Читать книгу Seven Years in Tibet - Heinrich Harrer - Страница 11

We are ordered to move on—Kyirong, the happy village—Our first New Year in Tibet—Improvised skis—The war ends—The Abominable Snowman?

IN spite of the wintry weather we were more than ever determined to leave Tradün, with or without a letter of authorisation. We started hoarding provisions and bought a second yak. But just in the middle of our preparations the abbot arrived with the news that the long-awaited letter had come from Lhasa. What we had secretly feared had come true. We were forbidden to travel into Inner Tibet. The letter was not handed to us personally. We were merely told that we must go by the shortest route to Nepal, but that we might march in Tibetan territory as far as Kyirong. From there it was only eight miles to the Nepalese frontier and seven days’ march to the capital, Katmandu. We would be given transport and servants for the journey. We agreed at once to this ruling, as our route would take us somewhat further into Tibet and the longer we remained on the right side of the law the better.

On December 17th we left Tradün, which had sheltered us for four months. We felt no grudge against the Tibetans for not allowing us to go to Lhasa. Everyone knows how hard it is for foreigners without passports to get a footing in any country. By giving us presents and providing us with transport the Tibetans had shown hospitality far exceeding that customary in other countries. Although I did not then appreciate our good fortune so much as I do now, Aufschnaiter and I were still thankful for the eight months we had passed outside the barbed wire.

Now we were on the march again. Our convoy consisted of Aufschnaiter and myself accompanied by two servants. One of these carried, wrapped up like a sacred relic, the letter of the Government to the district officer at Kyirong. We were all mounted and our two yaks were kept moving by a driver. One could see from far off that our caravan belonged to persons of consequence—very different from the three down-at-heel vagabonds who had crossed the Himalayas into Tibet some months before.

Our road took us again over the Himalayan watershed towards the south-east. The Tsangpo was already frozen when we crossed it, and the nights in the tent were bitterly cold.

After riding for a week we reached Dzongka, which was visible from a long way off by reason of a thick cloud of smoke which hung over the houses. Dzongka really deserved to be called a village. It contained about a hundred mud-brick houses grouped about a monastery, and round the village were cultivated fields. The village was situated at the junction of two streams which form the river Kosi and, penetrating the Himalayas, flow into Nepal. The place was enclosed by a thirty-foot rampart and commanded by a splendid peak, some 20,000 feet high, called by the natives Chogulhari. It was Christmas Day when we came into Dzongka—our first Christmas since we had escaped. We were lodged in surprisingly comfortable quarters. The tree-line was only two days away, and wood was no longer an expensive luxury; it could be used for building and for all household needs. A contraption of tin served as a stove in which we burnt crackling juniper wood, soon warming the whole room very agreeably. When evening came we lit some Tibetan butter-lamps, and to celebrate the day we soon had a leg of mutton stewing in our cooking-pot.

As in every other place in Tibet there were no public inns here. Billets in private houses are assigned to travellers by the authorities. This is done by rotation, so that the population is not too badly inconvenienced and the arrangement forms part of the taxation system.

We had not planned to stay here long, but we were kept in Dzongka a whole month by heavy snowfalls. All day thick snowflakes fell and communications were interrupted. We were glad of our rest here, and interested ourselves in some of the activities of the monks and enjoyed as spectators the performances of a group of dancers from Nyenam.

A number of aristocratic officials lived here and we soon made friends with them. By now we spoke good Tibetan and carried on long conversations through which we got to know much about the manners and customs of the country. St. Sylvester Eve passed uncelebrated, but our thoughts dwelt more than ever on home.

Whenever we could, during this period of waiting, we made short expeditions in the neighbourhood and found many sandstone caves, a mine of interest to us, containing as they did idols of wood or clay and leaves from Tibetan sacred books—offerings no doubt to the saints who used to live in these caverns.

