CHUMBI,
January 13.
From Darjeeling to Lhasa is 380 miles.
These, as in the dominions of Namgay Doola’s
Raja, are mostly on end. The road crosses the
Tibetan frontier at the Jelap la (14,350 feet) eighty
miles to the north-east. From Observatory Hill
in Darjeeling one looks over the bleak hog-backed
ranges of Sikkim to the snows. To the north and
north-west lie Kinchenjunga and the tremendous chain
of mountains that embraces Everest. To the north-east
stretches a lower line of dazzling rifts and
spires, in which one can see a thin gray wedge, like
a slice in a Christmas cake. That is the Jelap.
Beyond it lies Tibet.
There is a good military road from
Siliguri, the base station in the plains to Rungpo,
forty-eight miles along the Teesta Valley. By
following the river-bed it avoids the two steep ascents
to Kalimpong and Ari. The new route saves at
least a day, and conveys one to Rungli, nearly seventy
miles from the base, without compassing a single tedious
incline. It has also the advantage of being practicable
for bullock-carts and ekkas as far as Rungpo.
After that the path is a 6-foot mule-track, at its
best a rough, dusty incline, at its worst a succession
of broken rocks and frozen puddles, which give no foothold
to transport animals. From Rungpo the road skirts
the stream for sixteen miles to Rungli, along a fertile
valley of some 2,000 feet, through rice-fields and
orange-groves and peaceful villages, now the scene
of military bustle and preparation. From Rungli
it follows a winding mountain torrent, whose banks
are sometimes sheer precipitous crags. Then it
strikes up the mountain side, and becomes a ladder
of stone steps over which no animal in the world can
make more than a mile and a half an hour. From
the valley to Gnatong is a climb of some 10,000 feet
without a break. The scenery is most magnificent,
and I doubt if it is possible to find anywhere in
the same compass the characteristics of the different
zones of vegetation from tropical to temperate,
from temperate to alpine so beautifully
exhibited.
At ordinary seasons transport is easy,
and one can take the road in comfort; but now every
mule and pony in Sikkim and the Terai is employed
on the lines of communication, and one has to pay 300
rupees for an animal of the most modest pretensions.
It is reckoned eight days from Darjeeling to Chumbi,
but, riding all day and most of the night, I completed
the journey in two. Newspaper correspondents are
proverbially in a hurry. To send the first wire
from Chumbi I had to leave my kit behind, and ride
with poshteen and sleeping-bag tied to my saddle.
I was racing another correspondent. At Rungpo
I found that he was five hours ahead of me, but he
rested on the road, and I had gained three hours on
him before he left the next stage at Rora Thang.
Here I learnt that he intended to camp at Lingtam,
twelve miles further on, in a tent lent him by a transport
officer. I made up my mind to wait outside Lingtam
until it was dark, and then to steal a march on him
unobserved. But I believed no one. Wayside
reports were probably intended to deceive me, and
no doubt my informant was his unconscious confederate.
Outside Rungli, six miles further
on, I stopped at a little Bhutia’s hut, where
he had been resting. They told me he had gone
on only half an hour before me. I loitered on
the road, and passed Lingtam in the dark. The
moon did not rise till three, and riding in the dark
was exciting. At first the white dusty road showed
clearly enough a few yards ahead, but after passing
Lingtam it became a narrow path cut out of a thickly-wooded
cliff above a torrent, a wall of rock on one side,
a precipice on the other. Here the darkness was
intense. A white stone a few yards ahead looked
like the branch of a tree overhead. A dim shapeless
object to the left might be a house, a rock, a bear anything.
