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Updated: June 26, 2025
"Well," he went on, "that general came up to the Lamasery and demanded a sleeping place for his wife and children, also provisions and medicines, and guides across the desert.
Several Lamas came to call on me in the morning, and professed to be pleased to see us; in fact, they asked me to go and pay them a visit in the Lamasery and temple. They said there was much sickness in the village, and as they believed me to be a Hindoo doctor, they wished I could do something to relieve their sufferings. I promised to do all I could.
There was no one to be seen. All the inhabitants of the monastery were gathered in the courtyard. She stole carefully down to a side door of the lamasery chapel. This temple was a large and lofty building richly ornamented with fine wood carvings, rich brocades and elaborately embroidered banners and hangings.
So we walked in the Path, as we had done in many another Lamasery, and assisted at the long prayers in the ruined temple and studied the Kandjur, or "Translation of the Words" of Buddha, which is their bible and a very long one, and generally showed that our "minds were open."
They even escorted me through the desert beyond, till one night we camped within sight of the gigantic Buddha that sits before the monastery, gazing eternally across the sands and snows. When I awoke next morning the priests were gone. So I took up my pack and pursued my journey alone, and walking slowly came at sunset to the distant lamasery.
The Rinoong valley is cultivated for several miles up, and has amongst others the village and Lamasery of Bah. Beyond this the view of black, rugged precipices with snowy mountains towering above them, is one of the finest in Sikkim. There is a pass in that direction, from Bah over the Tckonglah to the Thlonok valley, and thence to the province of Jigatzi in Tibet, but it is almost impracticable.
At early dawn next morning, before the village was awake, we crept with stealthy steps out of the monastery, whose inmates were friendly. Our new guide accompanied us. We avoided the village, on whose outskirts the lamasery lay, and made straight for the valley. By six o'clock, we were well out of sight of the clustered houses and the pyramidal spires.
On the third day out from the lamasery we camped in a romantic Himalayan valley a narrow, green glen, with a brawling stream running in white cataracts and rapids down its midst.
A brawling river ran over a rocky bed in cataracts down its midst. Crags rose abruptly a little in front of us. Half-way up the slope to the left, on a ledge of rock, rose a long, low building with curious, pyramid-like roofs, crowned at either end by a sort of minaret, which resembled more than anything else a huge earthenware oil-jar. This was the monastery or lamasery we had come so far to see.
A caller is expected instantly on arrival to produce a kata for presentation to his host. The High Lamas sell katas to devotees. One of these scarves is presented to those who leave a satisfactory offering after visiting a Lamasery. If a verbal message is sent to a friend, a kata is sent with it. Among officials and Lamas small pieces of this silk gauze are enclosed even in letters.
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