HIDDEN ASIA By Peter Fleming. (World Copyright Reserved.)

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 133, 2 December 1935, Page 10

HIDDEN ASIA

By Peter Fleming. (World Copyright Reserved.)

INDIA FROM PEKING

L—A FLANK ATTACK

Mr. Peter Fleming, representing the London "Times," set out towards the end cf last year for the Far East. His journey to Vladivostock has been described, in articles published in "The Post."

There followed a protracted wait, till at the end of July it was announced that he had arrived safely at Kashgrr, on his way to Gilgit and British India. The journey, which Mr. Fleming himself describes as "a successful essay in travelling light," covered several thousand miles in Manchuria, Mongolia, the interior of China, Northern Tibet, and Sinkiang. Below is the first of a series of articles on the start and earlier stages of the journey overland to India from Peking.

At midnight'on February 15, 1935, I left Peking with three companions with the intention of proceeding to India across country. Our chances of getting through appeared slender; our own estimate of them may be gauged by the fact that we left no address for mail at the other end of our route, a piece of humility which, before the end of seven letterless months, we happily had' cause to regret. Our pessimism was in great part due to the political situation in the province of Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkestan. This situation, which will be reviewed at length in later articles, must be summarised here in its relation to our destinies as travellers.

A well-found expedition may reach India from China through Tibet. But for most travellers, and all merchants, the overland way lies, as it has lain for centuries, through Sinkiang, along that ancient "Silk Road," the most romantic and culturally the most important trade route in the history of the world. It is tempting but unnecessary to dilate on the history of this road, which offers two alternative approaches to Kashgar and the Himalayan passes; one (a road now practicable for wheeled traffic) along the line of oases fringing the Takla Makan desert on the north, below the foothills of the Tien Shan or Celestial Mountains; the other (a sandier and less well-watered track) skirting the Takla Makan desert on the south and backed by the Kwen Lun mountains, behind which mass the huge anfractuosities of the Tibetan plateau. From Peking the northern road is best approached by one or other of the Mongolian caravan trails; this was the route followed in 1926-27 by Mr. Owen Lattimore, the last traveller to reach India from Peking, and also (in lorries) by Sir Eric Teichman, of the British Embassy in Peking, on his mission to Urumchi this autumn. The southern route, of which Tunghwa, with its "Cave of a Thousand Buddhas," may be called the eastern terminus, is most conveniently joined via the old Imperial Highway, which runs up through Kansu to the Sinkiang frontier. THE FORBIDDEN PROVINCE. For us, however, in the early months of this year, to have attempted to enter the province by either of these routes would have been most inadvisable. The bloody civil war, or succession of civil wars, which had ravaged Sinkiang in 1933 and 1934, was indeed believed to be in abeyance. The capital, Urumchi, and with it the cause of the self-appointed provincial government, had been saved from the Tungan rebels in January, 1934, by Soviet troops and aeroplanes operating on Chinese soil; and the formidable Tungan army—the best fighters, bar the Communists, in China —was thought to be confined in that string of bases through which the southern road across the province runs, and of which the centre is Khotan. But the Provincial Government, although its authority had been more or less firmly reestablished over the greater part of its territories, was not at home to visitors. The Governor, General Sheng Shihtsai, though professing allegiance to and indeed—faute de mieux—confirmed in office by Nanking, rarely answered, and never demurred to, the Central Government's telegraphic protests at his Russian affiliations. His real masters, the Soviet civil and military advisers and the Soviet consular officials, were and are reluctant in the v extreme that their methods and aims in this remote but important region should be studied by outside observers.

