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Updated: May 19, 2025
Truly a beautiful land Bhutan, at its loveliest perhaps in spring, when the hills and upland meadows where the yaks graze, ten thousand feet above the sea, blaze with the mingled colours of anemones blue and white, of yellow pansies and mauve and white irises, of large white roses and small yellow ones, of giant yellow primulas with six tiers of flowers, when the oaks and the chestnuts are clothed in young green, and the apricot, pear and orange trees are in bloom, when large and lovely blossoms cover that little-known tree that the Bhutanese call chape, when the bright green of the young grass runs up to the white snowfields.
Below, in shadow, lay the Baltal camping-ground, a lonely deodar-belted flowery meadow, noisy with the dash of icy torrents tumbling down from the snowfields and glaciers upborne by the gigantic mountain range into which we had penetrated by the Zoji Pass.
The atmosphere was somewhat hazy, but the mountain seemed neither near nor far. Its glaciers flashed in the divine light. The rugged, storm-worn ridges between them and the snowfields of the summit, these perhaps might have been traced as far as they were in sight, and the blending zones of color about the base. But so profound was the general impression, partial analysis did not come into play.
Huge red chasms with glacier-fed torrents, occasional snowfields, intense solar heat radiating from dry and verdureless rock, a ravine so steep .and narrow that for miles together there is not space to pitch a five-foot tent, the deafening roar of a river gathering volume and fury as it goes, rare openings, where willows are planted with lucerne in their irrigated shade, among which the traveller camps at night, and over all a sky of pure, intense blue purpling into starry night, were the features of the next three marches, noteworthy chiefly for the exchange of the thundering Dras for the thundering Suru, and for some bad bridges and infamous bits of road before reaching Kargil, where the mountains swing apart, giving space to several villages.
I was chilled through, for the early morning air is keen, the pure breath of infinite snowfields, and I took my coffee gratefully amongst the crowd of hungry passengers. Rough miners some of them, going up to Sitka from the great Treadwell mine at Juneau, traders on their way to Fort Wrangle, and some few explorers.
All round, in marked contrast to the utilitarian ugliness below, dark pines ran up to the glittering snowfields on the shoulders of the peaks. Foster went to a big new hotel, which he found dirty and too hot. Its bare walls were cracked and exuded resin; black drops from the central heater pipes stained the rotunda floor, which was torn by the spikes on the river-Jacks' boots.
It should be remembered that one-eighth of the country lies within the region of perpetual snow, and that these lofty and nearly inaccessible heights are robed in a constant garb of bridal whiteness. No known portions of the globe have more extensive glaciers or snowfields, unless, possibly, it be some portions of Alaska or Greenland.
Here and there among the stones are spread the large, smooth, oval leaves and white gold-bearing cups of the shepherd's lily. The glaciers, snowfields, and cliffs of Mount Rolleston lie on the left. Everything drips with icy water. Suddenly the saddle is passed and the road plunges down into a deep gulf. It is the Otira Gorge. Nothing elsewhere is very like it.
Such a delicious feeling seemed stealing over me a feeling of mixed power and weakness. I felt my color rise, but I looked ahead over the snowfields and said, "I don't see why you should have turned back. Why should you want to be with me and not be with me? I wanted to see you too."
Ten or twelve of these exquisite blossoms grow on one stalk, and stalk, leaf, and seed-vessels are guarded by very stiff thorns. Seen from the Baralacha Pass are vast snowfields, glaciers, and avalanche slopes.
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