Seven Years in Tibet

by Heinrich Harrer

  The staple food in this region is tsampa. This is how they prepare it. You heat sand to a high temperature in an iron pan and then pour barleycorns onto it. They burst with a slight pop, whereupon you put the corns and the sand in a fine meshed sieve through which the sand runs; after this you grind the corn very small. The resulting meal is stirred up into a paste with butter tea or milk or beer, and then eaten. The Tibetans make a special cult of tsampa and have many ways of preparing it. We soon got accustomed to it, but never cared much for butter tea, which is usually made with rancid butter and is generally repugnant to Europeans. It is, however, universally drunk and appreciated by the Tibetans, who often drink as many as sixty cups in a day. The Tibetans of Kyirong, besides butter tea and tsampa, eat rice, buckwheat, maize, potatoes, turnips, onions, beans, and radishes. Meat is a rarity, for as Kyirong is a particularly holy place no animal is ever slaughtered there. Meat appeared on the table only when it had been brought in from another district or, more often, when bears or panthers left part of their prey uneaten. I never understood how this doctrine could be reconciled with the fact that every autumn some fifteen thousand sheep are driven through Kyirong bound for the slaughterhouses in Nepal and that the Tibetans levy export duty on them.

  At the very beginning of our stay we paid a call on the district authorities. Our travel document had already been delivered by a servant and the bönpo thought that we would go straight on into Nepal. That was by no means our intention, and we told him that we would like to stay for a while at Kyirong. He took this very calmly and promised, at our request, to report to Lhasa. We also visited the representative of Nepal, who described his country in the most attractive terms. We had meanwhile learned that Kopp, after staying a few days in the capital, had been pushed off to an internment camp in India. The seductions of automobiles, bicycles, and moving pictures which, we were told, we should find in Katmandu, made no appeal to us.

  We could not really hope to get a residence permit from Lhasa, and if we went to Nepal we expected to be expelled into India. Accordingly, we decided to recruit our strength in this fairylike village and stay there till we had worked out a new plan of escape. We could not foresee then that we would stay nearly nine months in Kyirong.

  We were not in the least bored. We filled exercise books with notes on the manners and customs of the Tibetans. On most days we went out to explore the neighborhood. Aufschnaiter, who had been secretary of the Himalaya Institute in Munich, used his opportunities for mapmaking. There were only three names on the map of the region we had brought with us, but we now filled in more than two hundred. In fact we not only enjoyed our freedom but made practical use of it.

  Our excursions, which at first were limited to the immediate neighborhood, gradually extended farther and farther. The inhabitants were quite accustomed to us, and no one interfered with us. Of course it was the mountains that attracted us most, and after that the hot springs around Kyirong. There were several of these, the hottest of which was in a bamboo forest on the bank of the ice-cold river Kosi. The water bubbled out of the ground nearly at boiling point and was led into an artificial basin, where it still had a temperature of about 40 degrees Centigrade. I used to plunge alternately into the hot pool and into the glacial waters of the Kosi.

  In the spring there is a regular bathing season in this place. Swarms of Tibetans came along and bamboo huts sprang up everywhere in this usually lonely spot, two hours distant from Kyirong. Men and women tumbled naked into the pool, and any signs of prudishness provoked roars of laughter. Many families pay holiday visits to this spa. They set out from their homes, with sacks full of provisions and barrels of beer, and settle down for a fortnight in bamboo huts. The upper classes also are accustomed to visit the springs and arrive with caravans and a staff of servants. But the whole holiday season lasts only a short time as the river, swollen with melting snow, overflows the springs.

