For five months of the year the Donkya La is an easy pass. It provides a route down into Sikkim for those Tibetans who cross the border between Phari and Kampa Dzong, and it links the upland grazing of the Yumchho plain with the lower but less extensive pastures in the valleys that descend on Mome Samdong. Hooker came this way more than a century ago; and we discovered later that Miss Drake, of the Scots Mission at Mangan, had crossed it more than a dozen times in the course of her many years service among the people of Lachung.
Yet because of it’s height (18,121ft) it is only a summer pass and the main stream of traffic with India keeps aloof. Winter is the Tibetan’s favourite season for visiting lower lands; whereby he has a two-fold gain, escaping the worst of his homeland’s weather, and visiting the marts and shrines of India without need to endure it’s stifling heat. He is then to be seen in the wool fair at Bageshwar, near Almora, having come down from the wastes around Manasarowar Lake. Or he will come, a true pilgrim, right down to the plains themselves, helping to swell the throng of the curious at Budh Gaya’s ancient shrine. His feelings will be such as excite a Christian setting foot in the Holy Land: here Buddha received enlightenment; from this place Gautama’s influence sent waves of mellowness rippling over the eastern and northern lands. Or, more prosaically, he will visit the foetid city that holds the key to ocean and the fabled lands beyond. I have seen him, a burly, pig-tailed figure, in gay-coloured cloth boots, his dark blanket-smock loosed from his shoulders, and tucked bulkily in at the waist, standing at the entrance to Sealdah terminus with a look of hesitant wonder on his broad unsophisticated face. Seas of excited scant-clothed Bengalis swelled around (as they do incessantly in that metropolis), and beyond in the street was the feverish, criss-crossing of cars and trams, and other wonders upon wheels. Well might he, newly descended from a land where the wheel is unknown, hesitate before launching, himself into the whirlpool of Calcutta’s streets. But though winter is his season for travelling south, snowfalls on the passes force him to be more selective in his Himalayan crossings; the Donkya, and other routes into Lachung are closed; the way down through Thangu may be blocked spasmodically; and caravans tend, therefore, to converge on the main, Chumbi valley, trade route where the increased flow helps to keep open the Jelap and Natu La. Summer’s happy-go-lucky overflow of the frontier, by muleteers and nomadic herdsmen has narrowed to a few tenuous threads.
Undoubtedly we were the year’s last travellers, knowing, the subconscious anxiety of belated stragglers – as lagging birds, separated from the migratory flock, approach the Alps with trepidatory misgivings. Beyond lay a lower land, a kinder atmosphere, but there was work to be done before we should gain the prize.
The sky held firm. “Bahut sahib”, said Angtsering for the tenth time, gazing, around the peaks. It was well to be reminded of our compensations; our good fortune was already becoming, a legend among the men. This late time could not rival April for alpine flowers; nor, down in the rhododendron belt, could it show the riotous colours of summer; certainly, too, it’s cloudless, frosty nights were a frigid ordeal. But we were seeing Himalayan architecture under conditions of unsurpassable clarity; the peaks seemed reared in space, airless and moistureless as the mountains on the moon; and distance was telescoped, a day’s march seeming but a mile or two away. Proof of our surfeit came in the quibble of those who do not know their good fortune, the eternal human failing of wishing that things were otherwise than they are. How we longed for a few wisps of cloud to drape the peaks, clothing them in atmosphere, increasing the scale of the already gigantic scene.
But day broke clear; it glowed a luminous yellow through the canvas of the tent. When at length, I could pluck up courage to venture out, it was to find Pauhunri’s pyramid-angled northern slope already fully lit. The sun was behind; it had not yet climbed high enough to look over the rim and bless our encampment on the frozen plain. But on that remote snow slope, aloof and aloft, the wind and the sun were at their wizardry; snow dust was blowing out into space, and, shot through with golden light seemed like the magic steam from an alchemist’s cauldron. Below was the immaculate, bowl-like col to which the slope descends, it’s rim glowing with promise of molten light; and here it was that the sun at last appeared. No Botticellian conception of Venus rising from the sea is more ideal than is here the appearance of the dawn Apollo: he rises effortless into the cloudless sky; the snowfoam, loth to lose him wreathes golden wisps about his feet; it is the ice-world’s dance of worship before its deliverer from darkness and death.
Each morning we had opportunity to reflect on the sun’s omnipotence. It was not possible here to start forth in darkness, as one does from an Alpine hut; danger of frostbite was real, even during the first hour after dawn; we, no less than the snow on the ridge, must needs await the blessing of the sun; only thus could we spring to life. It was the signal for stirring of embers, stamping of feet, and all the desultory moves that lead to breakfast, and striking of camp.
