Page:Journey to Lhasa and Central Tibet.djvu/53

 gradually increases as one advances along the Lungkyong chu. We camped on the river bank under a great boulder, spreading our rugs on beds of long dry grass, which covered, but very imperfectly, the rough, stony soil.

November 27.—We followed down the Lungkyong chu (the only way of communication between Kangpa-chan, Yangma, and Wallung), the mountains on our left nearly hidden in the morning mists. For part of the way our road led along a steep path through thick woods of firs, feathery larches, and deodars, amidst which I saw many pheasants and other kinds of birds, and the coolies told me that musk deer and wild sheep were also found there.

About two miles above the junction of the Yangma with the Lungkyong, we crossed the former stream by a wooden bridge, and finally arrived at the village of Tingugma, where we rested a while and ate a light meal.

Shortly after starting again we met a party of Yangma natives driving before them a few sheep and a dozen yaks laden with blankets, yak hides, barley, and salt. They were going to a village called Chaini, in the Tambur valley, to exchange their goods for rice and Indian corn. Phurchung asked them if the Kangla chen pass was still open. Some said we could easily cross it; others expressed doubts about it, for they said three feet of snow had fallen on it a few days previously.

Passing by Maya phug (a cavern sacred to the goddess Mamo), we crossed a little juniper-covered plateau called Shugpa thang ("Juniper plain"), and after a short but steep climb reached the summit of the pass, from whence I had a most extended and beautiful view of the surrounding country—behind me great reddish granite rocks, looking like the ruins of gigantic ramparts; before me a plain some two miles long, the bed of a former glacier, encircled by snowy mountains rising the one above the other; while to the south-east was the Nango la, and behind it the plain of Sumdongma. Crossing the Djari thang, or "Plain of Gravel," and the Do la, or "Rocky pass" (round the base of which the Yangma flows), I reached by dusk the monastery of Yangma, or Manding gomba, situated on a broad, shrub-covered terrace some 40 to 50 feet above the stream; where Phurchung found me lodgings in a wretched cell, where I settled myself as best I could for the night. He obtained a few eggs and some milk from the lamas; and while one of the nuns (ani)