  In Kyirong I made the acquaintance of a monk who had studied in the school of medicine in Lhasa. He was much respected and was able to live richly on the provisions that he received as fees for his services. His methods of treatment were diverse. One of them was to press a prayer stamp on the spot affected, which seemed to succeed with hysterical patients. In bad cases he branded the patient with a hot iron. I can bear witness to the fact that he thus restored a seemingly hopeless case to consciousness, but this treatment affected many of his patients adversely. He also employed this drastic treatment on domestic animals. As I was reckoned a sort of half-doctor and am greatly interested in everything connected with medicine, I used to have long conversations with this monk. He confessed to me that his knowledge was limited, but he did not worry himself unduly about that and managed to avoid unpleasant incidents by frequently changing his place of residence. His conscience was relived by the fact that the fees derived from his dubious cures served to finance his pilgrimages.

  IN THE MIDDLE of February, we had our first Tibetan New Year. The year is reckoned by the lunar calendar and has two names, one of an animal and the other of an element. The New Year festival is, after the birth- and death-days of Buddha, the greatest event of the year. During the previous night we already heard the voices of singing beggars and wandering monks going from house to house in quest of alms. In the morning fresh-cut pine trees decked out with flags were stuck on the roofs, religious texts were solemnly recited, and tsampa offered to the gods. The people bring an offering of butter to the temples, and soon the huge copper caldrons are overflowing. Only then are the gods propitiated and ready to grant favors in the New Year. White silk veils are draped around the gilded statues as a special mark of respect, and the worshipers reverently lay their foreheads against them.

  Rich or poor, all come full of devotion and with no inner misgivings to lay their offerings before the gods and to pray for their blessing. Is there any people so uniformly attached to their religion and so obedient to it in their daily life? I have always envied the Tibetans their simple faith, for all my life I have been a seeker. Though I learned, while in Asia, the way to meditate, the final answer to the riddle of life has not been vouchsafed to me. But I have at least learned to contemplate the events of life with tranquillity and not let myself be flung to and fro by circumstances in a sea of doubt. The people did not pray only at the turn of the year. For seven days they danced, sang, and drank under the benevolent eyes of the monks. In every house there was a party, and we, too, were invited.

  It is sad to remember that the festal celebrations in our house were overclouded by a tragedy. One day I was called into the room of our hostess’s younger sister. The room was dark, and only when hot hands gripped mine did I realize that I was standing near her. When my eyes had got accustomed to the darkness, I looked toward the bed and recoiled in a horror that I could hardly conceal. There lay completely transformed by sickness one who two days before had been a pretty, healthy girl. Though a layman, I instantly saw that she had smallpox. Her larynx and tongue were already attacked, and she could only cry out with thick articulation that she was dying. I tried to tell her that it was not so, and then escaped from the room as quickly as possible to have a thorough wash. There was nothing to be done, and one could only hope that an epidemic would not break out. Aufschnaiter also visited her and agreed with my diagnosis. Two days later she died.

  So after the joys of the festival, this mournful event made us acquainted with the ceremonies of a Tibetan burial. The decorated pine tree that stood on the roof was removed, and the next day at dawn the body was wrapped in white grave cloths and borne out of the house on the back of a professional corpse carrier. We followed the group of mourners, who consisted of three men only. Near the village on a high place recognizable from afar as a place of “burial” by the multitude of vultures and crows which hovered over it, one of the men hacked the body to pieces with an ax. A second sat nearby, murmuring prayers and beating on a small drum. The third man scared the birds away and at intervals handed the other two men beer or tea to cheer them up.
The bones of the dead girl were broken to pieces, so that they too could be consumed by the birds and no trace of the body should remain.

  Barbaric as all this seems, the ceremony draws its origin from deep religious motives. The Tibetans wish to leave no trace after death of their bodies, which, without souls, have no significance. The bodies of nobles and high-ranking lamas are burned, but among the people the usual way of dealing with them is by dismemberment, and only the bodies of very poor people, for whom this form of disposal is too costly, are thrown into the river. Here the fishes perform the function of the vultures. When poor people die of contagious diseases, they are disposed of by special persons paid by the government.

  Fortunately, the cases of smallpox were few, and only a small number died. In our house there was mourning for forty-nine days, and then a fresh tree with prayer flags was hoisted onto the roof. At this ceremony appeared many monks who said prayers to the accompaniment of their own peculiar music. All this naturally costs money, and when deaths occur in the family the Tibetans usually sell some of their jewelry or the possessions of the defunct, the proceeds of which pay for the obsequies performed by the monks and the oil used in their countless little lamps.

