Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 24, 2025
Yesterday, Tuesday, I left the camp at dawn, and went all over the same ground, but with no better success, only seeing a couple of bara singh, hornless now, and therefore comparatively uninteresting from a "shikar" point of view. After a delightful but bearless ramble I returned to breakfast, and then we struck camp, and completed the ascent of the pass over into the Lolab.
Pick up the blunderbuss, and let us make tracks for the ship." Wednesday, May 10. Beguiled by legends of many bears, detailed to me with apparently heartfelt sincerity by Ahmed Bot, I have been pursuing these phantoms industriously. On Monday we quitted our boat, and started upon a trip into the Lolab Valley.
The sloping snow melting into little rills which trickled through the fresh-springing flower-strewn grass; the extraordinary blue of the hillsides overlooking the Lolab Valley seen through the sloping boughs of the pines; the crows hopping audaciously around or croaking on a dried branch just above our heads; and above all, the glorious sense of freedom, of aloofness from all disturbing elements, of utter and irresponsible independence in a lovely land unspoiled by hand of man?
Jane joining me, we had a most charming ramble down a narrow track to the bed of the stream which rushes down from the snow-covered ridge guarding the Lolab. Here we crossed into a splendid belt of gaunt silver firs, the first I have seen here; whitish yellow marsh-marigolds and a most vivid "smalt" blue forget-me-not with large flowers were abundant, also an oxalis very like our own wood-sorrel.
I noticed early in May the water buffaloes just turned out to graze in the Lolab, and more weakly, melancholy collections of skin and bone I have seldom seen.
Every one said to me in spring, "Oh, go to the Lolab, it's full of bear," I went, and was informed that it was a late season and I was too early the bears were not yet awake.
Skirting the foot of the wooded ridge on our right, and with the flat and populous levels of the valley on our left, we marched along a good path shaded in many places by the magnificent walnuts and snowy fruit-trees for which the Lolab is justly famed, until, crossing the Pohru by a rickety bridge, and toiling up a hot, bare slope, we reached Kulgam, nestling at the foot of the hills.
Jane, who is in splendid condition now, toiled nobly up a track which would have been delightful had the weather been a little less hideous. Reaching the ridge which divides the Lolab from the Pohru Valley, we turned to the left, along the edge, instead of descending forthwith, as we had hoped and expected to do.
Well, I am perched in a little hollow under a big grey boulder, which serves to shelter me to a certain, but limited, extent from the brisk showers that come sweeping over from the Lolab Valley.
He has many "murghis" left; baskets full, as he says, for they are cheap in the Lolab, but we shall never love another so dearly. We had a shocking time while climbing to the pass which leads over to Rampur, the road being deep in slimy mud, and so slippery that the unfortunate baggage ponies could hardly get along.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking