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At Shergol and elsewhere fodder is so scarce that the grain is not cut, but pulled up by the roots. The intensely human interest of the journey began at that point.
The Kashmiris are false, cringing, and suspicious; the Tibetans truthful, independent, and friendly, one of the pleasantest of peoples. I 'took' to them at once at Shergol, and terribly faulty though their morals are in some respects, I found no reason to change my good opinion of them in the succeeding four months.
After leaving Shergol the signs of Buddhism were universal and imposing, and the same may be said of the whole of the inhabited part of Lesser Tibet. Chod-tens from twenty to a hundred feet in height, dedicated to 'holy' men, are scattered over elevated ground, or in imposing avenues line the approaches to hamlets and gonpos.
Leaving Shergol, we entered a curious valley with rocks of concrete standing out like towers and fortifications, and on the summits of these again, airy-looking habitations with red streaks adorning them, and entered, as that at Shergol, by holes in the face of the rock.
Descended the Waka Valley, leaving Shergol to our left, and thereby saving about a kos and a half of already explored road. Breakfasted under a shady grove of pollards, at the little village of Lotzum, a cold refreshing bathe in a snow torrent enabling us to do full justice to our cook's very excellent performances in this line.
This is Shergol, the first village of Buddhists, and there I was 'among the Tibetans.
The chaos of rocks and sand, walled in by vermilion and orange mountains, on which the village of Shergol stands, offered no facilities for camping; but somehow the men managed to pitch my tent on a steep slope, where I had to place my trestle bed astride an irrigation channel, down which the water bubbled noisily, on its way to keep alive some miserable patches of barley.
These enabled us to celebrate our Sunday's dinner by a "duck and green peas," and never since the first invention of ducks could a similar luxury have been so thoroughly appreciated. Started early again, and marched five kos, through the little half-deserted settlement of Lotzum to the village of Shergol, where we halted for breakfast.
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