CHAP. XVIII THE COLD AT RIMDI 329 



would have had very serious consequences. Altogether, 

 it was about the worst path we had ever ridden, and if the 

 ponies had not been very sure-footed and careful they 

 could hardly have got over it at all. 



Before reaching this bad part we came across an 

 encampment of some Pobrang men, who were returning 

 from Tibet with salt. The loads, which were all in 

 small double bundles for carriage by sheep, were arranged 

 neatly so as to form a kind of square fencing, within 

 which the sheep were to be confined at night. When we 

 passed they were out grazing, and a single black tent 

 alone stood beside the enclosure. 



We had a cold night at Rimdi. Though sleeping in 

 a sheep-skin bag, with four blankets over that, I was 

 waked by the cold before dawn, and when I got up and 

 went out at daybreak, I found the thermometer hanging 

 on the tent rope standing at 19° F., and it had fallen to 

 18° F. during the night. By 7.30 a.m., after the sun had 

 been shining for over an hour, the thermometer had only 

 risen to 25° F. inside our tent. Yet though this was 

 7° below freezing-point the water there did not solidify. 

 When, however, I put a tumbler containing some outside 

 our tent, it had a film of ice over it in a minute ; and when 

 I poured some on the ground, the water had turned to 

 ice almost before it ceased to flow. My wife, however, 

 perhaps because she always had an eider down quilt, and 

 often a fur rug also over her blankets, never suffered from 

 cold at night all the time we were in Changchenmo. 



From the top of the Marsemik La, which we reached 

 about nine o'clock, we walked down to Chorkangma, 

 where we had breakfast sitting in the dry bed of the 



