UNKNOWN TIBET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 December 1938, Page 8

UNKNOWN TIBET

NEW ZEALAND PARTY’S EXPERIENCES MOUNTAINEERING ADVENTURES. LONG TREK TO OBJECTIVE. A party of New Zealand mountaineers is at present climbing in the littlee known Pei Mashan range on the border d of China and Tibet. Last June Miss Marjorie Edgar-Jones (Timaru) and n Guide Mick Bowie, of the Hermitage, _ left New Zealand for an alpine advene ture. In Sydney they were joined by t Miss Marie Byles and Mr F. Ratcliffe, _ of Timaru, and later by Miss Dora De 0 Beer (England) and Guide Kurt Suter, s also formerly of the Hermitage. The s following summary was written from a n diary of their long trek towards their s objective kept by Mr Bowie. h Singapore was reached at the end of , July, and the party went on to Penang e and Rangoon, which was almost the e final point of departure in the Western fashion, for the railhead at. Mitkyina, beyond the teak forests, bamboo groves, and rice fields, was the beginning oJ the long journey on foot. Here the gear was made ready for packing and Chinese servants were engaged and christened. The next day the journey on foot began. They crossed the Irawaddy in a 40-foot teak dugout, loaded the luggage on to 16 mules, and made a start on the first 12-mile stage to Washung. Small riding mules were provided—(“So small my feet drag on the ground. Charlie says I look like a gorilla riding a billygoat’’). The first day the ’- road was good and some of the party went by car. The way lay amid fields 0 tended by children dressed chiefly in f large straw hats, with hundreds of magnificent butterflies flitting about, f and many wild peacocks in the patches r of forest. The next stage was of about - 13 miles down the Washung. THE COMPANY OF LEECHES. “Had our first experience 01 . leeches,” notes Mr Bowie. “The darned things came looking and wriggling in all directions on the track. One does not feel the bite, but the wound bleeds lor a long time after the leeches are scraped off, and we were all running blood in various places when we finished the march. We are maching in shorts and shirts, with canvas boots, and we must look a queer lot to the natives we pass—all shapes and sizes of legs and styles of shorts. Our Chinese servants look much more respec- .: table than we do. 1 “Our interpreter has a magnificent silver-headed walking stick and when 3 he rides at the head of the party looks 1 rather like a drum-major. Many of the ■ natives we passed on the track were •carrying fearsome-looking knives 3 1 about two feet long in wooden sheaths, ’> and I edged past the first few with what I hope was a casual air.” The march at this time was through country which resembled the West Coast. In good weather they went . on to Sedan, at 4,500 ft. “We buy pineapples, milk, chickens, bananas and un- ’ nameable vegetables at the villages en ' route . . . We have a crate of chickens ■ in a wickerwork backet which perches on top of one of mule loads.” The mule drivers were impressive with their control over their animals. “The mules are turned loose to graze when we camp, and when the drivers are ready to load up in the mornings they call the mules with weird cries rather like yodelling, and the mules come trotting in fi;om the bush to be loaded. The packs are tied on a wooden frame which fits on the saddle, and the drivers, one on each side of the frame, lift it and the mule walks underneath the load, which is dropped into place. The saddle has no girth, only a crupper and breastplate, but it works very well.” OVER THE BORDER TO CHINA. As they rose steadily to 6000 ft they ' were only a few miles from the Chin- ■ c-se border, and the ■ mules, badly 1 saddle-galled, began to fail. The divide 1 into China was crossed at about 8000 { feet, and they stayed at a Chinese inn at Taku. They all arrived at the top ( together, the white men sweating, the £ natives apparently not even warm. ( At the inns the big top room was 1 shared with several Chinese families. ' There were no fireplaces or chimneys, '■ cooking was done in odd spots among * the domestic animals on the ground v floor, and the smoke, coming through 1 the cracks in the floor, was almost 1 blinding. The only furniture upstairs *• was a few sleeping mats made of straw, 3 and everything was filthy. “ Travelling in the next stage was' u through fine grassland, with the grass v knee high, beautiful country for sheep *■ and cattle it would seem, but not used d for stock, as the Chinese work only in & the paddy fields and keep pigs and 3 poultry. The villages had paved streets, y six feet wide, and the houses wore of sun-cured bricks, with tiled roofs. b After 11 days they reached Teng a Yueh, 132 miles from their starting 11 place. "The town of Teng Yueh has not b altered in the last 500 years," notes Mr 0 Bowie. "There is no communication 31 with the outside world except by pack « mules or carrying chair, and there is ri no modern machinery of any kind. The only wheeled transport is a few L bicycles, which have been imported in o the last few years. All the women have bound feet. The practice is prohibited. but is still done in secret. The Indus- ( tries are the making of cotton cloth and J jade cutting .... The grain is ground between two crude stones laboriously _ turned by hand. The building of walls ? and houses is beautifully done and the L .-■tones are so well fitted that eno can ;; hardly see the joins."

