Читать книгу The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922 онлайн

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At Kalimpong the Expedition broke up into two parties, but before we left we had a very pleasant function to attend. I had been charged by Sir Robert Baden-Powell to deliver a message to the scouts of Dr. Graham’s Homes for European Children at Kalimpong. Not only that, but incorporated with these scouts was the first small body of Nepalese boy-scouts. It was a very interesting function indeed, and a most enthusiastic one.

From there we pushed on stage by stage over the Jelep La into the Chumbi Valley. Of course, journeys through Sikkim have often been described. Again we were disappointed. On my first arrival in Darjeeling, the cold weather had hardly finished, but now (March 28) we were well into the hot weather of Bengal, and in consequence we were also in the hot-weather haze. During the whole of our journey we never got a single view of the gorgeous Southern faces of the Himalaya, of Kanchenjanga and of its supporters, and especially of the wonderful Siniolchum peak. This was a very great disappointment, as from several points on our road a view of the Southern face can be obtained. Nevertheless, a journey through Sikkim is always a wonderful experience. The steep and deeply cut valleys, the wonderful clear mountain streams, and the inhabitants and their means of cultivation, are all full of interest. The depth of the valleys is always striking, and can never be anything else. When one thinks that from Rongli Chu, situated only at 2,700 feet above the sea, one rises in one continuous pull to close on 13,000 feet on the ridge which looks down on the Gnatong bungalow, and travels through cultivation and forest the whole way, passing through every phase of Eastern Himalayan landscape, one cannot cease to be continually impressed by the scale of the country. We were too early for the rhododendrons on the way to Gnatong, but there were just sufficient in flower to give us a mental vision of what these wonderful rhododendron forests would be like in another three weeks.