' So
twenty-four men, nine horses, a flock of goats, and two cows had been
waiting for me for three days in the Serchu valley. I wrote a polite
note to the magistrate, and sent all back except the chaprassie, the
cows, and the cowherd, my servants looking much crestfallen.
We crossed the Baralacha Pass in wind and snow showers into a climate
in which moisture began to be obvious. At short distances along the
pass, which extends for many miles, there are rude semicircular
walls, three feet high, all turned in one direction, in the shelter
of which travellers crouch to escape from the strong cutting wind.
My men suffered far more than on the two higher passes, and it was
difficult to dislodge them from these shelters, where they lay
groaning, gasping, and suffering from vertigo and nose-bleeding. The
cold was so severe that I walked over the loftiest part of the pass,
and for the first time felt slight effects of the ladug. At a height
of 15,000 feet, in the midst of general desolation, grew, in the
shelter of rocks, poppies (Mecanopsis aculeata), blue as the Tibetan
skies, their centres filled with a cluster of golden-yellow stamens,-
-a most charming sight.
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