308 VILLAGE OF MALABI. 



stands perched among the rocks, having, with its projecting 

 eaves and weather-stained timbers, all the picturesque look 

 of a Swiss chalet. Up this gorge towards the glacier is 

 good ground for tahr. In fact all the lateral gorges of 

 the Doulee valley are, in their upper regions, the resorts 

 of either tahr or burrell ; but in some of them the difficult 

 nature of the ground -is such that I do not think I overrate 

 it when I affirm that unless one is tolerably free from the 

 feeling of apprehension commonly termed " giddiness," hunt- 

 ing there is always more or less attended with risk. Indeed 

 a great many of the native mountaineers themselves lose 

 their lives in the pursuit of tahr. 



The village of Malari, consisting of about eighty houses, 

 is situated, almost overhanging the river, in an open kind of 

 basin, where the tolerably level ground is, in the summer 

 months, taken every advantage of by the inhabitants for the 

 cultivation of buckwheat (here called " phaper ") and barley. 

 The Bhotias having just reoccupied the place for the sum- 

 mer months, it presented a much more cheerful aspect than 

 it did on a former visit I had made to it earlier in the 

 spring, when it was all silent and deserted, with the wooden 

 roofs here and there torn up, where the bears had during 

 the winter effected a burglarious entrance after the stores of 

 grain. I found the burrell at that time low down on the 

 slopes in the immediate neighbourhood, and shot a ram 

 there. The track upward to Niti had, in many places 

 where it almost overhangs the river, been carried clean 

 away by avalanches, or was blocked by huge pine-trees, 

 rocks, and debris lying over it, that had been swept down 

 by them. In short, all above this was at that season soli- 

 tude and desolation. Now the road had been cleared and 

 repaired by the Bh5tias, with parties of whom, male and 

 female, moving up with their goods and herds by easy 

 stages to the higher villages, we found it thronged. The 

 men wore long, light, drab-coloured woollen tunics, and 

 continuations of the same material. The women were more 