When we left Peking two Germans —the last representatives, except for a few missionaries, of the non-Russian foreign community in Urumchi—had been causelessly imprisoned there for a year or more without trial, while a Swede, who had also seen more than was good for his health, was being detained under open arrest. (All three, I believe, have since been • released or have escaped.) Of the few Europeans who had attempted to enter Sinkiang since 1933 a young German had disappeared in the neighbourhood of Hami (it is now pretty certain that he was murdered), while an adventurous Italian, arriving from Mongolia, had been, arrested and finally sent out of the province; even Dr. Sven Hedin, who had just concluded a road-survey-ing mission for the Nanking Government, had been treated roughly by the Tungans and suspiciously by the provincial authorities. From our point of view it looked as if, with Russian influence astride both the recognised routes through Sinkiang to India, we should be lucky if we got into the Province at all; and luckier, perhaps, if we got out. A START WITH FOUR. In the circumstances our best course was obviously to find a route not generally recognised as such, and to take the province in the flank at a point where Soviet influence might be expected to be weak. The map showed that our only hope of doing this was to go to Lanchow, the capital of Kansu, and thence —instead of following the Imperial Highway north-west towards Hami and Urumchi —to continue due west through the newly formed province of Chinghai into the mountains round the Koko Nor Lake, to carry on across that curious feature of the North Tibetan plateau known as the Tsaidam marsh, and thence, if our prospects were locally considered good, to find our way over the eastern ranges of the Altyn Tagh and drop down into Sinkiang. This would bring us out at one of the oases believed to be controlled by the Tungan rebels and well on the main road to Kashgar. It should be emphasised that this ambitious and perhaps father foolhardy plan was undertaken with but little hope of our being able to carry it out. For the first four months of a journey which took seven altogether we had no more reason than on the day when we started to anticipate success; very often we had a good deal less.

When it left Peking the expedition (a purely courtesy title, even during the brief early phase when it was at full strength) consisted of Mile. Ella Maillart, 'Stepan Ivanovitch Smigunov, his wife Nina, and myself. Mile. Maillart, a Swiss girl who was acting as special correspondent, in the Far

East for a Paris newspaper, had already, during a journey in Russian Turkestan, looked down into Sinkiang from a pass in the Tien Shan mountains; but with a wistfulness which was wasted on the Soviet frontier guards. An international at skiing, hockey, and sailing, she possesses considerable powers of endurance; her knowledge of cooking and of medicine, while not extensive, was invaluable, as was her command (much greater than mine), of the Russian language. Smigunov was a White Russian ex-officer who, with his wife, had lived and traded in the Tsaidam for several years, and had narrowly escaped with his life in 1933, when the Moslem rebellion in Sinkiang had overflowed into that derelict corner of the Tibetan plateau. He spoke Mongol, Turki, and Chinese, and knew the country and the people well. Dr. Norm, of the Sven Hedin Expedition, had recommended him as a guide both to Mile. Maillart and to me; so, finding both our ambitions and the first requirement towards their fulfilment to be identical, we had decided to join forces for the journey. In return for their travelling expenses the Smigunovs had agreed to help us on the road tp India via the Tsaidam so far as circumstances permitted. This, as things turned out, was not very far.

We kept quiet about our plans—to our friends, because we did not expect those plans to come off, to the officials for obvious reasons. The most we admitted to was a passion for sp.ort and photography, which we hoped to indulge in the region of the Koko Nor Lake. Passports for Sinkiang could only be obtained from the Central Government, which would, we knew be pardonably reluctant to issue them for a region where Nanking could not take responsibility for a traveller's safety, and where Nanking was likely to gain little credit from a traveller's observations. Moreover, in the' present state of relations between Nanking and Urumchi, a passport from the Central Government might not be the best of. recommendations to the officials in Sinkiang. We therefore obtained passports which would take us as far as Lanchow and hoped for the best thereafter. PARAPHERNALIA. We travelled light; the paraphernalia and accoutrements which contribute to the comfort and efficiency of a proper expedition would have been the death of ours. Large quantities of baggage, stores, and tents would have stimulated the curiosity—and the cupidity—of frontier officials to a dangerous degree; and the event proved that we should often have found it impossible to get animals to carry the stuff. Our staple foodstuffs we bought or shot as we went along; apart from clothes and a few books we took with us from Peking only the following supplies: 21b of marmalade, four tins of cocoa, six bottles of brandy, one bottle of Worcestershire sauce, three packets of chocolate, lib of coffee, some spap, and a good deal of tobacco, besides a small store of knives, beads, toys, etc., by way of presents, and a rather scratch assortment of medicines. Our armament consisted of one .44 Winchester rifle, with 300 rounds of prewar ammunition of a poorish vintage, which was not worth firing; and a second-hand .22 rook rifle, which surpassed itself by keeping us in meat throughout' the three months; during which there was anything to shoot. The four of us, with all our effects, were easily accommodated in one sec-ond-class sleeper' on the Peking-Han-kow Railway.

Some friends, (there was a party that night) saw us off in fancy dress, than which no attire could have been more suitable to the occasion; a colleague, renowned for his collection of portraits of missionaries in stations likely to be bandited, took our photographs in a somewhat ghoulish manner; and the train rumbled dubiously off into the night. It struck me, as though for the first time, that it was really a very long way to India.

(To be continued.)