spent three months on their return from those gold-diggings in western Tibet. They follow a route through the mountains where there is suitable pasture for yaks. Thus the produce of the soil in the more favoured parts of the country reaches the nomads, who give in exchange for it wool, hides, and salt. After a short march we bivouacked in Ghe, which has nineteen houses. An _angdi_ (musician) scraped and plucked a two-stringed instrument (Illustration 185), while his wife danced before us.

Here our escort from Shigatse turned back, after handing our passport to four other men, the chief of whom was the Gova of Tong. They had done us excellent service, so I gave them good testimonials and presents. They were satisfied and would pray for my prosperity till their lives' end. I felt particular sympathy for one of the Tibetans who had lost his two sons in the battle at Guru; the one was twenty-three years old, and the other twenty-five, and the father could not understand why they had fallen, for they had done nothing wrong.

Next day the escort, jingling like a sledge party, accompanies us up the My-chu, which retains the same character. Granite and schists alternate. The river tosses about, though it has occasionally quiet reaches. In the background of the side valleys are often seen great mountains lightly covered with snow, and at their entrances villages with stone houses and fields where only barley and peas are grown, seldom wheat. The black tents we see occasionally belong to merchants who are on their way from or to western Tibet. Bridges cross the affluents, flat slabs of stone on a pair of beams between rather high slightly overhanging piers of stone. The religious stone heaps are still numerous; one has caused a sand-dune to be formed. Wild ducks, wood pigeons, and partridges occur here, and the latter, sorely against their will, make acquaintance with Tsering's kitchen. In the village Sir-chung the population is large, for here several routes and side valleys converge. Among the crowds of spectators was a young woman so extraordinarily pretty that I took two photographs of her. She was twenty years old and was named Putön (Illustration 186).

The day following we visited the adjacent monastery Lehlung-gompa, where the twenty-six monks belong to some heterodox sect, for they recognize neither Tsong Kapa nor the Tashi Lama; the prior had shut himself up in his dwelling sunk in deep speculations. A lama and three inhabitants of the neighbouring village Nesar had died the day before, so our Tibetan escort warned us not to go up to the monastery lest we should catch the infection, and when we nevertheless went, they begged to be allowed to stay behind. This dreary dilapidated monastery stood proudly on its point of rock, pretty far up a side valley which descends from the left to the My-chu. From its flat roof we had a splendid view and could make out the topography of the My-chu valley. A novelty to us was a row of stuffed yaks, hard as wood and dry as bone, with their horns, hoofs, and hides, hung up on the ceiling of a verandah. None of the monks could remember when they had been hung up. They looked very old, and apparently were for the same purpose as the four ghostly kings and the painted wild animals, that is, to scare away evil spirits.

Below the monastery twenty-four _manis_ stand close together in a row like a parish boundary on a topographical map. All the way up these sacred structures are so numerous that they even outnumber those near Leh. The country assumes a more alpine character, and the valley becomes wilder and more desolate; but some trees form a small thicket at Lehlung-gompa. At length we ride over a pebble terrace, perhaps 130 feet above the stream, which now pours over small falls and murmurs pleasantly among boulders. The caravan has pitched its tents in the narrow valley on the bank of the My-chu and not far from the side valley Kathing. Most of the luggage has been carried by Tibetans, for no pack animals were to be had, and now some hundred black-headed fellows sit in groups by their fires among the large boulders.

Here we were at a height of 13,875 feet, and therefore had only mounted up 1175 feet from Shigatse (12,700 feet). But the air was cooler; the night before we had noted 23 degrees of frost.