  During all this time, we continued our daily walks, and the excellent snow gave us the idea of making skis. Aufschnaiter got hold of a couple of birch trunks, which we stripped of their bark and dried before the fire in our room. I started making sticks and straps, and with the aid of a carpenter we succeeded in producing two pairs of decent-looking skis. We were delighted with their workmanlike appearance and looked forward to trying them with great excitement. Then, like lightning from a clear sky, came an order from the bönpo forbidding us to leave Kyirong except for walks in the immediate neighborhood. We protested energetically, but were told that Germany was a powerful state and that if anything happened to us in the mountains, complaints would be made in Lhasa and the authorities in Kyirong held responsible. The bönpo remained unshaken by our protestations and did his best to convince us that in the mountains we should be in great danger of attacks by bears, leopards, and wild dogs. We knew that their anxiety about our safety was all humbug, but conjectured that they had adopted their attitude in deference to the requests of the superstitious population, who possibly believed that our visits to the mountains might make the gods angry. For the moment we could do nothing but submit.

  During the next few weeks, we obeyed orders, but then we could not resist the temptation to go skiing. The attraction of the snow and the ice slopes was too much for us, and one day we had recourse to a stratagem. I took up my quarters provisionally by one of the hot springs only half an hour distant from the village. A few days later, when the people had got accustomed to my absence, I fetched our skis and carried them by moonlight some way up the mountainside. Early on the following morning, Aufschnaiter and I climbed up over the tree line and enjoyed ourselves on a splendid snow surface. We were both astonished at being able to ski so well after being so long away from it. As we had not been spotted, we went out again another day, but this time we broke our skis and hid the remains of these weird instruments. The people of Kyirong never found out that we had been snow riding, as they called it.

  Springtime came, work in the fields began, and the winter corn came up in lovely green shoots. Here, as in Catholic countries, the cornfields are blessed by the priests. A long procession of monks, followed by the villagers, carried the 108 volumes of the Tibetan bible round the village accompanied by prayers and sacred music.

  As the weather grew warmer, my yak fell sick. He had fever, and the local vet declared that only the gall of a bear would do him good. I bought the stuff, and dear it cost me, not so much from a belief in its properties as to give satisfaction to the “doctor.” I was not astonished at the lack of results. I was then advised to try goat’s gall and musk, and hoped, subconsciously, that the long experience of the Tibetans in the treatment of sick yaks would save my precious beast. However, after a few days I was obliged to have poor Armin slaughtered, as I wanted at least to save his meat.

  For such cases the people use a slaughterer, a man obliged to live as an outcast on the fringe of the village like the blacksmith, whose craft ranks lowest in Tibet. The slaughterer receives as pay the feet, the head, and the intestines of the yak. I found the manner in which he dispatched the animal to be as speedy as, and more humane than, the methods of our slaughterers. With one swift stroke, he slit open the body, plunged his hand in, and tore out the cardiac artery, causing instant death. We took away the meat and smoked it over an open fire, thus providing a basis for the stock of food we should need when we next escaped.

  About this time an epidemic had broken out in Dzongka, causing a number of deaths. The district officer with his charming young wife and four children came over to Kyirong to escape the danger. Unfortunately, the children brought with them the germs of the disease, a kind of dysentery, and one by one went down with it. At that time I still had some yatren, reckoned to be the best remedy for dysentery, and offered it to the family. This was a considerable sacrifice for Aufschnaiter and myself, as we had been keeping the last few doses for ourselves in case of need. Unfortunately, it did no good, and three of the children died. There was no yatren for the fourth, the youngest, who fell ill after the others. We were desperately anxious to save him and advised the parents to send a messenger in all haste to Katmandu with a specimen of the stools to find out what was the proper medicine to give. Aufschnaiter wrote a letter in English for this purpose, but it was never sent. The child was treated by the monks, who went so far as to call in a reincarnated lama from a distant spot. All their efforts were fruitless, and after ten days the child died. Sad as this business was, it acquitted us, in a way, of blame, for if the last child had recovered, we should have been held responsible for the deaths of the others.

