Mr Holmes asked me if it were possible for you to accompany him to Thibet.'
My heart leapt with joy; but I was careful not to let anything show on my face. 'Me, Sir?'
'Yes, you, Huree. What do you think about it?'
'Well, Sir, I am naturally pleased that Mr Holmes should regard my services so highly. But my accompanying him to Thibet is, of course, quite out of the question – without Departmental approval,' I added, conscientiously.
'Yes, of course, quite,' said the Colonel dryly. 'Now Hurree, as you well know, and have made sure, you are going with Mr Holmes to Thibet. But don't think you can spend your time there peacefully collecting data on quaint native customs and religions. I want work!' He opened his despatch box and delved into a mass of letters and documents.
'Why, of course, Sir,' I replied with dignity.
'Hmm… Now listen carefully' He held out a letter written on rough Thibetan paper; the kind manufactured from the bark of one of those species of Daphne plants (Edgeworthia gardneri) which comes mostly from Bhootan. 'This is a secret report I received from K.21 just a week ago. His monastery is, as you know, close to the main caravan route from Kashgar to Lhassa, and is therefore a good place to pick up news from the Thibetan capital. Evidently things are not as they should be in Lhassa. There are rumours that two senior ministers have been removed in disgrace from the cabinet, and a much respected abbot of the Drepung monastery gaoled like a common criminal. K.21 feels that the Manchu Amban is behind these events, and it is probably an attempt to undermine the position of the Grand Lama and strengthen Chinese influence in Thibet. It seems that these particular ministers and the abbot wanted the young Grand Lama to be enthroned before his constitutional age. They were opposed to the Regency, which has acquired the reputation of being influenced by the Chinese representative, the Amban.'
'Would that be Count O-erh-t'ai, the man who hates the English?'
'Yes, and we've found out why he's so rabidly xenophobic. It seems that his father, the Marquis T'o-shih, was burned to death when British troops set fire to the Imperial Summer Palace in Pekin.' [24]
'And he now wants to ensure that no one but China has any influence in Thibet.'
'Exactly. The Thibetans haven't taken too kindly to his meddling though. We have reports of angry mobs demonstrating before the Chinese legation in Lhassa, and the possibility of the Emperor despatching more Chinese troops to reinforce the garrison in Lhassa.'
'By Gad, Sir. That is a pretty kettle of fish that is boiling there. I myself have been the recipient of such snippets of rumours from certain Bhotia merchants of my acquaintance.'
'I need to have more than rumours. It is vitally important that you get to Lhassa and learn the truth of the situation there.'
'Not to worry. Sir. This time I will most assuredly not fail to get to Lhassa; and once there ascertain the veridicality of the situation.'
THIBET
10 More Bundobust
Sherlock Holmes was eager to be off, but the Colonel and I counselled patience. The passes would be snow-bound till late spring, and the Leh-Lhassa caravan [25] wouldn't start till then. It was also felt to be wiser not to join the caravan at Leh itself, as there was a Thibetan trade agency there whose officials might take an undue interest in our bona fides. Instead we would travel by the Hindustan-Thibet road and cross Thibet over the Shipki la, or Shipki pass, and as if by a happy chance, encounter the caravan somewhere around the vicinity of Kailash, the holy mountain.
In the meantime there were preparations to be made. I have, for very sound reasons, always taken pride in my faculty of organisation, or bundobast, as we call it in this country, and the reader must forgive me for the rather detailed description I have provided of the extensive arrangements I made to ensure the success of our expedition.
In order of importance, the first thing I had to do was hire our expedition sirdar. We were very lucky to acquire the services of Kintup, a sturdy mountaineer of Sikkhimese extraction, who had on previous occasions performed a few commissions for the Department, [26] and had also been my guide on my last lbortive trip to Thibet. He was living in Darjeeling at the time, eking out a living as a tailor. But I telegraphed him a message and some TA (travelling allowance) money, and he arrived in Simla a week later, eager to be off on another adventure.
'This time we will get to the Holy City, Babuji,' he reassured me, his rough callused hands clasping mine in greeting. 'We will not make the mistake of staying overlong in Shigatse, as we did the last time.'
He was a thickset, active man, with a look of dogged determination about his rugged, weather-beaten features. He had all the alertness of a mountaineer, and with the strength of a lion he was a host in himself. He and Mr Holmes took to each other at once.
We also hired two other men. To look after our pack animals we got Shukkur Ali Gaffuru, whose father was a man of Yarkand and mother a Lamaist of Spiti, the mixed race being called Argon, generally distinguished by physical hardihood and loyalty. For our cook we got Jamspel, a cheerful young Ladakhi who, in spite of certain limitations in his culinary ability was not averse to bathing occasionally, and was skilled in lighting and maintaining yak-dung fires under all circumstances and climatic conditions.
Kintup and I travelled to nearby Narkhanda for the animal mela, or fair, where we purchased twelve sturdy mules to carry our baggage and provisions. For riding we purchased five shaggy little tats, or hill ponies, which in spite of their ludicrous size and hirsuteness, were stronger and better equipped to survive in the desolate highlands of Thibet than most horses.
I also had to arrange for the purchase or preparation of various other items: tents, saddles, pack-saddles and panniers, yakdans, which are small leather-covered wooden boxes such as are used in Turkestan, kitchen utensils and dekchis frieze blankets, gutta-percha undersheets, a tent-bed for Mr Holmes, bashliks, rifles, knives, note- books, writing material, talkan, or roasted barley meal, which the Thibetans call tsampa, preserved meat, tobacco, etcetera, etcetera. I instructed Jamspel to bake a large quantity of khura, or hard Ladakhi biscuits, which keep practically forever. I was rather partial to them and they were very good to nibble on to relieve the tedium of a long journey.
I managed to order a complete medicine chestfrom Burroughs and Wellcome of London, with drugs prepared specially for a high and cold climate. All the remedies were in convenient tabloids, and stowed in a robust and beautifully crafted wooden chest.
At this point I think that I ought to inform the reader of certain other preparations I made demi-officially in the larger interests of science and Imperial advancement. We fieldmen were not only in the business of collecting political information, as my previous conversation with Colonel Creighton may have led the reader into believing. In fact the bulk of our duties, the rice and daal of departmental activities, was concerned with geographical and ethnological information. Therefore, we fieldmen, or to use the proper Departmental term, chainmen, were trained and equipped essentially to perform such tasks.
Initially we were trained in route survey and reconnaissance work. We were taught the use of sextant and compass, and how to calculate altitudes by observing the boiling point of water. But since this bally business cannot be convenientiy conducted because of the deplorably suspicious and hostile nature of the ignorant inhabitants of unexplored lands – and since it is occasionally inexpedient to carry measuring chains and other conspicuous tools of the trade – the Department has devised some very ingenious methods and contrivances to circumvent suspicion and hostility.
First of all we were trained to take, by much practice, a pace which, whether we walked up mountains, down valleys, or on level ground, always remained the same – thirty inches in my case. We also learned how to keep an exact count of the number of such paces we took in a day, or between any two landmarks. This was done with the
