Indeed, my experience was that just as one was about to
mount him he usually made a lunge at one with his horns. Some of my
yak steeds shied, plunged, kicked, executed fantastic movements on
the ledges of precipices, knocked down their leaders, bellowed
defiance, and rushed madly down mountain sides, leaping from boulder
to boulder, till they landed me among their fellows. The rush of a
herd of bellowing yaks at a wild gallop, waving their huge tails, is
a grand sight.
My first yak was fairly quiet, and looked a noble steed, with my
Mexican saddle and gay blanket among rather than upon his thick black
locks. His back seemed as broad as that of an elephant, and with his
slow, sure, resolute step, he was like a mountain in motion. We took
five hours for the ascent of the Digar Pass, our loads and some of us
on yaks, some walking, and those who suffered most from the 'pass-
poison' and could not sit on yaks were carried. A number of Tibetans
went up with us. It was a new thing for a European lady to travel in
Nubra, and they took a friendly interest in my getting through all
right. The dreary stretches of the ascent, though at first white
with edelweiss, of which the people make their tinder, are surmounted
for the most part by steep, short zigzags of broken stone.
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