A TRIP INTO TIBET

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 192, 10 May 1921, Page 5

A TRIP INTO TIBET

ENGINEER’S EXPERIENCE.

The first European who had an audience of ifhe Dalai Lama of Tibet at Lhasa since Manning in 1811, has just returned to Calcutta, after two months residence in the “forbidden land.” He is a Mr. J. Fairley, a telegraph engineer in> the service of the Government of India, who reports that the Tibetan Government is apparently anxious for the country to be linked up by telegraph with India, and there are also faint! signs, he thinks, of a desire for industrial advance on European lines. "A visit to Lhasa,” 'he says, “transports one Ftraight back to tho middle ages. There is no sanitation or drainage in Lhasa, to-day, and if it were not for its low temperature, owing to the fact that it is built on a plateau 11,000 ft. high, its 20,000 inhabitants would quickly die of typhoid fever. "The audience of the Dalai Lama took place in the Norbulinga Palace, three miles outside of the city. ' The reception. hall was goregously decorated in red and gold, with magnificent silk canopy over the throne on which the Lama was seated in European fashion. His Holiness wore an Oriental yellowbrown robe, and l his hai.r was done in the familiar plaited fashion of the Lamas. His salutation took the form of placing over my arms extended in front, of mo a long silk shawl, which courtesy I returned by placing a silk shawl over th» arm of His Holiness. "The Dalai Lama's first question concerned my age. and the second my wife's age, and he showed a great interest in my experiences on my journey. His Holiness gave me the same impression of gentle kindliness which I derived from all my contndt with the Tibetans.”

Mr. Fairley also visited the Council of Shapes, as Iho Tibetan Cabinet is called.

"The Shapes.” he says, "inquired anxiously if-the war was now over and Europe at peace again. Afterward, they invited me to a 24-conrse lunch. The only mishap was (halt my interpreter was so overcome with norvoniffness that bo spilled the tea in the lap of one <57 the Slinnos as he poured it.” Mr. Fairley also visited the Jo Kang, rhe Buddhist Crtthodral, where ho found a bell left behind by the Gnpucliin fathers in 1745. when they abandoned their attempt to found a mission in Lhasa "Tn front of the morn altar," Mr. Fairlev says, "stands 27 butter lamps of solid gold, Klin. high. The figure of the Buddha is finely glided and ornamented with gold and turquoise. In a corner close to the door there is a. largo butter lamp of solid silver, about 2ft. in diameter and 3ft. in height. This lamp is litoral Iv plastered to tho wall by Iflio filth loft by millions of pilgrims, who have been in the habit for centuries of touching it in the cosrrso of their devotions."