Seven Years in Tibet. Heinrich Harrer
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us, containing as they did idols of wood or clay and leaves from Tibetan sacred books—offerings no doubt to the saints who used to live in these caverns.
On January 19th the roads were sufficiently passable to allow us to start off in company with a huge yak-caravan. Ahead of us went a herd of yaks, carrying no loads, which acted as snow-ploughs and seemed to enjoy the exercise very much. The country was intersected by valleys and ravines and in the first two days we crossed no less than twelve bridges over the Kosi. My yak, which came from Changthang, was unused to bridges and jibbed vigorously when he had to cross one. It was only by pushing behind and pulling in front—an operation in which the drivers enthusiastically assisted us—that we could get him across. I had already been warned not to bring him to Kyirong as he would not be able to stand the hot summer climate, but I had not wanted to leave him behind in view of our plans for flight, which we had not abandoned. Throughout all this time my thermometer showed an unvarying temperature of -30 degrees Centigrade. There were no lower markings on the instrument!
We were deeply impressed by a rock monastery in the neighbourhood of the village of Longda. Seven hundred feet above the valley red temples and countless cells were perched like birds’ nests on the rocks. Despite the danger of avalanches Aufschnaiter and I could not refrain from climbing the rockface, and so obtained another wonderful view of the Himalayas. We also met some monks and nuns and learned from them that this was the monastery founded by Milarepa, the famous Tibetan saint and poet, who lived in the eleventh century. We could easily understand that the glorious surroundings and the loneliness of the place were peculiarly adapted to meditation and the making of poetry. We left this place regretfully and determined to revisit it one day.
Every day we found less snow and after reaching the tree-line soon found ourselves in a really tropical region. In this atmosphere the winter garments given us by the Tibetan Government were too warm for us. Now we came to Drothang, the last stopping-place before Kyirong. I remember that all the inhabitants of this place had highly developed goitres, which one rarely sees in Tibet. We took a week to get to Kyirong, which when the road is good is only three days’ march from Dzongka, and can be reached in a single day by a fast courier.
The name Kyirong means “the village of happiness” and it really deserves the appellation. I shall never cease thinking of this place with yearning, and if I can choose where to pass the evening of my life, it will be in Kyirong. There I would build myself a house of red cedar-wood and have one of the rushing mountain streams running through my garden, in which every kind of fruit would grow, for though its altitude is over 9,000 feet Kyirong lies on the twenty-eighth parallel. When we arrived in January the temperature was just below freezing; it seldom falls below -10 degrees Centigrade. The seasons correspond to those in the Alps, but the vegetation is sub-tropical. One can go ski-ing the whole year round, and in the summer there is a row of 20,000-footers to climb.
There are about eighty houses in the village, which is the seat of two district governors who administer thirty villages. We were told that we were the first Europeans who had ever come to Kyirong, and the inhabitants watched our entry with astonishment. This time we were quartered in the house of a farmer, which reminded me of our Tyrolese houses. As a matter of fact the whole of the village might have been transplanted from the Alps, except that instead of chimneys the roofs of the houses were decorated with prayer-flags. These were always in the five colours which represented different aspects of life in Tibet.
On the ground floor were the stables for cows and horses. They were separated by a thick ceiling from the living-rooms of the family, which are approached by a ladder from the courtyard. Thick stuffed mattresses served as beds and easy chairs, and near them were small, low tables. The members of the household kept their clothes in brightly painted wardrobes, and before the inevitable carved wooden altar butter-lamps were burning. In winter the whole family sit on the deal floorboards round a huge open log-fire and sip their tea.
The room in which Aufschnaiter and I were put was rather small, so I soon shifted to the hay barn next door. Aufschnaiter carried on our unceasing struggle with rats and bugs, while I had to cope with mice and fleas. I never got the better of the vermin, but the view over glaciers and rhododendron forests made up for my discomfort. We had a servant allotted to us, but preferred to do our cooking ourselves. We had a fireplace in our room and were given wood to burn. We spent very little money; our provisions did not cost us more than £2 10s. a month each. I had a pair of trousers made, and the tailor charged half a crown.
The staple food in this region is tsampa. This is how they prepare it. You heat sand to a high temperature in an iron pan and then pour barleycorns on to it. They burst with a slight pop, whereupon you put the corns and the sand in a fine-meshed sieve through which the sand runs: after this you grind the corn very small. The resulting meal is stirred up into a paste with butter-tea or milk or beer and then eaten. The Tibetans make a special cult of tsampa and have many ways of preparing it. We soon got accustomed to it, but never cared much for butter-tea, which is usually made with rancid butter and is generally repugnant to Europeans. It is, however, universally drunk and appreciated by the Tibetans, who often drink as many as sixty cups in a day. The Tibetans of Kyirong, besides butter-tea and tsampa, eat rice, buckwheat, maize, potatoes, turnips, onions, beans and radishes. Meat is a rarity, for as Kyirong is a particularly holy place no animal is ever slaughtered there. Meat appeared on the table only when it had been brought in from another district or, more often, when bears or panthers left part of their prey uneaten. I never understood how this doctrine could be reconciled with the fact that every autumn some 15,000 sheep are driven through Kyirong bound for the slaughterhouses in Nepal and that the Tibetans levy export duty on them.
At the very beginning of our stay we paid a call on the district authorities. Our travel document had already been delivered by a servant and the Pönpo thought that we would go straight on into Nepal. That was by no means our intention, and we told him that we would like to stay for a while at Kyirong. He took this very calmly and promised, at our request, to report to Lhasa. We also visited the representative of Nepal who described his country in the most attractive terms. We had meanwhile learned that Kopp, after staying a few days in the capital, had been pushed off to an internment camp in India. The seductions of automobiles, bicycles and the cinema which, we were told, we should find in Katmandu, made no appeal to us.
We could not really hope to get a residence permit from Lhasa, and if we went to Nepal, we expected to be expelled into India. Accordingly we decided to recruit our strength in this fairy-like village and stay there till we had worked out a new plan of escape. We could not foresee then that we should stay nearly nine months in Kyirong.
We were not in the least bored. We filled exercise books with notes on the manners and customs of the Tibetans. On most days we went out to explore the neighbourhood. Aufschnaiter, who had been secretary of the Himalaya Foundation in Munich, used his opportunities for map-making. There were only three names on the map of the region we had brought with us, but we now filled in more than two hundred. In fact we not only enjoyed our freedom but made practical use of it.
Our excursions, which at first were limited to the immediate neighbourhood, gradually extended further and further. The inhabitants were quite accustomed to us and no one interfered with us. Of course it was the mountains that attracted us most, and after that the hot springs round Kyirong. There were several of these, the hottest of which was in a bamboo forest on the bank of the ice-cold river Kosi. The water bubbled out of the ground nearly at boiling point and was led into an artificial basin, where it still had a temperature of about 40 degrees Centigrade. I used to plunge alternately into the hot pool and into the glacial waters of the Kosi.
In the spring there is a regular bathing season in this place. Swarms of Tibetans came along and bamboo huts sprang up everywhere in this usually lonely spot, two hours distant from Kyirong. Men and women tumbled naked into the pool and any signs of prudishness provoked roars of laughter. Many families pay holiday visits to this spa. They set out from their homes, with sacks full of provisions and barrels of beer, and settle down for a fortnight in bamboo huts. The upper classes also are accustomed to visit the springs and arrive with caravans and a staff of servants. But the whole holiday season lasts only a short time as the river, swollen with melting snow, overflows the springs.
In Kyirong I made the acquaintance of a monk who