TIBETAN MARCHES
ANDRÉ MIGOT
INTRODUTION
It is unlikely (but only because it is scarcely possible) that the Western traveler will ever be denied access to wider areas of the continent of Asia than he is today. By “traveler” I mean what the word means; I do not mean the fraternal delegate or the official guest who is privileged to spend an afternoon in a cotton-mill outside Tashkent or is given, from the aircraft which bears him from one cultural gabfest to the next, a glimpse of the Great Wall of China. These, though they may be classed as passengers, are really freight; as little masters of their destinies, as little able to see what really going on, as little (almost) exposed to any risk as the dormice which country-bred children still occasionally transport in boxes with perforated lids and which are at intervals extracted, bemused and somnolent, to be admired and touched with a gingerly forefinger by their masters `comrades before being put back in their conveyances.
By the end of the nineteenth century man`s questing spirit, backed by the knowledge and resources it had led him to acquire, had conquered almost all the physical obstacles and barriers which his planet had to offer. It was left to the twentieth century to throw up more artificial but more insurmountable barricades which quickly rendered obsolete and irrelevant such formerly useful items of equipment as curiosity, and courage, and the determination to go some- where because you have a strong but not always completely explicable wish to go there.
It follows that contemporary accounts of journeys in remote parts of Asia, or anyhow of East and Central Asia, have virtually ceased to appear; and it will certainly be many years, perhaps even many decades, before a citizen of the Free World penetrates the regions which Dr. Migot de scribes, vividly but with great fidelity, in his this book.
CONTENTS
ONE: INTO CHINA
1. Hanoi to Kunming
2. The first stage
3. A Chinese funeral
4. Lorries and Lolos
5. The opium racket
6. The Holy mountain
7. “Buddha’s Glory
TWO: A SLIGHT CASE OF BANDITRY
8. Life in Chengtu
9. Buddhism and visiting-cards
10. My amateur coolies
11. Robbery under arms
12. A grueling march
13. Pressing on regardless
THREE: THE GATEWAY TO TIBET
14. Tibetans in Kangting
15. Frontier troubles
16. Element of Buddhism
FOUR: CARAVANS AND LAMAS
17. Brick-tea and Tsampa
18. The spell of Jara
19. An alien world
20. Father fu
21. Night marches
FIVE: YAKS AND CORACLES
22. the Mecca of Sikang
23. the road to the north
24. The Holy valley
25. Printing and architecture
26. An agonising dilemma
SIX: MY INITITION
27. The barrier of the Yangtze
28. Transmission of strength
29. Captain ma
30. Midsummer festival
31. Dance of the Lamas
SEVEN: THE ATTEMPT ON LHASA
32. To be a pilgrim
33. Rough going
34. The long arm of the law
35. Enforced retreat
EIGHT: A CROSS MARKS THE SPOT
36. Homage to a hero
37. Rendezvous for Kokonor
38. The great grass desert
39. China once more
40. The blue lake
NINE: ACROSS INNER MONGOLIA
41. A Moslem capital
42. Lorries and quagmires
TEN: CAPTURED BY THE COMMUNISTS
43. Excursion to the tombs
44. Led away captive
45. Life in red China
46. Safe in Peking