CHAPTER XXL 



Top of Kongra Lama— Tibet frontier — Elevation — View —Vegetation — Descent 

 to Tungu — Tungu-choo — Ponies — Kinchinjhow and Changokhang moun- 

 tains — Palung plains — Tibetans — Dogs — Dingcham province of Tibet — 

 Inhabitants — Dresses — Women's ornaments —Blackening faces — Coral — Tents 

 — Elevation of Palung — Lama — Shawl-wool goats — Shearing — Siberian plants 

 — Height of glaciers, and perpetual snow — Geology — Plants, and wild 

 animals — Marmots — Insects — Birds — Choongtam Lama — Religious exercises 

 — Tibetan hospitality — Delphinium — Perpetual snow — Temperature at Tungu 

 — Return to Tallum Samdong — To Lamteng — Houses — Fall of Barometer — 

 Cicadas — Lime deposit — Landslips — Arrival at Choongtam — Cobra — Rageu 

 — Heat of Climate — Velocity and volume of rivers measured — Leave for 

 Lachoong valley — Keadom — General features of valley — Lachoong village — 

 Tunkra mountain — Moraines — Cultivation — Lachoong Phipun — Lama cere- 

 monies beside a sick-bed. 



We reached the boundary between Sikkim and Tibet early 

 in the afternoon ; it is drawn along Kongra Lama, which 

 is a low flat spur running east from Kinchinjhow towards 

 Choiniomo, at a point where these mountains are a few 

 miles apart, thus crossing the Lachen river : * it is marked 

 by cairns of stone, some rudely fashioned into chaits, 

 covered with votive rags on wands of bamboo. I made the 

 altitude by barometer 15,745 feet above the sea, and by 

 boiling water, 15,694 feet, the water boiling at 184.1°; the 

 temperature of the air between 2. 40. and 4 p.m. varied 

 from 41° 3 to 42° 5, the dew-point 39'8°; that of the 



* The upper valley of the Lachen in Tibet, which I ascended in the following 

 October, is very open, flat, barren, and stony; it is bounded on the north by 

 rounded spurs from Choiniomo, which are continued east to Donkia, forming 

 a watershed to the Lachen on the south, and to the Arun on the north. 



