Journeys on the Silk Road

by Joyce Morgan

  Chiang spent his days surrounded by bundles of scrolls attempting to make a rough list of the Dunhuang manuscripts. The results were thrilling, with Chiang turning up texts much older and more varied than Stein had expected when they began burrowing in the “treasure cave.” It was time-consuming work. Chiang had looked at just a third of the manuscripts at Khotan. “You can imagine the trouble of unfolding rolls of thin paper, often 30 yards long & more, to search for colophons etc. Chiang is glued to his table from morning till late at night,” Stein wrote to Allen.

  Chiang’s work came to a sudden halt when he suffered a serious case of food poisoning. A photograph taken at Narbagh shows a gaunt Chiang, almost unrecognizable from the round-faced figure photographed in Dunhuang fifteen months earlier. “He suffered awful pains for days & kept me busy as improvised doctor & superintendent of nursing. But at last he got over the attacks & is now slowly regaining strength & spirits. Faith in my medicines was the main cure,” Stein told Allen. And he plied poor Chiang with doses of the salty yeast extract sent out from England. “Marmite turned to use at last,” he noted with satisfaction in his diary.

  Stein too endured ill-health at Khotan. His malarial fevers returned, he suffered from a toothache and he became temporarily deaf in his left ear. Yet both men’s ailments paled beside the affliction suffered by Naik Ram Singh. Shortly after setting out for Miran, the Naik’s neck and back grew stiff. Soon he was struck by headaches that grew more intense each day. After five days, while sitting in an orchard to escape the noon heat, he began to reel and lost sight in one eye. Nonetheless, the hardy Sikh insisted on continuing, hoping his condition would improve. It worsened. At Miran, while clearing a temple with Ibrahim Beg, the Naik lost the vision in his other eye also. Still he waited—and hoped—for nearly two weeks. Finally he agreed to turn back and let Ibrahim Beg, a Muslim, guide him to Khotan. Although blind, Naik Ram Singh insisted on cooking his own food to avoid breaking caste rules, despite repeated campfire burns.

  Stein was devastated to see the once-proud soldier so diminished. No event during the entire expedition affected Stein so deeply. In a heartfelt letter to Allen, his closest confidant, he shared his fears for the Naik.

  You can imagine my feelings when I saw him arrive in this state of utter helplessness . . . [The Naik] luckily seems to bear his affliction with remarkable calmness & courage, perhaps a compensation of nature for a certain heaviness of mind & disposition. But whether this did not make him lose precious weeks on his return for the chance of proper treatment only the gods know. He himself seems confident of an early recovery & this is indeed fortunate. But alas I know only too well how delusive such hope may be & feel the full weight of his care.

  Stein searched for some clue and cure for the handyman’s blindness. Khotan’s only surgeon was called and relieved some of the Naik’s pain, but was unable to restore his sight. The best chance of medical help lay 200 miles away in Yarkand, where Stein had sold his camels and where the Swedish medical missionary, Dr. Gösta Raquette, was based. The Naik was transported by cart to Raquette, a friend of Stein.

  Raquette diagnosed glaucoma. The headaches were a symptom of its onset. There was no hope of recovery. Only a timely operation could have saved Naik Ram Singh’s eyesight. Raquette broke the terrible news to the Naik and reported back to Stein: “You have nothing to reproach yourself with. The disease might quite as well have come on if he had been at home & nobody can expect you to recognize a disease that very often in the beginning is overlooked even by medical men.”

  The letter was scant consolation. Stein knew that at home in India the Naik would have been among his own people and had the chance of prompt medical treatment. The soldier had paid a high price for his wish to better provide for his wife and son. He had been enticed from his regiment by the promise of pay five times his army salary. Although Stein warned him of the trip’s hardships, this was a danger no one could have anticipated. Chiang was so distressed by the Naik’s plight that he again set aside his religious skepticism and made offerings for the handyman’s recovery at the shrine of a healing saint. Others, such as Stein’s prosperous friend Akhun Beg, urged the use of local treatments. Stein dismissed as “truly mediaeval” remedies that involved the use of breast milk and baby’s urine. The Naik, who had been so enchanted when he encountered a frozen lake, would never see such a sight—or any other—again.