  The parents of these children and several other adult persons also fell ill, but recovered. During their illness they ate heartily and drank large quantities of alcohol, which may have accounted for their getting well. The children had refused food during their illness, and their strength had quickly ebbed away.

  Afterward we became very friendly with the parents, who though they felt their loss very deeply, consoled themselves in some measure by their faith in reincarnation. They stayed on for some time at Kyirong in a hermitage and we often visited them there. The father was called Wangdüla and was a progressive and open-minded man. He was very anxious to acquire knowledge and made us tell him any things about life outside Tibet. Aufschnaiter, at his request, drew him a map of the world out of his head. His wife was a twenty-two-year-old beauty from Tibet; she spoke fluent Hindi, which she had learned at school in India. They made a very happy couple.

  After several years we heard of them again. They had had a tragic fate. Another baby was born, and the mother died in childbirth. Wangdüla went mad with grief. He was one of the most likeable Tibetans I ever met, and his melancholy story moved me deeply.

  During the summer the authorities sent for us again and summoned us to leave Kyirong. In the meantime we had learned from merchants and the newspapers that war was over. It was known to us that after the First World War the English had kept the POW camps going in India until two years after hostilities were over. We had clearly no wish to lose our freedom now and were determined to make another attempt to penetrate into Inner Tibet. The fascination of the country was growing on us, and we were ready to stake everything to satisfy our ambition to know it better. Our knowledge of the language was now good, and we had acquired a lot of experience. What was to hinder us from going farther? We were both mountaineers, and here we had a unique opportunity of surveying the Himalayas and the nomad districts. We had long ago given up all hope of returning home soon, and now wished to push through to China over the northern plains of Tibet, and, maybe, to find work there. The termination of the war had made our original project of getting through to the Japanese lines pointless.

  So we promised the
bönpos to leave in the autumn if they would in return allow us freedom of movement. This was approved, and from that time on the chief aim of our excursions was to find a pass through which we could reach the Tibetan plateau without touching Dzongka.

  During these summer expeditions, we got to know the fauna of the region. We came across a great variety of animals, including species of monkeys that must have migrated here through the deep valley of the river Kosi. For some time leopards used to kill oxen and yaks nightly, and the villagers tried to catch them in traps. As a precaution against bears, I used to carry in my pocket a snuffbox full of red pepper. The bear, as I have mentioned, is dangerous only by day, when he will attack a man. Several of the woodcutters had bad face wounds as a result of encounters with bears, and one had been blinded by a blow from a bear’s paw. In the nighttime one could drive these animals away with a pine torch.

  On the tree line I once found deep footprints in the newly fallen snow, which I could not account for. They might have been made by a man. People with more imagination than I possess might have attributed them to the Abominable Snowman.

  I made a point of always keeping fit and had no lack of strenuous occupation. I helped in the fields or at the threshing. I felled trees and cut torches from the resinous pinewood. The bodily toughness of the Tibetans is due to the bracing climate and the hard work they do.

  They are also addicted to competitive sports. Every year a regular athletic meeting is held in Kyirong. It lasts several days. The principal events are horse racing, archery—distance and height of shot—footraces, and long and high jump. There is also an event for strong men, who have to lift and carry a heavy stone for a certain distance.

  I contributed to the enjoyment of the public by competing in some events. I nearly won the footrace, having led, after a massed start, for most of the way, but I had not reckoned with the local methods. In the last and steepest bit of the track one of the competitors grabbed me by the seat of my trousers. I was so surprised that I stopped dead and looked around. That was what the rascal was waiting for. He passed me and reached the winning post first. I was not prepared for that sort of thing and amid general laughter received the rosette awarded as second prize.