SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
then started off with renewed energy to find the owners of the fields in the outlying houses of the village of Sakhyong a few miles further down. Here I was royally entertained by the people, who gave me everything they had, eggs, buckwheat cakes and some other cakes of flour, made by grinding the root of a caladium which grows at high altitudes. These latter were to my taste most unpalatable, but I was only too thankful to get anything after the privations and hardships we had come through.
From Sakhyong everything was comparatively easy, there was a path of sorts, and we were again amongst cultivation and scattered houses, and in a few days more I arrived at Ringen, and from Ringen another five days brought me to my headquarters at Gangtak after a most enjoyable and successful expedition, during which I had thoroughly explored the hitherto unknown valley running down from the big Kangchen glacier.
My prolonged absence had caused some alarm, and even given rise to rumours that I had been captured by the Tibetans, and several parties had been sent out by the Phodong Lama and others to find out what had become of me, and I was greeted with a hearty welcome when I at last arrived.
I do not think this journey could be equalled throughout the world for its beauty and variety of scene, the magnificent gorges, with wonderful waterfalls tumbling down on all sides, the wild desolation of the higher snows, and the richness of colouring and dense vegetation lower down; every few miles bringing new beauties before one.
62
