A BOTANIST IN LAMA-LAND.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20772, 4 February 1933, Page 13

A BOTANIST IN LAMA-LAND.

. .—. FROM SRINAGAR TO LEH. (wbcuu.t wr.irrr.s roa thj- mess.) IBy I'noi Kssoit Aisnoi-o Wai.i,.] JV. , July 27th. Nurla (or Nurulla). Tils was a fairly hard stage, not so wry hrtg, IS miles, but trying because / tt f tho heat. We started a little later J iiait usual, as some things had been gtolen iu the night from my men's quarters aud wo suspected the chowkidar, with good reason, but there was no authority » l tlic village with whom to ''confront him, and time was wasted in fruitless accusations and arguments in three languages (Urdu, Kashmiri, and Ladakhi), with an occasional dip into . English; Maliudoo speaks Ladakhi very well. I left at 0' and got hero at 12.30, tie last two hours under a merciless sun jebeiag very arduous. On leaving Lamayuru tho road ..-• jdttßffos precipitously down an extremely gloomy and profound gorge

with a small stream in it walled in by , eliffs about 5000 to 7000 feet high. • This, after a few miles, joins a similar jforgo oa an even larger scale, with a bijf, impetuous, and dirty river roaring through it, and frowning precipices, purple and black, rising to the sky. In tliifi gorge there : .i one fine plantation of , ]»plars (Himalayan), and a tiny patch of crops. After four or five miles this >s debouches into tho valley of tho Indus, and this was the event of the day. A mile or two up the river is the bridge, vitiiwe crossed to tho right bank. The *Mus is here a out 100 yards broad, a great, surging, muddy flood. The valley .is half a mile wide at this spot, a •wilderness of gravel and boulders Hanked by unimpressive arid moun- '" tains, 6000 feet or so above the river; the rocks are purple, grey, reddish, yellowish, and black, and the valley walls consist largely of immense shingle-slips or screes. Here and there, very high up, I can see a faint tinge of , giecn. Above the bridge is a large village, Kiiolatsc, an oasis of apricots, willows, walnuts, and crops of wheat or barley, just harvested, i'or five miles above this the valley is without sign of life, and the road then reaches the similar village of Nurlu, where we set • up our tents among barley fields, walnut trees, apricots, and willows. For days we had looked forward to fresh fruit, and here at last we have come to it; I got a hatful of ripe apricots for about twopence as wo came through tho village. ■ In tho profound gorges near Lamayuru I came upon some old friends, the big "Lavender," Wild Kose, the tall shrub like Tamarisk and other things neon in the valley of the Dras and not again till now. I had also two great surprises. One was a pretty shrub ' about five feet high with a great show of bright pink blossoms like small Geraniums; I saw but little of this. The other plant is a marvel, a straggling prostrate shrub with round leaves and a large beautiful white Hower tinged with pink, very like an Azalea, about three inches across. This lovely thing holds its own right through, and it is abundant and conKpicuons on the stony screes by the road, and high up the hillsides, all along the Indus Valley, , where- little else grows. In some places it forms patches several yards square. This, I learned later, is just the ordinary Caper, of which tho luscious sauce is made. As ■we have now broken the neck of the journey, being paly three marches from Li*h, about 42 miles, and as Mahadoo, . 'he cook, has been ill and the others have sore feet, we decided to stay here . one day.