On January 19th the roads were sufficiently passable to allow us to start off in company with a huge yak-caravan. Ahead of us went a herd of yaks, carrying no loads, which acted as snow-ploughs and seemed to enjoy the exercise very much. The country was intersected by valleys and ravines and in the first two days we crossed no less than twelve bridges over the Kosi. My yak, which came from Changthang, was unused to bridges and jibbed vigorously when he had to cross one. It was only by pushing behind and pulling in front—an operation in which the drivers enthusiastically assisted us—that we could get him across. I had already been warned not to bring him to Kyirong as he would not be able to stand the hot summer climate, but I had not wanted to leave him behind in view of our plans for flight, which we had not abandoned. Throughout all this time my thermometer showed an unvarying temperature of -30 degrees Centigrade. There were no lower markings on the instrument!

We were deeply impressed by a rock monastery in the neighbourhood of the village of Longda. Seven hundred feet above the valley red temples and countless cells were perched like birds’ nests on the rocks. Despite the danger of avalanches Aufschnaiter and I could not refrain from climbing the rockface, and so obtained another wonderful view of the Himalayas. We also met some monks and nuns and learned from them that this was the monastery founded by Milarepa, the famous Tibetan saint and poet, who lived in the eleventh century. We could easily understand that the glorious surroundings and the loneliness of the place were peculiarly adapted to meditation and the making of poetry. We left this place regretfully and determined to revisit it one day.

Every day we found less snow and after reaching the tree-line soon found ourselves in a really tropical region. In this atmosphere the winter garments given us by the Tibetan Government were too warm for us. Now we came to Drothang, the last stopping-place before Kyirong. I remember that all the inhabitants of this place had highly developed goitres, which one rarely sees in Tibet. We took a week to get to Kyirong, which when the road is good is only three days’ march from Dzongka, and can be reached in a single day by a fast courier.

The name Kyirong means “the village of happiness” and it really deserves the appellation. I shall never cease thinking of this place with yearning, and if I can choose where to pass the evening of my life, it will be in Kyirong. There I would build myself a house of red cedar-wood and have one of the rushing mountain streams running through my garden, in which every kind of fruit would grow, for though its altitude is over 9,000 feet Kyirong lies on the twenty-eighth parallel. When we arrived in January the temperature was just below freezing; it seldom falls below -10 degrees Centigrade. The seasons correspond to those in the Alps, but the vegetation is sub-tropical. One can go ski-ing the whole year round, and in the summer there is a row of 20,000-footers to climb.

There are about eighty houses in the village, which is the seat of two district governors who administer thirty villages. We were told that we were the first Europeans who had ever come to Kyirong, and the inhabitants watched our entry with astonishment. This time we were quartered in the house of a farmer, which reminded me of our Tyrolese houses. As a matter of fact the whole of the village might have been transplanted from the Alps, except that instead of chimneys the roofs of the houses were decorated with prayer-flags. These were always in the five colours which represented different aspects of life in Tibet.

On the ground floor were the stables for cows and horses. They were separated by a thick ceiling from the living-rooms of the family, which are approached by a ladder from the courtyard. Thick stuffed mattresses served as beds and easy chairs, and near them were small, low tables. The members of the household kept their clothes in brightly painted wardrobes, and before the inevitable carved wooden altar butter-lamps were burning. In winter the whole family sit on the deal floorboards round a huge open log-fire and sip their tea.

The room in which Aufschnaiter and I were put was rather small, so I soon shifted to the hay barn next door. Aufschnaiter carried on our unceasing struggle with rats and bugs, while I had to cope with mice and fleas. I never got the better of the vermin, but the view over glaciers and rhododendron forests made up for my discomfort. We had a servant allotted to us, but preferred to do our cooking ourselves. We had a fireplace in our room and were given wood to burn. We spent very little money; our provisions did not cost us more than £2 10s. a month each. I had a pair of trousers made, and the tailor charged half a crown.

The staple food in this region is tsampa. This is how they prepare it. You heat sand to a high temperature in an iron pan and then pour barleycorns on to it. They burst with a slight pop, whereupon you put the corns and the sand in a fine-meshed sieve through which the sand runs: after this you grind the corn very small. The resulting meal is stirred up into a paste with butter-tea or milk or beer and then eaten. The Tibetans make a special cult of tsampa and have many ways of preparing it. We soon got accustomed to it, but never cared much for butter-tea, which is usually made with rancid butter and is generally repugnant to Europeans. It is, however, universally drunk and appreciated by the Tibetans, who often drink as many as sixty cups in a day. The Tibetans of Kyirong, besides butter-tea and tsampa, eat rice, buckwheat, maize, potatoes, turnips, onions, beans and radishes. Meat is a rarity, for as Kyirong is a particularly holy place no animal is ever slaughtered there. Meat appeared on the table only when it had been brought in from another district or, more often, when bears or panthers left part of their prey uneaten. I never understood how this doctrine could be reconciled with the fact that every autumn some 15,000 sheep are driven through Kyirong bound for the slaughterhouses in Nepal and that the Tibetans levy export duty on them.

