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Hokitika Guardian, 23 February 1925, Page 4

TIBET'S HOLY MEN IN LONDON. LONDON, December 2. “We have never seen such a big

Imzaar!” That is what seven amazed lamas from the interior of Tibet agreed as they drove through London in “demons oil wheels,” otherwise motorcars, yesterday. The seven wide-eyed lamas, holy men who have hitherto spent their lives in seclusion and meditation at a height of not less than 14,000 ft. above sen level, have been persuaded to make the perilous journey from Tibet to London to “give atmosphere” to the film “The Epic of Everest,” to he shown at the Sen la. Theatre, Charl-otte-street, Tottenham Court-road, for a seven-weeks season from next Tuesday. They will sing and dance in a prologue to the showing of the kineinntograpli record of a wonderful attempt made by Englishmen to climb to the top of Mount Everest. The chief of these lamas, one Gann Sutn Cheiubo, a grave-looking man arrayed in a mustard-colon rod hat resembling a cowl and flowing robes, lias come to London after five years’ continuous voluntary solitary (confinement in a mountain cell. With him are lesser lamas —one whose business it is to carry burning incense as an antidote to demons, another's to bear peacock’s feathers in a kind of teapot to ward off bad luck. Having seen the theatre in which they are to perform—the plush covering of tip-up seats appeared to intrigue some of them, considerably—the lamas were taken to their quarters in Charlotte-street. They are living in a newly decorated basement—“because they must be where the noise of their religious observances will not unduly disturb the neighbours,’’Captain J. B. L. Noel, their interpreter and the kinematographer of the Mount Everest expedition, explained. Their table, at which they all squat on the floor, is only a few inches high, and on their arrival it was found to be luxuriously spread with hard-boiled eggs, oranges, dried fruit, and a handbell. In face of such plenty the hand-bell was probably a little superfluous; the lamas have brought feeding down to such a fine point that—in Tibet then I daily rations are a handful of barley I and a cup of water.