Note 45 — Chapter I · JOURNEY FROM DARJILING TO TASHILHUNPO.

Passing by Maya phug (a cavern sacred to the goddess Mamo), we crossed a little juniper-covered plateau called Shugpa thang (“Juniper plain”), and after a short but steep climb reached the summit of the pass, from whence I had a most extended and beautiful view of the surrounding country—behind me great reddish granite rocks, looking like the ruins of gigantic ramparts; before me a plain some two miles long, the bed of a former glacier, encircled by snowy mountains rising the one above the other; while to the south-east was the Nango la, and behind it the plain of Sumdongma. Crossing the Djari thang, or “Plain of Gravel,” and the Do la, or “Rocky pass” (round the base of which the Yangma flows), I reached by dusk the monastery of Yangma, or Manding gomba, situated on a broad, shrub-covered terrace some 40 to 50 feet above the stream; where Phurchung found me lodgings in a wretched cell, where I settled myself as best I could for the night. He obtained a few eggs and some milk from the lamas; and while one of the nuns (ani) helped Dao Namgyal to cook the food, another blew the bellows. The lamas were engaged in their annual reading of the Kahgyur, which occupied them daily from 5 in the morning to 7.30 p.m., when they retired to their respective cells. There were fifteen monks and seven ani in the lamasery.45