Humidity, vegetation, and beauty
reappear together, wild flowers and ferns abound, and pencil cedars
in clumps rise above the artificial plantations of the valley. Wheat
ripens at an altitude of 12,000 feet. Picturesque villages,
surrounded by orchards, adorn the mountain spurs; chod-tens and
gonpos, with white walls and fluttering flags, brighten the scene;
feudal castles crown the heights, and where the mountains are
loftiest, the snowfields and glaciers most imposing, and the greenery
densest, the village of Kylang, the most important in Lahul as the
centre of trade, government, and Christian missions, hangs on ledges
of the mountain-side 1,000 feet above Bhaga, whose furious course can
be traced far down the valley by flashes of sunlit foam.
The Lahul valley, which is a part of British Tibet, has an altitude
of 10,000 feet. It prospers under British rule, its population has
increased, Hindu merchants have settled in Kylang, the route through
Lahul to Central Asia is finding increasing favour with the Panjabi
traders, and the Moravian missionaries, by a bolder system of
irrigation and the provision of storage for water, have largely
increased the quantity of arable land.
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