  Raquette advised that the Naik should head home as soon as possible. Arrangements were made for him to travel with a party of Hindu traders returning to India over the Karakorams to Ladakh. He rested in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, before being conveyed to Dr. Arthur Neve at the Srinagar Mission Hospital in Kashmir. He confirmed Raquette’s diagnosis. From there, the Naik’s brother escorted him to his family’s village in Punjab.

  The soldier’s future weighed heavily on Stein. When Stein saw him in Punjab five months later, the explorer was shocked by the Naik’s mental disintegration, exacerbated perhaps by hashish consumption. Stein argued for a special pension for his loyal handyman. The government of India granted it, but he did not benefit from it for long. Within a year of losing his sight, Naik Ram Singh was dead.

  After four months in Khotan, punctuated by a few exploratory diversions, Stein was ready to move. The packing in Akhun Beg’s orchard was complete. It had taken six arduous weeks, and the manuscripts alone filled thirty of the carefully made cases. Although he made a brief note in Khotan about a well-printed Chinese roll, Stein did not grasp the significance of what is now recognized as the world’s oldest printed dated book. It was simply one scroll among many. On August 1, more than fifty camels and a column of donkeys left Khotan under Tila Bai’s care for the journey through the Kunlun Mountains via a well-known caravan route. Stein, determined as ever to take the road less traveled, planned a more difficult path. He would then unite with Tila Bai and the antiquities convoy in late September to cross the Karakorams together.

  It was time for farewells: to Turkestan, where Stein the lifelong wanderer felt so at home, and to the desert that had yielded such treasures. And it was time to part from some of his loyal followers. Turdi, the courageous dak runner who had risked his life to find Stein in the desert on Christmas Eve in 1906, filled his saddle bags with Stein’s mail for the last time. But no parting was harder than from Chiang. A deep friendship had developed during their two years together. The man hired as an interpreter had proved far more: an unlikely desert traveler, a trusted companion, teacher, witty raconteur, a skilled diplomat, and negotiator. Without him, Stein might never have secured Dunhuang’s treasure from Abbot Wang.

  While the journey together—and especially their three weeks at the caves—would create an enduring bond between Stein and Chiang, the explorer had been mindful they would eventually part. Before he left Dunhuang he wrote to Andrews to secure a special parting gift. In typical Stein style, he was precise not only about what he wanted but how much he was prepared to pay. He requested a good silver watch—then a rare and prestigious item in Turkestan. The cost was not to exceed £2 10 shillings, and it should be inscribed: “Presented by Dr M.A. Stein to Chiang-ssu-yeh as a token of sincere regard and in grateful remembrance of his devoted scholarly services during explorations in Chinese Turkestan, 1906–08.”

  Chiang dreamed of following Stein to London or India, but knew obtaining work in either country would be difficult. Stein, too, imagined spending summers with Chiang on Mohand Marg in Kashmir. But the bucolic idyll remained a dream. The reality was Chiang would remain in Turkestan, in exile from his home and family. Stein wanted to ensure Chiang had a good position and worked behind the scenes to secure one. In Khotan, Stein received welcome news from Kashgar that George Macartney had agreed to employ him as his secretary.

  “Often as I look back on all we went through together, I have wondered to what merits (of a previous birth, perhaps?) I was indebted for this ideal Chinese comrade of my travels!” Stein later reflected.<
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  Chiang accompanied Stein and his small party from Khotan for one last day’s journey together. Appropriately, their parting would come not among the comforts of an oasis, but amid the solitude of a makeshift camp, an environment dear to them both. Chiang knew he was unlikely to experience such adventure ever again.

  They crossed the flooded Yurungkash River by ferryboat before making camp on a gravel flat. Dash seemed to sense the impending separation, nestling up to Chiang for a final cuddle. The next morning, Stein, with his back to Turkestan, headed toward the mountains. “Then, as I rode on, the quivering glare and heat of the desert seemed to descend like a luminous curtain and to hide from me the most cherished aspects of my Turkestan life.”

