526 ROUTE FROM CATHMANDU, IN NEPAL, 



reach KydngzM by night. A market is held in the middle of this town of 

 KydngzM every day, from morning till noon, where and when the whole 

 buying and selling of the place is transacted, it not being the custom 

 to expose any thing for sale in shops. Several sorts of woollen cloth 

 (called Tharma, and Punki, and Nambu) are woven here — and the dyers 

 are very expert, so that they can give the cloth a roseate hue equal to the 

 colour of the rose itself. Each year, in September, is a great congress of 

 people at KydngzM, partly religious, partly mercantile — when all the 

 Lamas suspend sacred pictures in all the streets and houses of the 

 town. The pictures represent the future rewards of virtue and vice— 

 and a Lama seated beneath each picture, enforces the lesson taught by it 

 to the people. This lasts for three days — the fourth day is consumed in 

 entertainments to friends and relatives. Then follow four days of pro- 

 miscuous assembly, with music, song, and feasting. On the evening of 

 the eighth day, all the Laics and clergy go in a body to the Chief of the 

 town, each carrying, for presentation, an arrow covered with a white silk, 

 scarf, called Khadar, and having inscribed on it the donor's name. The 

 Sirdar forwards all these arrows to Lahassa, with a letter, intimating to 

 the Ruler of that place, that all the persons whose names are inscribed on 

 the arrows forwarded, assembled at Kydngzhe, under your auspices, send 

 you their united blessings. The Ruler of Lahassa acknowledges this 

 salutation, by sending a handsome sum of money to the Lamas of Kydng- 

 zM, which they distribute among themselves. Eight days after the des- 

 patch of the arrows to Lahassa, and on the sixteenth day of the festival, 

 there are horse-races, and matches at marksmanship with arrows and 

 guns — which last to the end of the month, when the festival terminates. 



26th Stage, eight and a half cos, to Rillung. Two cos beyond Kydng- 

 zhe, a rill of very salt and bitter water issues violently from a rock on the 

 side of the road. It is so fully impregnated with salt, that if you dip 

 your hand in it and then let your hand dry in the sun, it will be covered 



