The teacher smiled and pointed to the stone floor, which appeared to have been given a hard, thick coat of brick-red paint. The smell, he explained, came from the floor. The smooth painted effect was achieved by house-proud Tibetans in this part with the use of a fine red dust mixed with animal urine.
Zaro had him work out the date for us. It was 23 December 1941.
We slept soundly on sheepskins spread on the coloured stone floor and the next morning were given food as we had been promised and sent on our way with good wishes for the success of our journey.
On Christmas Eve we sat up around a bright fire. The night was freezing and no one wanted to settle down to a chilled half-sleep. We talked about Christmases we had known, of the awful Christmas a year ago when we were slogging north to the timber camp. Paluchowicz, that tough, devout old Roman Catholic, surprised us all by suddenly starting to sing in his rusty, off-tune voice a Polish carol. He got through two verses; then, finding we were not going to join in, became silent.
After a little while he said, ‘Every Christmas since I was old enough to remember I have sung carols on Christmas Eve. So tonight I have sung a carol. It will be good for us, I know.’
The days were cold now, the nights colder. Snow-charged clouds hung menacingly over the distant, gaunt foothills of the Himalayas. In a poor hamlet of four stone-built shacks we stayed one night and the next morning spent several hours making warm mittens from the Circassian’s gift fleece.
There came one clear day when we saw the snow-capped, cloud-topped soaring hump of the Himalayas, deceptively near. We were, in fact, a long way off and were to find the intervening distance fraught with trial and hazard.
We tried desperately not to be caught on the heights after darkness, but there was nothing we could do about it when early one afternoon we were enveloped in a howling snowstorm. It would have been folly to push on through it. The snow was whipping into our eyes and it was difficult to see more than a few yards ahead. As we crept along looking for shelter the snow packed hard on our moccasins. We were on a normally steep descent and the slippery soles threatened us at every downward step with disaster.
Luck or Providence gave us a natural, cave-like windbreak between two great rocks lying at an acute angle. With us we carried one sack of wood and some dried animal droppings which we took turns in carrying and we set about lighting a fire. We almost gave up the job as time and again the glowing gubka failed to get the small dry twigs alight in this high, snow-laden wind. Zaro and I worked on the job for what must have been over an hour before we met success. Over the narrow opening at the junction of the two rocks we spread our sacks, pinning them down with the heaviest stones we could find and they were soon sagging with the weight of the snow. Then we jammed our sticks, rafter-fashion, under the sacks to take the strain.
By morning we were snowed in, but surprisingly cosy in our smoky little retreat. The worst of the storm was over and only small snow flurries under a watery sun greeted us when we dug our way out. The descent was perilous but we made it unscathed. It took us all day to get down from our high perch.
21. Himalayan Foothills
I ESTIMATE the time to have been late January when we came to the great river, iced over from bank to bank. This must have been the broad Tibetan waterway flowing west to east across the southern part of the country to find its way through the mountain barrier into India as the mighty Brahmaputra. Winter had overtaken us and the night temperatures were well below zero. There were occasional heavy snowfalls, sleety rain, winds which whipped down off the tops of the hills with the chill of the heights in them. Bitter though the conditions, they had not the severity of the Siberian winter. But they were grim enough for us, underfed and weakened by nine long months of continuous foot travel. We crossed the river warily, Zaro, the lightest of us, leading to test the strength of the ice in the middle, where we feared it might not take our weight. There was no difficulty, however, until we reached the south bank, which was tall, steep and ice-coated. Kolemenos chipped steps out with the axe and we climbed up. We followed the river along westwards for a mile or so until we came to a point where the bank fell away, offering easy access to the water. Grouped here were three low stone huts and in front of them on a small sloping beach well back from the river edge half-a-dozen small boats lay keels upwards. Because of their high bows and sterns the boats were canted over, leaving space enough between the gunwales and the ground for a man to crawl under. I poked my head under and sniffed at the smell of long-dead fish. In the boat’s planks I could see fish scales.
In a bunch we moved over to the huts. Inside they were so low that Kolemenos had to bend his head to avoid touching the roof. The construction of the roof was interesting: bamboo lengths supported a covering of tightly-interlaced wattles, into which were woven twisted cords of animal hair, probably yak’s. The floors were dry enough to suggest that the roofs were reasonably watertight. The construction was of the crudest — three stone boxes with mats thrown over the top, with doorless slits for entrances. They contained some old nets, some odd lengths of bamboo poles and a few short, big-diameter cylinders of wood, heavily rubbed and scored, which were obviously used as rollers upon which the boats were pushed to the water and launched.
We picked out the best of the huts and decided to sleep there the night. On the earthen floor was a blackened, hard-baked circle with a few charred pieces of wood, and overhead there was a small hole in the roof. Here we built our fire, splitting up some bamboo for fuel and banking it up for the night with animal dung which Zaro carried with him.
In February we encountered our last village, just eight or nine houses snuggled in a hollow a couple of hundred feet above a narrow valley. Behind the village reared the forbidding rampart of tall hills over which we had struggled for two days. Across the valley, hazy in the light of a wintry afternoon sun, another range heaved itself up towards the clouds. The houses had, for Tibet, a rare distinction. They were the only two-storey buildings we saw in the whole country, or, indeed, since we had left Siberia. We had descended to a point west of and below the little settlement and had to climb up to it along a rough track. We were profoundly tired, miserable and hungry. Paluchowicz was limping on his right foot, the arch of which had been bruised when he trod on a sharp stone.
The Tibetans, when they understood by signs whence we had come and where we intended to go, showed amazement at our hardihood, or foolhardiness. We were gently ushered into one of the houses, made to sit down on low benches polished with years of use, fussed over, given steaming hot tea and fed with mutton and the usual filling oaten cakes. Paluchowicz was given some grease, possibly sheep fat, to rub into his sore foot. From all the houses men and children came to look at us. There was much smiling and bowing and slow nodding of heads. Undoubtedly our arrival was an extraordinary event and would long be a topic for wondering talk.
In this house was an excellent example of a building custom we had noted throughout Tibet — a flat-faced stone on which three or four lines of an inscription had been cut. This one had been built in near the door and about two feet above floor level. The Circassian had told us that these tablets could only be made by certain lamas and that the Tibetans set great store by them, for the words upon them were a holy injunction to the spirits of evil and misfortune to keep their distance. Our host, rather taller than the average Tibetan and aged, I guessed, about thirty, seemed pleased at my interest in his lucky stone. He came over, pointed to it and then to his left wrist, on which I saw a broad brass bracelet to which was attached a small metal box. This was, to me, a new variation of the prayer-wheel, and I think it is obvious the man was trying to show a religious connection between it and the inscription on the stone.