At the very beginning of our stay we paid a call on the district authorities. Our travel document had already been delivered by a servant and the Pönpo thought that we would go straight on into Nepal. That was by no means our intention, and we told him that we would like to stay for a while at Kyirong. He took this very calmly and promised, at our request, to report to Lhasa. We also visited the representative of Nepal who described his country in the most attractive terms. We had meanwhile learned that Kopp, after staying a few days in the capital, had been pushed off to an internment camp in India. The seductions of automobiles, bicycles and the cinema which, we were told, we should find in Katmandu, made no appeal to us.

We could not really hope to get a residence permit from Lhasa, and if we went to Nepal, we expected to be expelled into India. Accordingly we decided to recruit our strength in this fairy-like village and stay there till we had worked out a new plan of escape. We could not foresee then that we should stay nearly nine months in Kyirong.

We were not in the least bored. We filled exercise books with notes on the manners and customs of the Tibetans. On most days we went out to explore the neighbourhood. Aufschnaiter, who had been secretary of the Himalaya Foundation in Munich, used his opportunities for map-making. There were only three names on the map of the region we had brought with us, but we now filled in more than two hundred. In fact we not only enjoyed our freedom but made practical use of it.

Our excursions, which at first were limited to the immediate neighbourhood, gradually extended further and further. The inhabitants were quite accustomed to us and no one interfered with us. Of course it was the mountains that attracted us most, and after that the hot springs round Kyirong. There were several of these, the hottest of which was in a bamboo forest on the bank of the ice-cold river Kosi. The water bubbled out of the ground nearly at boiling point and was led into an artificial basin, where it still had a temperature of about 40 degrees Centigrade. I used to plunge alternately into the hot pool and into the glacial waters of the Kosi.

In the spring there is a regular bathing season in this place. Swarms of Tibetans came along and bamboo huts sprang up everywhere in this usually lonely spot, two hours distant from Kyirong. Men and women tumbled naked into the pool and any signs of prudishness provoked roars of laughter. Many families pay holiday visits to this spa. They set out from their homes, with sacks full of provisions and barrels of beer, and settle down for a fortnight in bamboo huts. The upper classes also are accustomed to visit the springs and arrive with caravans and a staff of servants. But the whole holiday season lasts only a short time as the river, swollen with melting snow, overflows the springs.

In Kyirong I made the acquaintance of a monk who had studied in the school of medicine in Lhasa. He was much respected and was able to live richly on the provisions which he received as fees for his services. His methods of treatment were diverse. One of them was to press a prayer-stamp on the spot affected, which seemed to succeed with hysterical patients. In bad cases he branded the patient with a hot iron. I can bear witness to the fact that he thus restored a seemingly hopeless case to consciousness, but this treatment affected many of his patients adversely. He also employed this drastic treatment on domestic animals. As I was reckoned a sort of half-doctor and am greatly interested in everything connected with medicine, I used to have long conversations with this monk. He confessed to me that his knowledge was limited, but he did not worry himself unduly about that and managed to avoid unpleasant incidents by frequently changing his place of residence. His conscience was relieved by the fact that the emoluments derived from his dubious cures served to finance his pilgrimages.

In the middle of February we had our first Tibetan New Year. The year is reckoned by the lunar calendar and has two names, one of an animal and the other of an element. The New Year festival is, after the birth- and death-days of Buddha, the greatest event of the year. During the previous night we already heard the voices of singing beggars and wandering monks going from house to house in quest of alms. In the morning fresh-cut pine-trees decked out with flags were stuck on the roofs, religious texts were solemnly recited and tsampa offered to the gods. The people bring an offering of butter to the temples and soon the huge copper cauldrons are overflowing. Only then are the gods propitiated and ready to grant favours in the New Year. White silk veils are draped round the gilded statues as a special mark of respect, and the worshippers reverently lay their foreheads against them.

