Charles Granville Bruce

“ We awoke in the morning to find a sprinkling of snow in the village itself — a most unusual occurrence at this time of the year, as the leaves of the walnut trees had hardly begun to turn.
Struck as we had been the night before by the scenery of the valley into which we were descending, we were not prepared for what was to meet us in the morning. I think I have rarely come across a more beautiful and impressive scene, even assisted as it may have been by the fresh snow. ”

“ The whole range of the main Himalaya looks down on this broken-up valley, prodigiously terraced and cultivated, Chinese in character, evidently civilised in a way the Kashmiri could not imagine, and that is the dominant note of what one sees. India is left, another civilisation is reached, and a fresh train of thought and imagination set in motion. ”

“ Still, we did well, capturing another peak over Konnag, approximately 17,500 feet, which gave us a most enjoyable day, with some of the best ice and rock climbing we had had; indeed a big traverse across an ice face was quite as sensational as I personally care for — a long day from camp, but only one day, and really typical of one of the best kinds of quite insignificant Himalayan peaks in which one can really enjoy oneself, and about which no one can quarrel or accuse one of not having done one's best, or of having generally behaved in any way deleterious to the sport of mountaineering. ”

“ I venture to say that no mountaineering or travelling party would ever make a journey through Kaghan with no further objective. They are always off to the monsters and to glory and discomfort. Real glory can only be obtained in Kaghan by climbing its one giant, Mali, and the giant’s height is not enough — a mere 17,345 feet.
The valley itself is a wedge driven up between the western border of Kashmir territory and the southern borders of the independent Kohistan tribes which inhabit the mountainous country on both sides of the Indus. ”

“ It is only when one pushes far afield, many days' journey from villages, in the great wastes of mountain and ice, far beyond human habitation, that the porter question becomes really vital. Roads fit for animals are few and far between, though the domesticated yak does yeoman service whenever he can be obtained, and is a most wonderful animal, clumsy in appearance, but walking with apparent ease over ground that would puzzle any pony or mule, and quite happy in a climate which would be fatal to either without shelter or protection. ”

“ The descent into Chumbi, as it always is, was very striking. One leaves Sikkim behind and enters a valley which reminds one much more of the west than of the east. At Chumbi itself we were entertained by the Trade Agent, Mr. Macdonald, who accompanied us afterwards up to Phari Dzong. The road from Chumbi to Phari Dzong is again rather different in type, but quite beautiful in its way, and as wild as it is possible to make a forested gorge. It is very striking, emerging from the black and forested gorge of the Ammo Chu (the Chumbi river) on to the bare plateaux of Tibet. ”

“ We were in a country which possibly had never been seen by human beings, or if seen, only by Graham’s party. The scenery was of the very highest Alpine order, and we had the real pleasure of not knowing how in the earth we were going to find our way out. We had, in fact, everything that makes a mountain expedition enjoyable, the one drawback being the heavy loads we carried. For all one’s appreciation of fine scenery, of nature in general, and of nice little questions in rock-climbing in particular, one’s pleasure is seriously marred by 40 lbs. ”

“ By ambitious I do not mean that we proposed to climb Nunkun (23,000 feet) or to go for any description of record, but ambitious in that I proposed to take with me a few men from several Goorkha regiments, my idea being that practice in mountaineering, or rather mountain exploration, is one of the finest educations for an infantry or hill scout. Not only is he thrown on his own resources, but his training as a pathfinder alone is worth anything to him; and in the wilds of the Himalaya this training can be obtained in a way that can probably not be matched in any other part of the world. ”

“ A distinguished mountaineer has lately remarked that, though he recognised merits, he considered that he preferred Europeans to any Asiatic native — technical qualifications being put on one side — on account of their greater power of resisting fatigue and discomfort. I have always doubted his outlook, and since my visit to Nepal doubt it still more. The inhabitants, all small, of a Japanese build, but varying, owing to their descent, in colour and physiognomy, come down to the frontier mart to earn a living, and there earn it by the sweat of their brows. ”

“ The scale of even minor valleys in the Himalaya is vast, and it is curious, when the snow has left the higher levels, how very little these great and often equably coloured hill-sides impress one by their size. It is only when one comes to climb them that one realises what a number of feet have to be climbed before one emerges above the forest line.
Kaghan is a playground and a training-ground, and near enough to civilisation to give one a first-rate circular scramble in fifteen or even ten days. ”

“ A Public House, Sikhim Colonists always want quick returns with little labour, but why is a country, from which fine agricultural results might have been expected, allowed to be so ruined? Putting aside this consideration, travelling in Sikhim, when the weather is at all propitious, is delightful. To the mountaineer, no district offers so many chances, not only of really good mountain exploration, but also of obtaining that most irritating and annoying thing, a record. It is an expensive district, and supplies are supposed to be difficult to obtain. ”

