s,
at any rate in the case of the pack mule, one of the great problems of
army transport, and we were brought face to face with it more than once
during this march. Grain too is heavy stuff, or, in other words, gets
quickly consumed. We used over two hundred maunds a day, or more than a
hundred mule loads, and so could not start our march with many days'
supply in reserve without excluding other things that also had to be
carried. The next heaviest item was tsampa (the Tibetan barley flour
which we were now using as a substitute for the 'ata' or coarsely ground
wheat flour usually consumed by natives). Of this we used seventy maunds
daily, and so had only a few days in reserve. Meat, though a large item,
is much more tractable stuff, for it walks on its four feet till you
kill it. It can even be of use in carrying other things. For instance,
we had made up our minds that, if sheep and cows ran short, we would eat
each yak that, on account of the depletion of supplies, had no longer a
load to carry! The other items of food, though many of them costly and
highly essential, were none of them very bulky, and of these we had been
able to bring along some weeks' reserve.

Our more pressing needs were therefore confined to fodder and grain and
tsampa, and many were the foraging parties that went forth on arrival in
camp, or that made a detour from the line of march in search of these
articles, some drawing blank, some getting very little, and some
occasionally a fair haul. At Ralung we got a fair haul. There is a very
fine monastery there, situated up a valley five miles from where we
camped. I remember spending a very pleasant afternoon there. I had gone
there, immediately after arriving in camp, with my commanding officer to
see what could be got out of the place. We found some whole barley, some
tsampa, and a fair stock of straw. My commanding officer left me there
to await the necessary transport while he went back to camp to send it.
I really had a very pleasant time, being hospitably entertained both by
the monks and also the nuns--especially the latter. They brought me out
'chang' to drink, a home-brewed light wine, made I believe from barley,
and the carcass of a sheep that had been cooked whole, and from which
you were expected to pick off your individual requirements. It had
already had a lot taken from it, and from a certain self-assertiveness
that there was about it, I concluded that it had been a standing dish
for