THE WAY TO EVEREST

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 25, 29 July 1922, Page 15

THE WAY TO EVEREST

DWELLERS IN DEEP VALEEYS SHUT OFF FROM THE WORLD. The world's loneliest humanity lives an the valleys. When Judge Hughes wrote in his schoolboy classic that he pitied folk who were not born in a valley he did not know of those wonderful valleys which members of the Everest reconnaissance expedition penetrated last year for the first time, states the Daily Chronicle.. It shows that if the scientific interest of his great mountaineering project ie the attainment of the highest peak, the human interest lies in the isolated valleys and gorges through which the mountaineers have to pass to reach their goal. Some of the places described by Lieut-enant-Colonel C. K. Howard-Bury, in "Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, IS2l>' are quite as intriguing as those magic lands of Sinbad the Sailor. VALLEY OF HERMITS. There is not » Valley of Diamonds, but there is a Holy Valley, in the Tingri, country, where hermits and nuns have shut themselves up in caves to meditate, burning juniper bushes as incense before thair entrances. : ■ Here was one cave high up on a rocky lodge where a hermit had been meditating, and he hoped after ten years to be able to live on ten grains, of barley a day. There was a female anchorite in this place, who was supposed to have lived there for 138 years, "and she was greatly revered." , • . •

• One of the valleys that leads up to Mount Everest is the Rongbuk, where the inhabitants are mostly monastic. In fact, one-fifth of the whole population of Tibet are said to be living a monastic life. Every animal in this valley was extraordinarily tame. Rock pigeons fed out of the visitors' hands, and the ravene and other birds had no fear of humans. So secluded are some of the Himalayan valley folk that they seldom know anything of the life beyond their own particular valley. Distances are measured by cups of tea. "Three cups of tea was the. equivalent of about five miles." In some of tha valley regions the winds blow hareh all day long, and' the oliffs are bleak and bare, but others are luxuriant in vegetation. Ono of the most beautiful of these last was the Khama Valley, where grew rhododendrons and wild roses, deep pur. pie-coloured primulas and monkehood. Here tho explorers passed! through beautiful glades gay with great - hydrangeas, 20ft or more in height, covered with flowers. One fe*ture > of this neighbourhood, however, was distinctly unpleasant—leeches. At certain 6pote the valley was alive with them, and the explorers spent a lot of their time picking leeches off their clothes, legs, hands, or heads. "They climbed up the sides of the tents and dropped down into our food, our cup 9 and on to our plates. .' .We took them off by tens *t a time. They were very hungry and varied from great striped, horse leeches to tiny ones as thin aB a. pin and able to penetrate anywhere." This pest was thriving at an altitude of over 12,000 feet. Except for these leeches the Kama Valley was found to be the most alluring. NEVER SEEN WHITE MEN. "None seemed to be comparable with this, either for the beauty of its Alpine scenery or for its wonderful vegetation. Wo shall not ©asily forget the emilins pasturee, carpeted with gentians and every variety of Alpine-flower, that rise to the very verge of ice-bound and snow-covered tracks, where mighty glaciers descend among the forests which clothe the lower slopes." Some of the villagers in these hidden valleys had never seen white men before, and on at least one occasion the entire population decamped and hid on the explorers' approach. Only wth great difficulty could they be persuaded to come i out of their hiding places. ■ I "Their ignorance of the outside world," says Colonel Howard-Bury, "was at times astonishing. Tibetan officials and /traders I were an exception, but it was seldom that the ordinary Tibetan ever left the valley in which he Was born and bred, with the result that, except for tho wildest "rumours, they knew nothing of the outside world."

It may be that these little-known valleys_ of the Himalayas will be the lust habitable places of the earth where what is called modern progress will ever be introduced, and Lieut.-Colon.el HowardBury notes with satisfaction that some of them are so inaccessible that they can never be exploited commercially.