Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/100

 The women of the house were up by four and busy milking and churning. The village looked from afar like one big house, but it is in reality composed of a number of houses, each with a courtyard in front. The place is vulgarly called the "Anthill" (Dog tsang ), on account of the great number of serfs inhabiting it. After breakfast, which consisted of boiled mutton, minced radish, and pa-tug, or balls of flour cooked in mutton broth, we mounted our ponies and started off.

To the south-west of Gyatsho-shar is the plateau of Chyugpu Shung, dotted with numerous hamlets, chief of which is Lhena djong. About two miles from Chyang chu is Norgya Nangpa, with numerous hamlets surrounding it, and one mile and a half to the east of Norgya, where the valley approaches the edge of the mountains to the south, is Kena, composed of a dozen hamlets. The houses of Kena are well built and prosperous looking, the door-frames and windows showing considerable taste, and the walls of most of them painted with long blue and red stripes, the favourite colours of the Tibetans. From Kena the mountains of Pankor-shornub, notorious as a lair of brigands, were clearly discernible, and far to the east, across the Nyang chu, we could just discern the village of Sanga-ling. At Kena we crossed, by a culvert some fifteen feet long, an irrigation canal which comes down from Nyang chu. From this point our way lay over a barren plateau more than two miles broad; in the upper part of it are several villages, in the largest of which is the Shalu monastery. A little above the junction of the Shalu with the Nyang chu stands the hamlet of Chuta Chyangma, three or four dilapidated mud hovels, the ground everywhere overgrown with thistles and briars. Here, we were told, the Grand Lama's camels are pastured in winter. The Nyang chu flows here in several channels, and some cranes were seeking for food in the ice along the banks.

Going south-eastward for nearly two miles and a half, we reached a fertile tract of land, in which stand the villages of Panam-gang, Jorgya, Pishi, Penagangdo, and Natog, which, we were told, belonged