Rich or poor, all come full of devotion and with no inner misgivings, to lay their offerings before the gods and to pray for their blessing. Is there any people so uniformly attached to their religion and so obedient to it in their daily life? I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquillity and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt. The people did not only pray at the turn of the year. For seven days they danced, sang and drank under the benevolent eyes of the monks. In every house there was a party, and we, too, were invited.

It is sad to remember that the festal celebrations in our house were overclouded by a tragedy. One day I was called into the room of our hostess’s younger sister. The room was dark, and only when hot hands gripped mine did I realise that I was standing near her. When my eyes had got accustomed to the darkness, I looked towards the bed and recoiled in a horror which I could hardly conceal. There lay completely transformed by sickness one who two days before had been a pretty, healthy girl. Though a layman, I instantly saw that she had smallpox. Her larynx and tongue were already attacked and she could only cry out with thick articulation that she was dying. I tried to tell her that it was not so, and then escaped from the room as quickly as possible to have a thorough wash. There was nothing to be done and one could only hope that an epidemic would not break out. Aufschnaiter also visited her and agreed with my diagnosis. Two days later she died.

So after the joys of the festival, this mournful event made us acquainted with the ceremonies of a Tibetan burial. The decorated pine-tree which stood on the roof was removed and the next day at dawn the body was wrapped in white grave-cloths and borne out of the house on the back of a professional corpse-carrier. We followed the group of mourners, who consisted of three men only. Near the village on a high place recognisable from afar as a place of “burial” by the multitude of vultures and crows which hovered over it, one of the men hacked the body to pieces with an axe. A second sat nearby, murmuring prayers and beating on a small drum. The third man scared the birds away and at intervals handed the other two men beer or tea to cheer them up. The bones of the dead girl were broken to pieces, so that they too could be consumed by the birds and that no trace of the body should remain.

Barbaric as all this seems, the ceremony draws its origin from deep religious motives. The Tibetans wish to leave no trace after death of their bodies, which, without souls, have no significance. The bodies of nobles and high-ranking Lamas are burned, but among the people the usual way of dealing with them is by dismemberment and only the bodies of very poor people, for whom this form of disposal is too costly, are thrown into the river. Here the fishes perform the function of the vultures. When poor people die of contagious diseases, they are disposed of by special persons paid by the Government.

Fortunately the cases of smallpox were few and only a small number died. In our house there was mourning for forty-nine days, and then a fresh tree with prayer-flags was hoisted on the roof. At this ceremony appeared many monks who said prayers to the accompaniment of their own peculiar music. All this naturally costs money, and when deaths occur in the family the Tibetans usually sell some of their jewellery or the possessions of the defunct, the proceeds of which pay for the obsequies performed by the monks and the oil used in their countless little lamps.

During all this time we continued our daily walks and the excellent snow gave us the idea of making skis. Aufschnaiter got hold of a couple of birch trunks which we stripped of their bark and dried before the fire in our room. I started making sticks and straps and with the aid of a carpenter we succeeded in producing two pairs of decent-looking skis. We were delighted with their workmanlike appearance and looked forward to trying them with great excitement. Then, like lightning from a clear sky, came an order from the Pönpo forbidding us to leave Kyirong except for walks in the immediate neighbourhood. We protested energetically, but were told that Germany was a powerful state and that if anything happened to us in the mountains, complaints would be made in Lhasa and the authorities in Kyirong held responsible. The Pönpo remained unshaken by our protestations and did his best to convince us that in the mountains we should be in great danger of attacks by bears, leopards and wild dogs. We knew that their anxiety about our safety was all humbug, but conjectured that they had adopted their attitude in deference to the requests of the superstitious population, who possibly believed that our visits to the mountains might make the gods angry. For the moment we could do nothing but submit.