“ All who take interest in things Himalayan must have at times had their curiosity whetted by the long narrow stretch of the great main Himalayan range included in the kingdom of Nepal, known and yet unknown; marching with our own dominion for no less than 500 miles; carrying on an extensive trade with us, and supplying us with 25,000 Goorkha soldiers, and yet, with the exception of the one main road to the capital at Khatmandu, quite unexplored by the European. ”

“ Mountain scenery is always, to my mind, affected by the character of its inhabitants and the buildings they live in. The flat-roofed houses of the western Himalaya, with their squalor and dirt, are seldom, however well situated, an assistance to the scenery, whereas the neat villages of the Kangra Valley, with their slate and thatched roofs, are most picturesque, whether in the actual valley itself or in the hill villages. The villages of the hill folk are often very strikingly placed, and have frequently quite the appearance of Swiss chalets. Anywhere in the world mountain villages are dirty. ”

“ Continual walking over stones and up scree slopes is more than dull, no matter what the scenery, and the slopes were much worse than the scenery was fine. However, Shikara was evidently in front of us, and an unpleasant rock-throwing scrubby mountain on our right, and we finally arrived at the pass between the two, and into really interesting surroundings. We had a fine view of Shikara, and also of the eastern face of the one real Kaghan giant, Mali by name, very rough and wicked looking, right to our front. ”

“ There are innumerable climbs all over the Hindu Koosh and Himalaya below the 20,000 line which will give one all one wants, and at the same time leave room for more. If one sets out wound up to do something unpleasant, i.e. to go above 20,000 feet as often as possible, this comes under the head of achievement; but for purposes of a purely mountaineering expedition I cannot imagine anything nicer than arranging a trip when each member of the party is determined not to stay longer than necessary in any named valley, and is also bound down not to pass the 20,000 limit. ”

“ Thence to Jongri, a tiresome road and a tiresome jungle; a two days' hard march, and unfortunately for us a damp one. The forest fires had extended even so far as these remote hill-sides, and we had very hard work cutting a way through fallen trees. The road in some places can hardly be distinguished at the best of times, at least this is true of the short cut by which we were going, but when covered by trees fallen from above and in places still alight, it added considerably to the trouble of getting through. ”

“ All attempts on Mount Everest must be carried out before the break of the monsoon with its soft and damp winds.
The prevailing wind in Thibet is a cold and extraordinarily dry western wind, and while this lasts the mountain remains hard and frozen, and, with the exception of the intense cold, in a comparatively safe condition.
When the warm winds conquer the dry west winds everything changes, and a condition is set up which can he quite well likened to the "Fohn" wind [7] which blows in the Alps in the spring, and melts the winter snow and causes the spring avalanches. ”

“ Our last march up the Dzakar Chu into the Rongbuk valley was exceedingly interesting. The valley itself is deadly bare and barren, and the mountains are great horrible humps with nothing on them. One suddenly arrives where the valley opens on to the Rongbuk monastery. It is wonderfully new and clean for a Tibetan monastery, and even its lamas in this respect take after the monastery. The Head Lama of Rongbuk was a very interesting character. He is of extreme sanctity, and pilgrimages are made to his monastery; and further, the Dalai Lama visits the Rongbuk monastery yearly by proxy. ”

“ A last word on the training of mountaineers; it is almost an impossibility to train a mountaineer in the Himalaya. The country is too large, not sufficient variety can be obtained, and for an amateur one has to go so far, and gets so few days in the real mountains. The Himalaya will never produce an Alexander Burgener or an Emile Rey: it is impossible to get the experience. No I not even fancy rock-climbing will ever arrive, for there is much too much of interest on all sides to spend much time in any one locality. ”

“ We had our special outfits, the best of clothing, sleeping-bags, thermos bottles and boots, and light tents, and even then we all suffered considerably from cold. How could the wretchedly-clad local man be expected to lie out at 18,000 feet in the snow on May the 20th, and, even if he survived, be worth anything the next day? I have on many occasions seen natives sleep in the snow with the one blanket that they carried with them as their only coverlet, but not at such a height nor so early in the year. ”

“ The great main thoroughfare to the prosperous State of Nepal is enough, to put it vulgarly, to make a cat laugh. It is about as bad as a road could well be, but one arrives every four miles at a most pleasant and surprising tank, with a stand-pipe for water, and an excellent drinking-pond for animals, the intervening road being merely the jungle. ”

“ The Kangra Valley of the southern Punjab is in itself of great interest — a district of small broken hills usually well clothed with jungle and of rich cultivation, and presenting a great contrast to the deadly plains of the true Punjab, so close to it. The average elevation of the valley is about 2000 feet above the sea, though there are, of course, small points which exceed this by 1000 feet or so; but the feature which gives special character to this district is the great wall of the Dhaoli Dhar range, which bounds the valley on the north, and may best be called the outer Himalaya. ”

