Seven Years in Tibet. Heinrich Harrer
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food which he then set before me. I asked him to get me provisions and a woollen blanket before the following night. He promised to do this and in addition made me a present of a pair of hand-woven woollen drawers and a shawl.
The next day I slept in a neighbouring wood and came in the evening to fetch my things. My friend gave me a hearty meal and accompanied me for a part of my way. He insisted on carrying some of my baggage, undernourished as he was and hardly able to keep pace with me. I soon sent him back and after the friendliest parting found myself alone again.
It may have been a little after midnight when I ran into a bear standing on his hind legs in the middle of my path, growling at me. At this point the sound of the swiftly running waters of the Ganges was so loud that we had neither of us heard the other’s approach. Pointing my primitive spear at his heart, I backed step by step so as to keep my eyes fixed on him. Round the first bend of the track I hurriedly lit a fire, and pulling out a burning stick, I brandished it in front of me and moved forward to meet my enemy. But coming round the corner I found the road clear and the bear gone. Tibetan peasants told me later that bears are only aggressive by day. At night they are afraid to attack.
I had already been on the march for ten days when I reached the village of Nelang, where last year destiny had wrecked my hopes. This time I was a month earlier and the village was still uninhabited. But what was my delight to find there my four comrades from the camp! They had overtaken me when I was staying with my Indian friend. We took up our quarters in an open house and slept the whole night through. Sattler unfortunately had an attack of mountain sickness; he felt wretched and declared himself unequal to further efforts. He decided to return, but promised not to surrender till two days were up, so as not to endanger our escape. Kopp, who in the previous year had penetrated into Tibet by this route in company with the wrestler Kramer, joined me as a partner.
It took us seven long days’ marching, however, before we finally reached the pass which forms the frontier between India and Tibet. Our delay was due to a bad miscalculation. After leaving Tirpani, a well-known caravan camp, we followed the most easterly of three valleys, but eventually had to admit that we had lost our way. In order to find our bearings Aufschnaiter and I climbed to the top of a mountain from which we expected a good view of the country on the other side. From here we saw Tibet for the first time, but were far too tired to enjoy the prospect and at an altitude of nearly 18,000 feet we suffered from lack of oxygen. To our great disappointment we decided that we must return to Tirpani. There we found that the pass we were bound for lay almost within a stone’s throw of us. Our error had cost us three days and caused us the greatest discouragement. We had to cut our rations and felt the utmost anxiety about our capacity to hold out until we had reached the next inhabited place.
From Tirpani our way sloped gently upward by green pastures, through which one of the baby Ganges streams flowed. This brook, which we had known a week back as a raging, deafening torrent racing down the valley, now wound gently through the grasslands. In a few weeks the whole country would be green and the numerous camping-places, recognisable from their fire-blackened stones, made us picture to ourselves the caravans which cross the passes from India into Tibet in the summer season. A troop of mountain sheep passed in front of us. Lightfooted as chamois, they soon vanished from our sight without having noticed us. Alas! our stomachs regretted them. It would have been grand to see one of them stewing in our cooking-pot, thereby giving us a chance, for once, to eat our fill.
At the foot of the pass we camped in India for the last time. Instead of the hearty meat dinner we had been dreaming of, we baked skimpy cakes with the last of our flour mixed with water and laid on hot stones. It was bitterly cold and our only protection against the icy mountain wind that stormed through the valley was a stone wall.
At last on May 17th, 1944, we stood at the top of the Tsangchokla pass. We knew from our maps that our altitude was 17,200 feet.
So here we were on the frontier between India and Tibet, so long the object of our wishful dreams.
Here we enjoyed for the first time a sense of security, for we knew that no Englishman could arrest us here. We did not know how the Tibetans would treat us but as our country was not at war with Tibet we hoped confidently for a hospitable welcome.
On the top of the pass were heaps of stones and prayer-flags dedicated to their gods by pious Buddhists. It was very cold, but we took a long rest and considered our situation. We had almost no knowledge of the language and very little money. Above all we were near starvation and must find human habitation as soon as possible. But as far as we could see there were only empty mountain heights and deserted valleys. Our maps showed only vaguely the presence of villages in this region. Our final objective, as I have already mentioned, was the Japanese lines—thousands of miles away. The route we planned to follow led first to the holy mountain of Kailas and thence along the course of the Brahmaputra till at last it would bring us to Eastern Tibet. Kopp, who had been in Tibet the year before and had been expelled from that country, thought that the indications on our maps were reasonably accurate.
After a steep descent we reached the course of the Optchu and rested there at noon. Overhanging rock walls flanked the valley like a canyon. The valley was absolutely uninhabited and only a wooden pole showed that men sometimes came there. The other side of the valley consisted of slopes of shale up which we had to climb. It was evening before we reached the plateau and we bivouacked in icy cold. Our fuel during the last few days had been the branches of thorn bushes, which we found on the slopes. Here there was nothing growing, so we had to use dry cow-dung, laboriously collected.
Before noon next day we reached our first Tibetan village, Kasapuling, which consisted of six houses. The place appeared to be completely deserted and when we knocked at the doors, nothing stirred. We then discovered that all the villagers were busy sowing barley in the surrounding fields. Sitting on their hunkers they put each individual grain of seed into the ground with the regularity and speed of machines. We looked at them with feelings that might compare with those of Columbus when he met his first Indians. Would they receive us as friends or foes? For the moment they took no notice of us. The cries of an old woman, looking like a witch, were the only sound we heard. They were not aimed at us, but at the swarms of wild pigeons which swooped down to get at the newly planted grain. Until evening the villagers hardly deigned to bestow a glance on us; so we four established our camp near one of the houses, and when at nightfall the people came in from the fields we tried to trade with them. We offered them money for one of their sheep or goats, but they showed themselves disinclined to trade. As Tibet has no frontier posts the whole population is brought up to be hostile to foreigners, and there are severe penalties for any Tibetan who sells anything to a foreigner. We were starving and had no choice but to intimidate them. We threatened to take one of their animals by force if they would not freely sell us one—and as none of the four of us looked a weakling, this method of argument eventually succeeded. It was pitch dark before they handed to us for a shamelessly high price the oldest billy-goat they could put their hands on. We knew we were being blackmailed, but we put up with it, as we wished to win the hospitality of this country.
We slaughtered the goat in a stable and it was not till midnight that we fell to on the half-cooked meat.
We spent the next day resting and looking more closely at the houses. These were stone-built with flat roofs on which the fuel was laid out to dry. The Tibetans who live here cannot be compared with those who inhabit the interior, whom we got to know later. The brisk summer caravan traffic with India has spoilt them. We found them dirty, dark-skinned and shifty-eyed, with no trace of that gaiety for which their race is famous. They went sulkily to their daily work and one felt that they had only settled in this sterile country in order to earn good money from the caravans for the produce of their land. These six houses on the frontier formed, as I later was able to confirm, almost the only village without a monastery.
Next morning we left this inhospitable place without hindrance. We were by now fairly well rested and Kopp’s Berlin mother-wit, which during the last few days had suffered an eclipse, had us laughing again. We crossed over fields to go downhill into a little valley. On the way up the opposite slope to the next plateau we felt the weight of our packs more than ever. This physical fatigue was mainly caused by a reaction to the disappointment which this long-dreamed-of country had up to now caused us. We