Uphill and downhill could only be distinguished by
the angle of the saddle. Every now and then a
firefly lit up the white precipice an arm’s-length
to the right. Once when my pony stopped panting
with exhaustion I struck a match and found that we
had come to a sharp zigzag. Part of the revetment
had fallen; there was a yard of broken path covered
with fern and bracken, then a drop of some hundred
feet to the torrent below. After that I led my
beast for a mile until we came to a charcoal-burner’s
hut. Two or three Bhutias were sitting round
a log fire, and I persuaded one to go in front of me
with a lighted brand. So we came to Sedongchen,
where I left my beast dead beat, rested a few hours,
bought a good mule, and pressed on in the early morning
by moonlight. The road to Gnatong lies through
a magnificent forest of oak and chestnut. For
five miles it is nothing but the ascent of stone steps
I have described. Then the rhododendron zone is
reached, and one passes through a forest of gnarled
and twisted trunks, writhing and contorted as if they
had been thrust there for some penance. The place
suggested a scene from Dante’s ‘Inferno.’
As I reached the saddle of Lingtu the moon was paling,
and the eastern sky-line became a faint violet screen.
In a few minutes Kinchenjunga and Kabru on the north-west
caught the first rays of the sun, and were suffused
with the delicate rosy glow of dawn.
I reached Gnatong in time to breakfast
with the 8th Gurkhas. The camp lies in a little
cleft in the hills at an elevation of 12,200 feet.
When I last visited the place I thought it one of
the most desolate spots I had seen. My first
impressions were a wilderness of gray stones and gray,
uninhabited houses, felled tree-trunks denuded of bark,
white and spectral on the hillside. There was
no life, no children’s voices or chattering
women, no bazaar apparently, no dogs barking, not even
a pariah to greet you. If there was a sound of
life it was the bray of some discontented mule searching
for stray blades of grass among the stones. There
were some fifty houses nearly all smokeless and vacant.
Some had been barracks at the time of the last Sikkim
War, and of the soldiers who inhabited them fifteen
still lay in Gnatong in a little gray cemetery, which
was the first indication of the nearness of human
life. The inscriptions over the graves were all
dated 1888, 1889, or 1890, and though but fourteen
years had passed, many of them were barely decipherable.
The houses were scattered about promiscuously, with
no thought of neighbourliness or convenience, as though
the people were living there under protest, which
was very probably the case. But the place had
its picturesque feature. You might mistake some
of the houses for tumbledown Swiss chalets of
the poorer sort were it not for the miniature fir-trees
planted on the roofs, with their burdens of prayers
hanging from the branches like parcels on a Christmas-tree.
These were my impressions a year or
two ago, but now Gnatong is all life and bustle.
In the bazaar a convoy of 300 mules was being loaded.
The place was crowded with Nepalese coolies and Tibetan
drivers, picturesque in their woollen knee-boots of
red and green patterns, with a white star at the foot,
long russet cloaks bound tightly at the waist and bulging
out with cooking-utensils and changes of dress, embroidered
caps of every variety and description, as often as
not tied to the head by a wisp of hair. In Rotten
Row the inscription of 1889 still remains I
met a subaltern with a pair of skates. He showed
me to the mess-room, where I enjoyed a warm breakfast
and a good deal of chaff about correspondents who
’were in such a devil of a hurry to get to a
God-forsaken hole where there wasn’t going to
be the ghost of a show.’
I left Gnatong early on a borrowed
pony. A mile and a half from the camp the road
crosses the Tuko Pass, and one descends again for another
two miles to Kapup, a temporary transport stage.
The path lies to the west of the Bidang Tso, a beautiful
lake with a moraine at the north-west side. The
mountains were strangely silent, and the only sound
of wild life was the whistling of the red-billed choughs,
the commonest of the Corvidae at these heights.
They were flying round and round the lake in an unsettled
manner, whistling querulously, as though in complaint
at the intrusion of their solitude.
I reached the Jelap soon after noon.
No snow had fallen. The approach was over broken
rock and shale. At the summit was a row of cairns,
from which fluttered praying-flags and tattered bits
of votive raiment. Behind us and on both sides
was a thin mist, but in front my eyes explored a deep
narrow valley bathed in sunshine. Here, then,
was Tibet, the forbidden, the mysterious. In
the distance all the land was that yellow and brick-dust
colour I had often seen in pictures and thought exaggerated
and unreal. Far to the north-east Chumulari (23,930
feet), with its magnificent white spire rising from
the roof-like mass behind, looked like an immense
cathedral of snow. Far below on a yellow hillside
hung the Kanjut Lamasery above Rinchengong. In
the valley beneath lay Chumbi and the road to Lhasa.
