418 THE TRACK BEYOND NITI. 



All arrangements being completed, I started on 6th June 

 with fifteen laden jooboos, and eight Bhotias to look after 

 them. This may seem rather heavy marching-order for a 

 sportsman's requirements ; but having to carry with us an 

 extra tent for the Bh5tia followers, a month's food for about 

 a dozen people, and the baggage-animals having, moreover, 

 to be lightly laden for getting over the snow-beds, which 

 would still be lying deep along portions of our route, will 

 account for it. The summit of the pass is about 25 miles 

 from Niti village, beyond which the mountains, except for a 

 few birch-trees, become bare and desolate. The first day we 

 proceeded up the valley of the Doulee here called the Niti 

 to a spot called Goting. Soon after leaving the village 

 the way leads for some eight miles, in a succession of tire- 

 some ups and downs where it crosses deep precipitous 

 gullies, along a bare stony hill-face with so sharp a slope 

 that you cannot see the river, although you can hear it roar- 

 ing sullenly down its narrow rocky channel some 2000 feet, 

 on an average, below. The track, which had not as yet been 

 repaired by the Bhotias, was narrow and broken, and in many 

 parts had been carried clear away by slips of earth and snow, 

 and broad beds of snow still lay hard, smooth, and terribly 

 steep in some of the gullies we crossed. In such places we 

 had ourselves to make it passable for the jooboos, with tools 

 we carried with us for the purpose. As we went along we 

 could sometimes see the summer avalanches which are 

 quite different from the more destructive ones of the early 

 spring coming tumbling down the rocky gullies on the 

 steep mountain-face across the river ; the streams of falling 

 snow appearing in the distance to descend quite slowly, 

 though they were really thundering down at a fearful rate. 

 At one point we reached an elevation of nearly 15,000 feet, 

 just before descending to Goting, which is about 13,000 feet. 

 These altitudes I ascertained by my mountain aneroid, which 

 I had had corrected at the headquarters of the great Trigono- 