During the next few weeks we obeyed orders, but then we could not resist the temptation to go ski-ing. The attraction of the snow and ice slopes was too much for us and one day we had recourse to a stratagem. I took up my quarters provisionally by one of the hot springs only half an hour distant from the village. A few days later when the people had got accustomed to my absence, I fetched our skis and carried them by moonlight some way up the mountain-side. Early on the following morning Aufschnaiter and I climbed up over the tree-line and enjoyed ourselves on a splendid snow-surface. We were both astonished at being able to ski so well after being so long away from it. As we had not been spotted, we went out again another day but this time we broke our skis and hid the remains of these weird instruments. The people of Kyirong never found out that we had been snow-riding, as they called it.

Springtime came, work in the fields began and the winter corn came up in lovely green shoots. Here, as in Catholic countries, the cornfields are blessed by the priests. A long procession of monks, followed by the villagers, carried the 108 volumes of the Tibetan bible round the village accompanied by prayers and sacred music.

As the weather grew warmer my yak fell sick. He had fever and the local vet declared that only the gall of a bear would do him good. I bought the stuff, and dear it cost me, not so much from a belief in its properties as to give satisfaction to the “doctor.” I was not astonished at the lack of results. I was then advised to try goat’s gall and musk and hoped, subconsciously, that the long experience of the Tibetans in the treatment of sick yaks would save my precious beast. However, after a few days I was obliged to have poor Armin slaughtered, as I wanted at least to save his meat.

For such cases the people use a slaughterer; a man obliged to live as an outcast on the fringe of the village like the blacksmith, whose craft ranks lowest in Tibet. The slaughterer receives as pay the feet, the head and the intestines of the yak. I found the manner in which he dispatched the animal to be as speedy as, and more humane than, the methods of our slaughterers. With one swift stroke he slit open the body, plunged his hand in and tore out the cardiac artery, causing instant death. We took away the meat and smoked it over an open fire, thus providing a basis for the stock of food we should need when we next escaped.

About this time an epidemic had broken out in Dzongka causing a number of deaths. The District Officer with his charming young wife and four children came over to Kyirong to escape the danger. Unfortunately the children brought with them the germs of the disease, a kind of dysentery, and one by one went down with it. At that time I still had some yatren, reckoned to be the best remedy for dysentery, and offered it to the family. This was a considerable sacrifice for Aufschnaiter and myself, as we had been keeping the last few doses for ourselves in case of need. Unfortunately it did no good and three of the children died. There was no yatren for the fourth, the youngest, who fell ill after the others. We were desperately anxious to save him and advised the parents to send a messenger in all haste to Katmandu with a specimen of the stools to find out what was the proper medicine to give. Aufschnaiter wrote a letter in English for this purpose, but it was never sent. The child was treated by the monks, who went so far as to call in a reincarnated lama from a distant spot. All their efforts were fruitless and after ten days the child died. Sad as this business was, it acquitted us, in a way, of blame, for if the last child had recovered, we should have been held responsible for the deaths of the others.

The parents of these children and several other adult persons also fell ill, but recovered. During their illness they ate heartily and drank large quantities of alcohol, which may have accounted for their getting well. The children had refused food during their illness and their strength had quickly ebbed away.

Afterwards we became very friendly with the parents, who, though they felt their loss very deeply, consoled themselves in some measure by their faith in reincarnation. They stayed on for some time at Kyirong in a hermitage and we often visited them there. The father was called Wangdüla and was a progressive and open-minded man. He was very anxious to acquire knowledge and made us tell him many things about life outside Tibet. Aufschnaiter, at his request, drew him a map of the world out of his head. His wife was a twenty-two-year-old beauty from Tibet; she spoke fluent Hindi, which she had learnt at school in India. They made a very happy couple.

After several years we heard of them again. They had had a tragic fate. Another baby was born and the mother died in childbed. Wangdüla went mad with grief. He was one of the most likeable Tibetans I ever met, and his melancholy story moved me deeply.

During the summer the authorities sent for us again and summoned us to leave Kyirong. In the meantime we had learned from merchants and the newspapers that the war was over. It was known to us that after the first world war the English had kept the P.O.W. camps going in India until two years after hostilities were over. We had clearly no wish to lose our freedom now and were determined to make another attempt to penetrate into Inner Tibet. The fascination of the country was growing on us and we were ready to stake everything to satisfy our ambition to know it better. Our knowledge of the language was now good and we had acquired a lot of experience. What was to hinder us from going further? We were both mountaineers and here we had a unique opportunity of surveying the Himalayas and the nomad districts. We had long ago given up all hope of returning home soon, and now wished to push through to China over the northern plains of Tibet, and, maybe, to find work there. The termination of the war had made our original project of getting through to the Japanese lines pointless.