There is a descent of over 4,000 feet
in six miles from the summit of the Jelap. The
valley is perfectly straight, without a bend, so that
one can look down from the pass upon the Kanjut monastery
on the hillside immediately above Yatung. The
pass would afford an impregnable military position
to a people with the rudiments of science and martial
spirit. A few riflemen on the cliffs that command
it might annihilate a column with perfect safety,
and escape into Bhutan before any flanking movement
could be made. Yet miles of straggling convoy
are allowed to pass daily with the supplies that are
necessary for the existence of the force ahead.
The road to Phari Jong passes through two military
walls. The first at Yatung, six miles below the
pass, is a senseless obstruction, and any able-bodied
Tommy with hobnailed boots might very easily kick it
down. It has no block-houses, and would be useless
against a flank attack. Before our advance to
Chumbi the wall was inhabited by three Chinese officials,
a dingpon, or Tibetan sergeant, and twenty Tibetan
soldiers. It served as a barrier beyond which
no British subject was allowed to pass. The second
wall lies across the valley at Gob-sorg, four miles
beyond our camp at Chumbi. It is roofed and loop-holed
like the Yatung barrier, and is defended by block-houses.
This fortification and every mile of valley between
the Jelap and Gautsa might be held by a single company
against an invading force. Yet there are not half
a dozen Chinese or Tibetan soldiers in the valley.
No opposition is expected this side of the Tang la,
but nondescript troops armed with matchlocks and bows
hover round the mission on the open plateau beyond.
Our evacuation of Khamba Jong and occupation of Chumbi
were so rapid and unexpected that it is thought the
Tibetans had no time to bring troops into the valley;
but to anyone who knows their strategical incompetence,
no explanation is necessary.
Yatung is reached by one of the worst
sections of road on the march; one comes across a
dead transport mule at almost every zigzag of the
descent. For ten years the village has enjoyed
the distinction of being the only place in Southern
Tibet accessible to Europeans. Not that many
Europeans avail themselves of its accessibility, for
it is a dreary enough place to live in, shrouded as
it is in cloud more than half the year round, and
embedded in a valley so deep and narrow that in winter-time
the sun has hardly risen above one cliff when it sinks
behind another. The privilege of access to Yatung
was the result of the agreement between Great Britain
and China with regard to trade communications between
India and Tibet drawn up in Darjeeling in 1893, subsequently
to the Sikkim Convention. It was then stipulated
that there should be a trade mart at Yatung to which
British subjects should have free access, and that
there should be special trade facilities between Sikkim
and Tibet. It is reported that the Chinese Amban
took good care that Great Britain should not benefit
by these new regulations, for after signing the agreement
which was to give the Indian tea-merchants a market
in Tibet, he introduced new regulations the other side
of the frontier, which prohibited the purchase of
Indian tea. Whether the story is true or not,
it is certainly characteristic of the evasion and
duplicity which have brought about the present armed
mission into Tibet.
To-day, as one rides through the cobbled
street of Yatung, the only visible effects of the
Convention are the Chinese Customs House with its
single European officer, and the residence of a lady
missionary, or trader, as the exigencies of international
diplomacy oblige her to term herself. The Customs
House, which was opened on May 1, 1894, was first
established with the object of estimating the trade
between India and Tibet traffic is not
permitted by any other route than the Jelap and
with a view to taxation when the trade should make
it worth while. It was stipulated that no duties
should be levied for the period of five years.
Up to the present no tariff has been imposed, and the
only apparent use the Customs House serves is to collect
statistics, and perhaps to remind Tibet of the shadowy
suzerainty of China. The natives have boycotted
the place, and refuse to trade there, and no European
or native of India has thought it worth while to open
a market. Phari is the real trade mart on the
frontier, and Kalimpong, in British Bhutan, is the
foreign trade mart. But the whole trade between
India and Tibet is on such a small scale that it might
be in the hands of a single merchant.