Little more than an hour later, the tiny human caravan moved southward across the snow. Our route lay parallel with the dark narrow water of the lake; slowly we drew away, up into the narrowing funnel formed by the convergence of ridges on the pass. We left the lake to it’s dark sorrow amid the gleaming peaks. At Chho Lhamo the very spirit of sadness breathes; sadness immutable, silent, and beyond words.
“The sedge is wither'd from the lake
And no birds sing”
Our men were heavily laden. A large part of our fourteen maunds of wood had already merrily burnt, and we had paid off the yak-men, sending them back to Donkung with their spirited beasts; what remained was distributed among the loads, and, though food supplies were constantly being eaten down, this addition probably meant a greater, weight per head than on any other stage of the journey.
All, however, went well. The most tiresome feature was the snow’s inconsistency. Sometimes it bore our weight so well that there was hardly more than a pattern of stud marks to show that men had passed. Such going was of the pleasantest, but it was disconcerting to step on what seemed an equally hard surface and find oneself pitched suddenly-knee-deep, or more, into disintegrating, crustless powder. There was a good deal of this exhausting floundering, and we soon found it better to advance in Indian file, each treading exactly in the steps of the man ahead, all, except the unfortunate leader, forewarned as to how deep we were likely to sink. In the upper part, however, wind and low temperature had so compacted the snow that it was almost ice. The climb was nearly done, but the top lay away to the right; axes came into play, and we made a slow, cold traverse out over a steep and treacherous slope. I was moving second, and saw well the confident poise of Nurbu, the-leading porter, as he cut step by step his dizzy way to the safety of the col. His steps were minute, sufficient only to hold him while he swung his axe at the next; but, following up, we enlarged them so that, finally, a respectable icy staircase trailed away in our wake. It was slow work for the leader, and anxious, goading cries came from the porters in the rear as they stood, each precariously balanced in a single step. Nurbu had not waited to put on the rope, and to have done so when once launched upon the slope would have been an awkward manoeuvre. For this folly we nearly paid when there was, suddenly and unaccountably, a patch where he floundered waist-deep, and, using the pick of the axe, had to pull himself up by main force. They were anxious moments, and there was certainly danger of starting an avalanche.
It was with some relief that we reached the top; the wind pushed us over the final bulge of snow, and we went down a few yards to safety and shelter on the southern side. Nurbu sat himself down on a rock and unwound his snow-soaked puttees. I congratulated him on his step-cutting, and he grinned cheerfully, unconcerned at his recent danger. People were arriving from nothingness over the bulge, first one and then another appearing outlined, a dark figure, against an intense blue sky. The last porter only just made the top; he was breathless and staggering as I helped him up. I took a final glance over the arid northern scene to the lake, the snowy plain, and some of the brown and purple hills of yesterday — then joined the group to relax and bask in the sun. Someone handed round cigarettes; everyone was cheerful, relieved.. We picnicked gratefully off scones and cheese, and enjoyed the warmth and soothing smoothness of cocoa.
The pass was a funnel for the wind, which rushed spasmodically above our heads; we heard it hiss over the snow, and moan among boulders on a shoulder of Donkya Rhi. Sometimes it’s whim was to whip up the surface, bringing down showers of snow and ice particles upon us, filling our rucksacs, and getting down our necks. Such attacks lasted no more than a minute, and we sat huddled, waiting for them to end, amused at this unnatural onslaught from a cloudless sky.
We could have stayed there for hours, sitting on top of the world, on this Himalayan divide, with new country spread out below, lower and moister than that we had left. A few small tarns at our feet, and an occasional dark crag, were the only snow-free places; winter was everywhere; the whole scene glistened painfully. But we still had eight miles to travel, and it was evident that we should have to break a trail. We got to our feet, and started down.
There was no incident, no sensational traverse; but we had a laborious time, and the sun was merciless; we clenched our eyelashes, even behind dark goggles. Our route lay southward, with the light shining against us from a myriad reflecting surfaces. Where the shaft of an ice-axe pierced the snow, a luminous, greenish-blue tunnel appeared. But we had no mind to gaze at the curious or the beautiful; our one wish was to get down out of the glare to our night’s shelter. No part of the landscape offered relief; beauty was cruel, were it the fluted ice-sculpture of Pauhunri, or the craggy arêtes of the Donkya Rhi. This latter peak, a mere twenty-thousand footer, and therefore a pigmy in the scale of it’s surroundings, is yet sharply distinctive, being primarily a rock mountain among giants of ice and snow, and bearing, from this side, a strong resemblance to the Zermatt side of the Matterhorn. Four hours after leaving the lake at it’s foot, when we were down between the enclosing cliffs of the Mome Samdong stream – down in the cold snow, with the night breeze already prowling, and the sun gone low in the west – I turned back to look at the way by which we had come, and saw this peak, framed in the black containing walls of the gorge, glowing pink in the last light; an indomitable, rough textured pyramid, above the floundering wastes where we had so lately toiled.
A Short Walk in Northern Sikkim 1946 