  12

  Frozen

  Stein’s high-altitude journey to India soon led him to the Kunlun Mountains, long rumored to be the site of great goldmines. Until he entered the Zailik Gorge on August 18, 1908, no European had ever seen the legendary gold pits, and what he encountered must have appeared like a scene from King Solomon’s Mines. The cliffs were dotted with hundreds of diggings. In this deep, gloomy valley, generations of wretched souls—virtual slaves—had lived and died digging for flecks of gold. Their graves extended over every bit of flat ground around the twelve-mile gorge. Others were entombed in abandoned pits.

  Most of the gold had long been extracted, but about fifty impoverished men still worked the mines in summer, when the 13,600-foot valley was accessible. The miners were astonished at the arrival of outsiders in their frigid valley. Eight or nine of the miners agreed to abandon their burrowing in the dark pits to work as porters for a couple of weeks through the mountainous terrain. They helped map the glacier-fed rivers that coursed through the mountains to Khotan and emptied far away in the Taklamakan’s sands. On the movement of such life-giving rivers the fate of the ancient desert civilizations had depended. Even high in the mountains, Stein sensed a connection with the sand-buried sites. He suspected that long ago gold from these pits had been used to gild the temples of Khotan.

  While he mapped the rivers, his murals from Miran and his manuscripts from Dunhuang, including the Diamond Sutra, were crossing the mountains via the main trading route between Turkestan and Ladakh. It was safer than his uncharted path. Nonetheless, the terrain that Stein’s antiquities had to negotiate posed considerable difficulties, not least repeated river crossings, sometimes up to forty a day. The rivers were full of deep holes, and loose rocks could easily fell a horse. (Von Le Coq, on this route from Turkestan to Ladakh in 1906, watched in dismay as a leather case carried on horseback burst open during one such crossing. A collection of kettles and his supplies of sugar and condensed milk floated away on the swift current.)

  Not knowing the fate of the treasures he had acquired over two years of hard toil must have added to Stein’s worries when, having sent the porters back to their goldmines, he approached the most dangerous part of the mountainous journey. The going grew increasingly tough as he and his men were blasted with icy gales by day and endured temperatures that fell to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit at night. At the foot of a line of glaciers, 17,200 feet above sea level, Stein located the source of the Keriya River, the waterway he had found just in time on his hazardous shortcut across the desert eight months earlier. Once again fodder was running low and no grazing could be found. Several donkeys suffered in the cold and had to be shot.

  Then Stein’s pony, Badakhshi, became ill. For more than two years of rugged travel, he had conveyed Stein through the most inhospitable of mountainous and desert terrain. With little food or water, the hardy mount had crossed the Taklamakan without any apparent ill-effect. His implacable temperament had wavered only once, when a blast of horns had farewelled Stein’s party from an oasis. What caused the animal’s sudden illness, none of Stein’s men knew, despite their knowledge of horses. Badakhshi was wrapped in extra felts and blankets for the cold night ahead. Stein gave him most of a bottle of port that he kept for emergencies. At daybreak, when Stein rose to check on him, the pony lay on the ground in convulsions.

  “He recognized me when I stroked him, and on my holding some oats close to his mouth he struggled to get on his legs,” Stein wrote. He had hoped Badakhshi would one day graze on Kashmir’s lush grass. But just when the goal seemed near, the pony died in one of the most desolate places Stein had encountered.

  “What he succumbed to I failed to make out. He was equal to the hardest of fares & would cheerfully chew even ancient dead wood. It was some consolation that he suffered but for a short time & had for his last night every comfort we could provide in that wilderness,” he told Allen.

  The dispirited party trudged on the next morning until they spotted two small stone mounds, or cairns, half buried under sand and gravel. It was what Stein had been looking for—the cairns that marked a disused route to Ladakh. The party rejoiced at having finally found a path where men had passed before. For two days, they followed the stone cairns that led down to a valley. Finally, the welcome remains of an old rock shelter offered refuge from the bitter wind. There were signs in the valley of more recent life—fresh tracks made by wild yaks and donkeys. The valley had just enough vegetation for the hungry animals. And not before time; the fodder had run out. Would those two days have made a difference for Badakhshi? Stein had no way of knowing. But as he watched the hungry ponies graze, he mourned the loss of his own mount, frozen stiff in the forbidding wastes higher up the mountain.

