Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/157

 at Shetoi, took a short cut to the Ralung zamba, and by 3 p.m. reached the village of Ralung chong-doi, crossing once more the river by a wooden bridge before entering it.

Ralung is one of the most sacred places in Tibet, for it is here that the great Dugpa school of red-hat monks originated, a school still influential with numerous adherents in Southern, Northern, and Eastern Tibet, and in Bhutan, which latter country is, in fact, called Dugpa owing to the preponderance of this sect. The Ralung-til, the head monastery of the Dugpa, is to the south-east of this village. This monastery owes its name to the fact that it is surrounded by mountains as the heart (mt'il) of a lotus is by the corolla.

May 14.—We left without even waiting for a cup of tea, as the Lhacham was desirous of reaching Nangartse the same day, and, in spite of my enfeebled condition, I was anxious to keep up with her party, for the country we had to traverse is infested by brigands.

After following up the river for a while, we ascended the Karo la, a lofty plateau from which we could distinguish to the north-east the snow-covered slopes of the Noijin kang-zang (or Noijin norpa zang-po and Kang zang-po). The plateau of the Karo la is called Oma tang, or "milky plain," as is also the little hamlet near the summit of the pass. On this plateau, which is about five miles broad where we traversed it, there is fine grazing, and we saw numerous herds of yaks by the sides of the little streamlets which meander over its surface, the one flowing westward becoming the Nyang chu; the other flows to the east, and is called the Kharnang-phu chu, and along this the road led. On the summit of the pass I noticed a species of thorny shrub, the like of which I had not seen in any other part of Tibet; the thorns were quite long, and the stem and leaves of the plant of an ash grey colour.

A short way down the other side of the pass we came to a little hut made of loose stones, where we rested and partook of some