Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/70



It was in the beginning of the month of March, 1899, that, followed by a retinue of three men and one old dame, I bade farewell to my kind host and, seated on a snow-white pony, given me by my fatherly friend, left the Kāṣyapa Buḍḍha tower. I was not in good health that day, on account of fever and weakness, but I was obliged to start from Kātmāndu, for it was very dangerous for me to stay there any longer, as I was quite a stranger to the Nepālese, and they might find out my nationality, and stop me from proceeding further. So I took the assistance of the horse; and the good animal proved to be a splendid mountaineer, and carried me up steep ascents and down abrupt descents in perfect safety. We directed our course towards the north-west, through the British Residency, the most beautiful and clean quarter in Kātmāndu, and through Nagar-yon, a hill famous for a cave where Nāgārjuna, a great Boḍhi-Saṭṭva, used to meditate. We arrived at a village called Jittle-Pedee in the evening, and passed the night under the eaves of a shop-keeper's house.

The present Ruler of Nepāl is a Hinḍu, and keeps the caste system as rigidly as it is kept in India, where the people belonging to that religion do not allow a foreigner to enter their rooms, or to eat with them. Therefore we were obliged to pass the night outside a house, or under a rock, or in the forests. Here I must not omit some interesting things about my travels among the Himālayan mountains from Kātmāndu to the lake Mānasarovara through Nepāl. The country being extra-territorial, I believe no bold European or American had trodden this precipitous path before me; hence I would like to mention