1 62 Sport and Life in the Further Himalaya 



skin, and it will be believed that the daily 

 process of emerging from it at an hour long 

 before dawn was not unalloyed pleasure. An 

 astounding series of garments, with leather over 

 all, receives me, but down to the long boots of soft 

 leather on which I had been sleeping to keep 

 them from freezing into boards, the exchange is 

 a poor one. Ablutions are a concession to having 

 once been civilised, but there is no temptation 

 to linger over them. Breakfast, of mutton chops 

 smoked over an unsavoury fire, and tea that 

 freezes while you wait, is similarly a duty which 

 has to be faced with some determination. 



Outside I am met by a cutting wind like a blast 

 from the North Pole. Figures come crunching 

 towards me over the snow those of my Khirgiz 

 hunter and the old stalker I had brought with 

 me from Gilgit, Gul Sher, my faithful compan- 

 ion for many years in the Himalaya. They are 

 pulling along by their nose -ropes our riding 

 animals, the hirsute and uncouth yaks. We mount 

 and disappear in the darkness, and the camp 

 settles down to sleep till warmed into life by the 

 beams of the rising sun. By that time we have 

 gone far, our steeds sometimes slipping and sliding 

 over a surface of ice, sometimes floundering in deep 

 snow ; but when possible we keep to the slopes, 

 where the wind has swept the surface compara- 