So we promised the Pönpos to leave in the autumn if they would in return allow us freedom of movement. This was approved and from that time on the chief aim of our excursions was to find a pass through which we could reach the Tibetan plateau without touching Dzongka.

During these summer expeditions we got to know the fauna of the region. We came across a great variety of animals, including species of monkeys which must have migrated here through the deep valley of the river Kosi. For some time leopards used to kill oxen and yaks nightly and the villagers tried to catch them in traps. As a precaution against bears I used to carry in my pocket a snuffbox full of red pepper. The bear, as I have mentioned, is only dangerous by day, when he will attack a man. Several of the woodcutters had bad face-wounds as a result of encounters with bears, and one had been blinded by a blow from a bear’s paw. In the night-time one could drive these animals away with a pine-torch.

On the tree-line I once found deep footprints in the newly fallen snow which I could not account for. They might have been made by a man. People with more imagination than I possess might have attributed them to the Abominable Snowman.

I made a point of always keeping fit and had no lack of strenuous occupation. I helped in the fields or at the threshing. I felled trees and cut torches from the resinous pinewood. The bodily toughness of the Tibetans is due to the bracing climate and the hard work they do.

They are also addicted to competitive sports. Every year a regular athletic meeting is held in Kyirong. It lasts several days. The principal events are horse-racing, archery—distance and height of shot—foot races, and long and high jump. There is also an event for strong men, who have to lift and carry a heavy stone for a certain distance.

I contributed to the enjoyment of the public by competing in some events. I nearly won the foot race, having led, after a massed start, for most of the way, but I had not reckoned with the local methods. In the last and steepest bit of the track one of the competitors grabbed me by the seat of my trousers. I was so surprised that I stopped dead and looked round. That was what the rascal was waiting for. He passed me and reached the winning post first. I was not prepared for that sort of thing and amid general laughter received the rosette awarded as second prize.

There was a good deal of variety in life at Kyirong. In summer caravans came through every day. After the rice-harvest in Nepal men and women brought rice in baskets and exchanged it for salt, one of the most important exports of Tibet. It is brought from the lakes in Changthang which have no exit.

Transport from Kyirong to Nepal is effected by means of coolies, as the road goes through narrow ravines and is often cut into stairways. Most of the carriers are women from Nepal wearing cheap dresses and showing their stout muscular legs below their short skirts. We witnessed a curious drama when the Nepalese came to gather honey. The Tibetan Government has officially forbidden Tibetans to take honey, because their religion does not allow them to deprive animals of their food. However, here, as in most other places, people like to circumvent the law, and so the Tibetans, including the Pönpos, allow the Nepalese to have the honey they collect, and then buy it back from them.

This honey-taking is a very risky adventure as the bees hide the honeycomb under the projecting rocks of deep ravines. Long bamboo ladders are dropped, down which men climb sometimes two or three hundred feet, swinging free in the air. Below them flows the Kosi and if the rope which holds the ladder breaks it means certain death for them. They use smoke-balls to keep the angry bees away as the men collect the honeycomb, which is hoisted up in containers by a second rope. For success of this operation perfect and well-rehearsed combination is essential, as the sound of shouts or whistles is lost in the roar of the river below. On this occasion eleven men worked for a week in the ravine, and the price at which they sold the honey bore no relation to the risks they ran. I much regretted that I had no cine-camera with which to take a picture of this dramatic scene.

When the heavy summer rains were over, we began to explore the long valleys systematically. We often stayed out for several days, taking provisions, drawing materials and compass with us. At these times we camped on the high pastures alongside the herdsmen who, just as they do in the Alps, spent the summer months grazing their cattle on the luxuriant mountain meadows. There were hundreds of cows and female yaks feeding on the green stretches of pasture in the middle of a world of glaciers. I often helped with the butter-making and it was a pleasure to receive a slab of fresh golden butter for my pains.