em
in their opinion that we had no serious intention of penetrating to
Gyantse.

With this brief account of the facts that led to the expedition I
abandon politics for the present, and in the succeeding chapters will
attempt to give a description of the Chumbi Valley, which, I believe,
was untrodden by any European before Colonel Younghusband's arrival in
December, 1903.

I was in India when I received permission to join the force. I took the
train to Darjeeling without losing a day, and rode into Chumbi in less
than forty-eight hours, reaching the British camp on January 10.

CHAPTER II

OVER THE FRONTIER

CHUMBI,
_January 13._

From Darjeeling to Lhasa is 380 miles. These, as in the dominions of
Namgay Doola's Raja, are mostly on end. The road crosses the Tibetan
frontier at the Jelap la (14,350 feet) eighty miles to the north-east.
From Observatory Hill in Darjeeling one looks over the bleak hog-backed
ranges of Sikkim to the snows. To the north and north-west lie
Kinchenjunga and the tremendous chain of mountains that embraces
Everest. To the north-east stretches a lower line of dazzling rifts and
spires, in which one can see a thin gray wedge, like a slice in a
Christmas cake. That is the Jelap. Beyond it lies Tibet.

There is a good military road from Siliguri, the base station in the
plains to Rungpo, forty-eight miles along the Teesta Valley. By
following the river-bed it avoids the two steep ascents to Kalimpong and
Ari. The new route saves at least a day, and conveys one to Rungli,
nearly seventy miles from the base, without compassing a single tedious
incline. It has also the advantage of being practicable for
bullock-carts and ekkas as far as Rungpo. After that the path is a
6-foot mule-track, at its best a rough, dusty incline, at its worst a
succession of broken rocks and frozen puddles, which give no foothold to
transport animals. From Rungpo the road skirts the stream for sixteen
miles to Rungli, along a fertile valley of some 2,000 feet, through
rice-fields and orange-groves and peaceful villages, now the scene of
military bustle and preparation. From Rungli it follows a winding
mountain torrent, whose banks are sometimes sheer precipitous crags.
Then it strikes up the mountain side, and becomes a ladder of stone
steps over which no animal in the world can make more than a mile and a
half an hour. From the valley to Gnatong is a climb of some 10,000 feet
without a break. The