1 The Ladakliis do not improve on acts quaintance. They seem jovial and child- ;' ' like folk, but our experience of last j f -, night was unpleasant, and as soon as I -. got hero an Indian servant camo to mn ' , with a chit from hjs master to ask all ' -r --.travellers to look out for his Cairn teru *rw, stolen, here last night. The men '^ J are lazy and idle, I imagine, and most t ' of them stroll about with a skein of hj 'wool or goatshair and spin it on to a ||s ttiJtk as thev loaf, or twirl a prayingj I'. July 2Sth'. Nurla. ' This day was I |.ij earnestly devoted to complete rest. I l|f\>«nly visited the bank of the Indus, a iSLVltittdrcd yards-away, to look for plants I lp and gaze upon that great turgid flood p* : «»d listen to the muffled thunder with §• ■ wWch it fills the broad valley. Its | ILj /flloar so perfectly harmonises with S|p : "tli*t of its gravelly shores that in a |E„}*a*oal glance at the landscape you I lt?sf,ißjght "" HS li altogether. Our camp and IpiHS* village are up on a terrace, and the jptf riyer runs in a deep trough whoso slopes Ife/ate all loose sand, gravel, and boulders. illP'*H m I saw several of my familiar llpH&nds, the tall "Lavender," the &**uikly-lcavcd "pink »lage," and the 11} War fiosc. I found some very queer IBSs paintings on a large boulder and tried |H|[t* take a picture of them, but the .ipikament played me false. ilpt' Tacae villages are haunted by many JHjSwrda. Here I have seen and heard the BgtfHbe rock-dove, sparrows, black red■|'Ha]ttsf golden orioles, watcr-wagtaila, HpiWfpiea, my old, old friend the Carrion [§lfcs»Dw, whose nests 1 used to rob about jjißXiaadoii in my boyhood and whosi red-| HEfA&Mted young I reared as pets; and, if Iwlfaiß not mistaken, the chiffchaff. ■IP; i Having read in a littlo guide-book of. ■Pf *'%Ut beer" called Chhang brewed by (jgfMtib Ladakliis from giram, a kind of Bff¥%by, I enquired for it, and in no Kplm* a whisky bottle of it was proHQNPM& To my surprise it is " clear K^ , TS Mr ,i3jo water, and it does not taste HftTWa any beer I ever tried, but rather ■■!;]■%) a mixture of whey and Plymouth Hreafc This does not sound nice, but it is MfiF'W* * good drink. The cost is pro■3£%itivat to me at any rate, for 1 had to ■flip? S's 2, about 3a, for one bottle. |KJjß»fding to my guide all men, women. ■&% d Children in Ladakh drink it, "and, BKj&feet, without it they cannot live, and. H&l**law finds its place even in their worMy book gives a full desenp■Prf* « f the way it is made, a cheap- and ■Hst-jStaple process. HP *™y 2!) t - Saspul. This stage of 14 ■S&JMS miles gave little trouble, the road ■frWSi' mostly hard, though rough, and. WBr fare were only a few sandy bits. I left ■b?if&3o and arrived at 10.30, before the Ki fattaise heat set in. The road keeps to the Indus all the way, dipping SI;!, #*i -rising over bluffs. Only one village mst W passed, and the scene remains un- |||| panjfed—the name unappetising, stony and long shiuglc-slips, and I 111 piPfy'pa>f>ed one and met one long string ■ LMfonies and donkeys with their bales II |LB, or cloth. At Saspul the valley H ■HI 311 * out ' anu 'here is a little plain. H ilß''* i " in i ? ' l 3 l" Jtll<1 think, a good H {Hf"* w '' e ~f ~,,{,1 , 5. . wheat and barley, llflfffi 8 and bean*, and' poplars, walnuts, ■BHW'apricutti. The Jtcst House* is in a Hflfflr position. high above the ailtivaand has an upper storey with a HHN verandah, screened by poplars trees. From here one high ffliHp h vifihle, with a snow-field, per—lft 18.M0 feet high, certainly 16,000. fflHllpf tho river and on the screes 1 »ani« plants again, Lavender, IHlifc'Csper, Rat*, «nd Golden Clematis,!

£S " here for ™«g seeds; and I SnatntaT taU ValGrian > »<* «* v.m C ] ? s * nothin S Nurla after all. Each mght wo had a man on guard close to the tent 3 -I paid him 3or 4 7o?wi W f dld ~. ; and Iha dmy suit-case tethered to my bed (we always do this in camp). Money i 3 a great source of anxiety on this trip; tho traveller must have a good deal in order to pay his way and every villager knows that he Has it. Before I left a man came up and exhibited to me a board with a notice signed by the British Joint Commissioner at Lcb, who has charge of tins Treaty Koad, and in accordance witrt its terms I paid him 8 annas (9d) as rent for our two nights' residence. But after I left the real owner of the land turned up and demanded the rent. ;"y people paid him nothing and left him to fight it out with the Pretender, and tho result of the conflict I shall probably never know. So the Ladakhis cheat each other as well as the stranger.

I need hardly say that we passed chortens and manis without number today, as wo now do every day. On some conveniently flat boulder-faces I saw a long, sacred inscription and "The Lotus" quite artistically drawn. In some countries I know of there would bo invitations to buy soap, whisky, or tobacco instead of these. But these people arc centuries behind the times.

During tho whole of the eight hours that I have spent here a lama just below has been chanting holy phrases in a very loud voice with very few intervals. It is a monotonous and rather lugubrious performance with many repetition's, long-drawn notes, and little runs or trills. It sounds more like a street-cry than an act of worship. Another, or others, are doing the same thing a little further off, so there is quite an atmosphere of sanctity in Saspul.