  There was relief for men and animals when a team of Kirghiz guides arrived with yaks, camels, and much-needed supplies. With them came word that Tila Bai and the heavy cargo of antiquities were waiting safely eighty miles ahead as arranged. After so much long and hard travel, Stein must have thought his troubles were behind him.

  Just one expeditionary challenge remained. Stein still wanted to resolve inaccuracies in a map sketched by surveyor William Johnson, who had crossed the Kunlun Mountains in 1865. Stein’s attempt to do this on his first expedition had failed. He had been similarly thwarted two years earlier on his second expedition. This was the determined Stein’s third—and final—chance to solve the mystery. The task would also allow him to locate the watershed of the Kunlun Mountains. The side trip had to begin the next day or not at all. There was not enough food for the animals to delay. On the night before his departure, a bout of colic made for a fitful sleep, but the day dawned clear. Just after 5 a.m. he set out with four Kirghiz guides and two of his own men—surveyor Lal Singh and the surveyor’s assistant, Musa—all mounted on yaks. After three hours of climbing, the terrain became too difficult even for the yaks and they were abandoned for the final ascent up a glacier.

  As the sun rose higher, the snow softened and the men sank up to their thighs. Roped together for safety, they struggled for breath in the thinning air. Lal Singh especially felt the effects of the altitude and had to be hauled along, stopping after every ten steps to catch his breath. It took seven hours to climb four miles.

  The panorama at 20,000 feet was awe-inspiring. They were surrounded by majestic snow-covered crests that dazzled under the intense light and cobalt sky. Some peaks appeared smooth, almost benign, under a blanket of virgin snow, others harsh and serrated. To the south were ranges whose rivers ended in the mighty Indus. Far away to the north, Stein glimpsed the yellow haze that hovered over the Taklamakan Desert. His mood was as elevated as the landscape.

  “The world appeared to shrink strangely from a point where my eyes could, as it were, link the Taklamakan with the Indian Ocean,” he wrote. The grandeur before him united his two beloved ancient worlds. To the south was India, where Buddhism had been born. To the north was where it had flourished before the great civilization sank under desert sands.

  But Stein could afford little time for reflection that day. There was photographing and surveying to be done, and it was already mid-afternoon. From his vantage point, he corrected the miscalculations of Johnson�
�s sketch. The temperature was down to sixteen degrees Fahrenheit at 4:30 p.m. when the guides insisted on starting the descent. They did not want to risk being stranded overnight on the glacier. Stein grabbed a few mouthfuls of food. In the rush, there was no time to change his boots, which had become wet during the ascent in the soft snow and then frozen as he worked. Nor did he have time to consider how fatigue, high altitude, and inadequate sleep might cloud his judgment.

  It was already dark by the time the men rejoined the yaks and mounted the sure-footed beasts. At times the men dismounted as the yaks negotiated the rocky slopes. When they did, Stein struggled to find his footing, but attributed the difficulty to fatigue and slippery terrain. The six-hour descent seemed endless. When at last the camp came into view, he hobbled into his tent and removed his boots and two pairs of socks. The toes on both feet were frozen. He rubbed them vigorously with snow in an effort to restore circulation. A quick check of his medical manual had advised this as emergency treatment. It may have made matters worse. These days, friction is avoided so that injured tissue is not further damaged; immersing in warm water or wrapping in blankets is the preferred treatment. Nonetheless, the toes on Stein’s left foot gradually warmed, though the skin was badly damaged. He had lost feeling in the toes on his right foot.

  The pain in his feet immobilized him the next morning. He again consulted his medical manual: “The aid of an experienced surgeon should be sought at once.” The advice was sound but hardly reassuring. He knew he was at risk of developing gangrene and must reach Ladakh and medical help quickly. But the town was two weeks’ journey away—nearly 300 miles—through some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain on earth.