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We marched from Chumbi on April 5, accompanied by Mr. Macdonald and his son, who had come to help us make all our transport arrangements when we should arrive in Phari. Mr. Macdonald helped us on all occasions, and we cannot thank him enough for all the trouble he took from now on and during the whole time the Expedition was in Tibet. It was owing very largely to his help that we were able in Phari to get our Expedition on so soon, for he warned the two Dzongpens of Phari Dzong beforehand to obtain adequate transport for us.

Again, the march from Yatung to Phari has been described on many occasions, but it is quite impossible to march through it without mentioning its character. It is, especially at the time of year we went through, one of the darkest and blackest and most impressive forested gorges that I have ever seen, and almost equally impressive is the debouchment on to the Phari Plain at the head of the gorge, dominated as it is by our old friend Chomolhari.

We arrived in Phari on April 6, and made our first real acquaintance with the Tibetan wind. Phari is 14,300 feet, and winter was scarcely over; the weather also was threatening. Luckily, there is a little British Government rest-house and bungalow and serai at Phari, and there we found comfortable quarters. We were joined on the following day by the rest of the party. This really formed the starting-point of the Expedition, and, further, it was my birthday, and the bottle of old rum, 120 years old, specially brought out for this occasion, was opened and the success of the Expedition was drunk to. If we had known what was in front of us, we should have put off the drinking of this peculiarly comforting fluid until the evening of the day of our first march from Phari. The two Phari Dzongpens, probably owing to the fact that Phari is on the main route between Lhasa and India, were far and away the most grasping and difficult of any officials that we met, but no doubt their difficulties were pretty considerable. Although there is a great quantity of transport to be obtained in Phari, at this time of the year it is in very poor condition. Grazing exists, but one would never know that it existed unless one was told, and also unless one saw herds of yaks on the hillsides apparently eating frozen earth. Everything was frozen hard. We had difficulty, therefore, in obtaining the transport required. We found here collected the whole of our stores, with the exception of the oxygen. Our excellent tindel,^[1] Chongay, who had gone on ahead, had got it all marshalled; the tents were also pitched and in good order.