“ If Nepal is well cultivated, and if the hill-sides are well and economically treated, so in contrast is the condition of Sikhim a crying shame. It is situated in a kind of sleeve formed by mountain ridges and headed by the great Kinchenjanga group, it possesses one of the most humid climates in the whole Himalayas, and is fine and wonderful, but generally unpleasant Up to a certain altitude it produces fine crops — but this is how immigrants treat the hill-side; they have one, and only one, idea — burn, burn, burn. ”

“ The great difficulty for travellers is that they have to take whatever porters they can get, and have not the opportunity or time to pick and choose. The best natives, however, though quite at home in ordinary snow, have no familiarity with the upper ice world in the same manner that Alpine guides and porters have. In fact I have never met any native who, for knowledge and judgment of snow or of ice, or in power of dealing with either, was ever the equal of any second-rate Alpine guide. ”

“ The actual road to Kashmir leads over the Shikara Pass into Kashmir territory, and cuts at right angles the Droua and Kishenganga Valleys, which have almost exactly the same character as Kaghan itself, though the first parts are possibly even finer. One of the most charming features of all these western Himalayan sub-Alpine valleys is their forests, finer than I myself have seen anywhere in the Alps, and probably quite as fine as any Caucasian forests, excepting the great beech forests, which occur nowhere in the Himalaya. ”

“ Of course, owing to the want of good roads leading to India, wheeled carriages are, except on the main road, unknown, but baggage animals are also few and very far between, nearly the whole of the trade exports and imports from all directions being carried on men's backs; in fact, every one seems to carry — men, women, and children. The amounts they take when they are conveying the produce of their fields to market or to the towns of Nepal proper are prodigious. ”

“ Further, men trained in really difficult country will, when they have to work in much easier country, do so with great confidence and certainty; they are therefore far less likely to make mistakes — in itself a great consideration. This being my object, combined with having as good a time as possible, both climbing and shooting, if any came in my way, we set off for Suru by way of Ganderbal and the Scinde Valley in Kashmir. The party was a very formidable one, consisting of my wife and myself and sixteen Goorkhas, to say nothing of servants and coolies. ”

“ They have nearly all learnt in Nepal itself, where they have an excellent English school. A surprising fact about them is that they are excellent military historians. All that is military has for the Nepalese a great attraction; in fact, the entire State seems to be run on semi-military principles, a mode of government that appears to suit the people very well. The one little mote in the eye of all this militarism is that physical exertion does not appeal to the upper classes, to the very great detriment of the actual training of their army itself. ”

“ As mountaineers, to help in a high climbing expedition, few are of much use. This is due, not to want of capacity by any means, but to want of clothing and food. Their clothes are wretched; their blankets worse. They are in fact generally clothed in little more than a blanket, which does for day and night covering, and their legs and feet are bare. Their accustomed food is low forms of grain, a little milk, and less meat. In their own country, when they are out after game, or even working for their own benefit, they are accustomed to very difficult ground. ”

“ We started on October 14th from Dharmsala in beautiful weather, although clouds the previous evening had been hanging about the summits of the range, and bivouacked at the before-mentioned Lakkar. There was a slight thunderstorm at night and broken clouds on the following morning, but apparently no sign of a thorough break in the weather. We had had the usual difficulties with porters, and our last remaining baggage did not turn up until the morning. Then the laggards refused point blank to cross the pass, and skedaddled when we were starting the other men. ”

“ The different native races are much worse fed, certainly worse clothed, and probably more superstitious regarding the great mountains than the Swiss were 100 years ago, and yet there was considerable difficulty at that period in getting even the best chamois hunters to undertake any new bit of exploration. What would have happened if a whole village had been ordered to send every available man with some unknown Englishman, and to stay with him for a fortnight above the snow-line, is better imagined than described, yet this is what must necessarily occur in the Himalaya. ”

“ Though all the ordinary passes are in continual use by natives, it is still possible to make one’s way backwards and forwards across the range by quite unknown ways. Such a trip I took in 1896, with Karbir as guide. We climbed two little points above the Bichala Valley of Manoor, and had intended to stay there and do more. But the wandering spirit seized me, and away we went over the range to the top of the Droua Valley to a grass alp known as Tōd Gali, my idea being to find my way over to the lakelet of Saifal Maluk in a side valley draining into Kaghan river. ”

“ It is delightfully steep to run down, very unpleasant to be carried down, and still more unpleasant to ride down. Still it is a sensible road, or at least it would be if it were kept in good repair. But do not let us leave the top of the pass for a moment. The view of the Nepal Valley is quite unmatched: Kashmir has nothing so fine to show. Gorgeous as the Kashmir views are, notably from the Nagmarg across the Wular Lake, there is nothing so suggestive or containing such strong contrasts as the views of the Chitlung Pass overlooking the Nepal Valley. ”