CLOSING GATES TO STO D RAIN. The city of Teng Yueh had closed its north gate as a measure to stop the too abundant rain which was spoiling the crops in the district. In times of drought the south gate is opened to bring rain. “The system,” notes Mr Bowie, "is said to work quite well.” Later they found more interesting things—water tanks holding up to 100 gallons and cut from a single block of granite and with walls not more than two inches thick—and, surprisingly enough, sewing machines. Here, as elsewhere, the natives fled when a camera was produced. At a party at the Consulate a Swedish missionary boasted of being able to read the New Testament in Chinese. The Consul deflated him by asking: -But can you buy a mule?” The stores they had been awaiting irrived. at last and they moved off again with 26 pack mules and four riding ponies, through paddy fields gay with lotus bloom and tumbledown villages full of pigs and mud. over a pass at 8000 feet, and down into the Selween '

Valley, among peach groves and walnut trees. At the inns they grew to prefer the mule stables to the houses when camping. They lived very cheaply. For 3d a day they got rice, tea, corncob, potatoes, beans, pomegranates, bananas, peaches, pears, and chickens, and also their lodging for the night. They had all taken to umbrellas; it was too hot for coats and rained every day. At the walled town of Yung Chang there began to be a good deal of. discussion about provision of a military escort by the authorities. But, because they did not believe that claims for lost pro-

perty would, be recognised by the Government, even if the party travelled with an escort, and that the escort itself would be as likely to desert in the - face of trouble as not, they did not accept one. Another fact was that the travellers must pay for the escort. Leaving Yung Chang they struck the new motor road to Burma. They went on down the Yanghi river in heavy rain, Mr Ratcliffe shooting a five-foot snake and having the surprising ex- . perience of seing it disgorge a three- ' foot snake it had eaten. SOLDIERS’ QUEER EQUIPMENTS At Yanghi they watched the local volunteers, on parade (they did bayonet drill with muzzle-loaders and looked about as dangerous as a crocodile of high school girls). Caravans which passed at this stage had military escorts, but the soldiers’ arms were rather assorted, as “all the good stuff is at the war.’’ A few- had old Lee Enfields, but most had-smooth-bore Sniders using dum-dum bullets. A motor-car was sighted amidst great excitement, for some of the mule-driv-ers had never seen one before. The Chinese general in charge of construction of the road passed them in a convoy of three anneient lorries bristling with ancient machine-guns and muzzleloaders. Here they took to riding in wicker reclining chairs borne by cool- • ies and carried at a sharp dog-trot. They found the heads of bandits captured the previous week stuck on stakes at the north gate of Tali, by the Erh Hai lake. On the lower slopes of the Tali mountains were cemeteries which extended for 20 miles, the monuments so crowded together that at a distance they looked like an outcrop of granite. The graves were in a strip from half a mile to a mile and a halfwide. Up the valley above the lake thej r found the beheaded bodies of bandits against whom troops had been in action two days before. Fifteen soldiers had Seen killed in the encounter. They obtained a bodyguard of two Chinese soldiers at a dollar a day; the men were armed with old Spandau 1875 rilles and umbrellas, and had 10 ■ounds of ammunition among them. 1-ater it was discovered that these cart'idges did not fit the guns. NEARING THE OBJECTIVE. Crossing a low pass at 8.300 feet, they, ravelled in company with 200 Chinese ;oldiers who were on their way to Ar:unta, where there had been trouble vith the Tibetans. The troops wore mitation Western uniforms and also arried the old Spandau rifles. The •aravan had been growing for days, jther travellers having attached themselves under the impression that the bandits would not attack foreigners, frfiey camped in a temple loop-holed for rifle-fire at Tein Wei.

Along a track through swamps and paddy fields, they travelled at altitudes of from 8000 to 10,000 feet through cooler temperature, and on September 20 could see their objectives about two days' travel away—San Seto (“The Fan”), said to be about. 21,000 feet and the snow mountain of Pikiang, with its top still shrouded in monsoon clouds which would not clear for about two weeks. Their camp would be in the timber line about 12,000 feet. Two parties had attempted to climb and failed, one of them circling the mountain in the effort to find a route. At that date the diary closes with a final note: “There are many Tibetans here, and we have been introduced to buttered tea. which is quite good."