Page:Three Years in Tibet.djvu/80

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That night we put up in an inn in a hamlet called Kimiyi (fountain of fortune), that nestles in the snow-covered mountains. Ten miles on the following day brought us within sight of Tsarang, which, on reaching, I found to be a little town built on a plain which was about eleven miles from east to west, and three miles or more from north to south, enclosed by walls of snow-covered mountains. More accurately, the plain has to its west a snow-capped mountain, whence it extends in a very slow incline towards the east, until it breaks off into a valley. From Tsarang to the north-west plain of Tibet is a day's trip, and the physical features of these regions are practically of the same character, devoid of large trees and desolate in the extreme. It was in the middle of May that I arrived in Tsarang, and I was told that the farmers had just finished sowing wheat. Skirting the town of Tsarang runs a stream, which has its rise in the mountain that forms the western wall of the plain, and on an elevated part of the town stands a castled palace, in which lives the King of the Lo State. Before the Gurkha tribe had subjugated Nepal, Lo was an independent State. At a little distance, opposite to the royal castle, is a temple of considerable size, belonging to the Kargyu-pa sect of the old school of Tibetan Buddhism. The temple is a square structure of Tibetan style, built of stone and painted red, and adjoining it is a stone building painted white, which forms a dormitory for the priests of the temple. On a piece of level land to the west of the palace and the temple a group of about sixty large and small houses constitutes the town of Tsarang.