July 30th. Nimu. This, the last stage but one on our journey, is one of the easiest of all, only 12 miles, and a hard road most of the way. I left Saspul a little before G and was hero by 9.30. The Rest House at Saspul proved to be a perfect heat-trap, facing south, and sleep there was impossible. The road here loaves the Indus Valley and climbs for three or four miles through a narrow gully upholstered in the usual red and grey gravels to a high pass, about 11,000 feet I suppose, undulates through a broad, arid, shallow valley, almost a plain, about five miles wide, and then drops suddenly into an idyllic village called Basgo, with crops and trees, a clear little stream, and a most picturesque Gompa built up high on cliffs like Lamayuru. It then regains the Indus and goes for the rest of the way over a flat, sandy plain into Nimu, the valley being here quite wide. About tho top of the pass I saw quantities of a curious, leafless, brittle little plant, a true xerophyte, not beautiful however. In the sand near the Best House I got, or hope I got, pictures of the "Lavender" and the "Sage" which have become so familiar to me since I saw them first in the gorges of the Dras. The weather is abnormal to-day, as the afternoon wind which invariably blows in those regions, usually upstream from the west, hot and parching, |s accompanied by much black cloud and thunder, and af>ter 5 p.m. even a little rain. Later tho wind, blowing down the valley, rose to gale force and raised a terrific dust storm such as I should be sorry to face on the road.

, Nimu, like Saspul, has a very large . expanse of green crops and plantations, ' and tho scenery of the valley is un- | changed except for its greater width. July 31st. Nimu. When tho ponies I arrived at 4 a.m. the gale was still eo fierce and the weather so threatening that the journey to Leh had to be postponed. The day turned out well, after [ all, but not till it was too late to start; it proved, indeed, an ideal travelling day for these parts, cool and cloudy. At intervals all day there.was thunder and from time to time stray blasts of wind. Just after breakfast a nativo came to say that thcro were Shapu visible, and my people thought I might get a photograph. But they were a mile or more' away on a high terrace beyond the Indus, mere whitish specks in a brown waste, five of them. I climbed up the hills bohind tho village in order to see for myself whether there were any plants at all to be found. I went up about 1000 feet to a large plateau, where there was evidence that sheep regularly pastured, and found four or five species of small plants in fair abundance, all insignificant things, and all but one or two I had seen already. The "tennis-ball" thistle abounds here, arid tho pretty pinkflowered "Sage," but it is no botanist's paradise. After 5 p.m. we had a very big thunderstorm and heavy Tain, and the temperature fell swiftly; we had, for once, a cool night. August Ist. Leh. A cool breeze and occasional kindly clouds mado this a fairly easy stage, 18 miles: the road first goes up into a low pass, leaving the Indus Valley, then by a wide, arid plain returns to it, after about 10 miles; it then reaches Spituk, four or five miles from Leh, where there is a large Gompa crowning a rugged hill. From Spituk the road rises 1000 feet to Leh, which stands at 11,500 feet. I left at 5.30 and entered tie gate of Leh at 11.30. Mahadoo had given us a terrific account of this stage, saying that it was all deep, loose sand and that nobody could possibly walk it, so, though not half believing him, I provided one pony for Aziza and Mahadoo, and one for Shahban and myself, making a caravan of seven for the day. Yet, as I expected, I found good hard walking, if only on boulders, most of the way, and proudly completed my journey from Violo Bridge to Leh, 222 miles, on foot, and Shahban had the pony. I got my first sight of Leh from Spituk. At this place we turned upwards from the Indus, which runs hero in a valley about 10 miles wide through grassy flats and thickets of shrubs. You see before you a flat, greyish-white, sandy, barren plain, about three miles wide, rising very gen" ■ towards high, rocky, ycllow-ish-rcd mountains with deep gorges. At the upper end, just where tho gorges begin, a mass of verdure fills up the plain, above which is visible a very high stone building, of tho same colour as the rocks above it—the old palaco or castlo of the rulers of Leh, now a monastery. Behind it rise peaks streaked and patched with snow. Leh is before you. To a point about a mile, to tho right of the town the road takes a bee-line along the plain, marked by a! double row of boulders, and the telegraph poles run parallel to it some distance away. One mile from the town th' cultivations begin, fields of beans, lucerne, wheat, barley, etc., closed in by neat walls of boulders four feet high, and above them skylarks "are singing. Tho road meanders through walled-in lanes, rising pretty steeply at the end, and finally I came to the wooden gate and entered the bazaar of Leh, a broad street (for an Eastern town), about 25 yards wide, with poplars along one side, shops on both sides, and a mosque at the end, above which are tier upon tier of picturesque houses and the old palacemouastcry toweri-g high above all, not a beautiful building but impressive by its size (it has nine storeys) and its commanding situation. But architecturally it has a very strong resemblance to those concrete buildings which houso our road-metalling plants. The ponywallah led us through a very labyrinth of narrow, twisting lanes to the DakBungalow, quite above the town, and unon the "lawn" in front of it my tent Ktched So lam settled in Leh. I visited the ?ost Office to collect my mail Over the doorway two beams are crudely painted, one blue the other red On the upper is inscribed in rather ?haky capitals, "God Save ( Our King Emperor," and on the other, "Welcome." (To be Continued.) }