r thinks of washing.
Soap is not included in the list of sundries that pass the Customs House
at Yatung. If the Lamas are dirtier than the yak-herds and itinerant
merchants it is because they lead an indoor life, whereas the pastoral
folk are continually exposed to the purifying winds of the tablelands,
which are the nearest equivalent in Tibet to a cold bath.

I once read of a Tibetan saint, one of the pupils of Naropa, who was
credited with a hundred miraculous gifts, one of which was that he could
dive into the water like a fish. Wherein the miracle lay had often
puzzled me, but when I met the Lamas of the Kanjut Gompa I understood
at once that it was the holy man's contact with the water.

Phari is eloquent of piety, as it is understood in Tibet. The better
rooms are frescoed with Buddhistic paintings, and on the third floor is
a library, now used as a hospital, where xylograph editions of the
Lamaist scriptures and lives of the saints are pigeon-holed in lockers
in the wall. The books are printed on thin oblong sheets of Chinese
paper, enclosed in boards, and illuminated with quaint coloured
tailpieces of holy men in devotional attitudes. Phari fort, with its
casual blending of East and West, is full of incongruous effects, but
the oddest and most pathetic incongruity is the chorten on the roof,
from which, amidst praying-flags and pious offerings of coloured
raiment, flutters the Union Jack.

_February 18._

The troops are so busy making roads that they have very little time for
amusements. The 8th Gurkhas have already constructed some eight miles of
road on each side of Phari for the ekka transport. Companies of the 23rd
Pioneers are repairing the road at Dotah, Chumbi, and Rinchengong. The
32nd are working at Rinchengong, and the sappers and miners on the
Nathula and at Gautsa.

We have started football, and the Gurkhas have a very good idea of the
game. One loses one's wind completely at this elevation after every
spurt of twenty yards, but recovers it again in a wonderfully short
time. Other amusements are sliding and tobogganing, which are a little
disappointing to enthusiasts. The ice is lumpy and broken, and the
streamlets that run down to the plain are so tortuous that fifty yards
without a spill is considered a good run for a toboggan. The funniest
sight is to see the Gurkha soldiers trying to drag the toboggan uphill,
slipping and tumbling and sprawling on the ice, and immensely enjoying
one