Black Bears 243 



us. Everything was frozen hard as nails when 

 we got up, and the first five miles was an arduous, 

 slippery climb. However, we were now on the 

 Gilgit road, though at present it was a mere track 

 marked by the passage of a ddk coolie or two. 

 Higher we rose up over the pass, where a cutting 

 wind would have taken the skin off a rhinoceros. 

 The glare of the snow was most painful to the 

 eyes, and they grew blood-shot and sore. The 

 sun sparkled on the edges, glittered on the icicles, 

 shone on the heights, illumined the depths, till all 

 was one vast radiance, and our dazzled eyes ached 

 again. 



The bleak mountains at the top, over which our 

 path lay, were more than ever desolate and solemn 

 as far as the eye could see, and beyond that, as far 

 as the mind could think, stretched waste upon waste 

 of snow ! From the summit we turned to look 

 back at Nanga Parbat, and again and again we turned 

 before the slope on the other side brought us too 

 low down. 



The third highest mountain in the world, 26,620 

 feet, we had seen it often and often during our stay 

 in Kashmir, whenever we were up at any considerable 

 elevation. In one's imagination Nanga Parbat grows 

 to be more than a mountain it becomes invested 

 with a personality. Far above all other ranges any- 

 where near it, its splintered, snow-white crest rears 

 itself into the sky ; the first sunlight of early dawn, 

 the last of the sunset, belong to Nanga Parbat, and 