The Customs House, the missionary
house, and the houses of the clerks and servants of
the Customs and of the headman, form a little block.
Beyond it there is a quarter of a mile of barren stony
ground, and then the wall with military pretensions.
I rode through the gate unchallenged.
At Rinchengong, a mile beyond the
barrier, the Yatung stream flows into the Ammo Chu.
The road follows the eastern bank of the river, passing
through Cheuma and Old Chumbi, where it crosses the
stream. After crossing the bridge, a mile of
almost level ground takes one into Chumbi camp.
I reached Chumbi on the evening of January 12, and
was able to send the Daily Mail the first cable
from Tibet, having completed the journey from Darjeeling
in two days’ hard riding.
The camp lies in a shallow basin in
the hills, and is flanked by brown fir-clad hills
which rise some 1,500 feet above the river-bed, and
preclude a view of the mountains on all sides.
The situation is by no means the best from the view
of comfort, but strategic reasons make it necessary,
for if the camp were pitched half a mile further up
the valley, the gorge of the stream which debouches
into the Ammo River to the north of Chumbi would give
the Tibetans an opportunity of attacking us in the
rear. Despite the protection of almost Arctic
clothing, one shivers until the sun rises over the
eastern hill at ten o’clock, and shivers again
when it sinks behind the opposite one at three.
Icy winds sweep the valley, and hurricanes of dust
invade one’s tent. Against this cold one
clothes one’s self in flannel vest and shirt,
sweater, flannel-lined coat, poshteen or Cashmere
sheepskin, wool-lined Gilgit boots, and fur or woollen
cap with flaps meeting under the chin. The general
effect is barbaric and picturesque. In after-days
the trimness of a military club may recall the scene officers
clad in gold-embroidered poshteen, yellow boots, and
fur caps, bearded like wild Kerghizes, and huddling
round the camp fire in this black cauldron-like valley
under the stars.
Officers are settling down in Chumbi
as comfortably as possible for winter quarters.
Primitive dens have been dug out of the ground, walled
up with boulders, and roofed in with green fir-branches.
In some cases a natural rock affords a whole wall.
The den where I am now writing is warmed by a cheerful
pinewood blaze, a luxury after the angeiti in
one’s tent. I write at an operating-table
after a dinner of minal (pheasant) and yak’s
heart. A gramophone is dinning in my ears.
It is destined, I hope, to resound in the palace of
Potala, where the Dalai Lama and his suite may
wonder what heathen ritual is accompanied by ’A
jovial monk am I,’ and ‘Her golden hair
was hanging down her back.’
Both at home and in India one hears
the Tibet Mission spoken of enviously as a picnic.
There is an idea of an encampment in a smiling valley,
and easy marches towards the mysterious city.
In reality, there is plenty of hard and uninteresting
work. The expedition is attended with all the
discomforts of a campaign, and very little of the
excitement. Colonel Younghusband is now at Tuna,
a desolate hamlet on the Tibetan plateau, exposed
to the coldest winds of Asia, where the thermometer
falls to 25 deg. below zero. Detachments
of the escort are scattered along the line of communications
in places of varying cold and discomfort, where they
must wait until the necessary supplies have been carried
through to Phari. It is not likely that Colonel
Younghusband will be able to proceed to Gyantse before
March. In the meanwhile, imagine the Pioneers
and Gurkhas, too cold to wash or shave, shivering
in a dirty Tibetan fort, half suffocated with smoke
from a yak-dung fire. Then there is the transport
officer shut up in some narrow valley of Sikkim, trying
to make half a dozen out of three with his camp of
sick beasts and sheaf of urgent telegrams calling for
supplies. He hopes there will be ‘a show,’
and that he may be in it. Certainly if anyone
deserves to go to Lhasa and get a medal for it, it
is the supply and transport man. But he will be
left behind.