Journeys on the Silk Road (24 page)

“Often as I look back on all we went through together, I have wondered to what merits (of a previous birth, perhaps?) I was indebted for this ideal Chinese comrade of my travels!” Stein later reflected.

Chiang accompanied Stein and his small party from Khotan for one last day’s journey together. Appropriately, their parting would come not among the comforts of an oasis, but amid the solitude of a makeshift camp, an environment dear to them both. Chiang knew he was unlikely to experience such adventure ever again.

They crossed the flooded Yurungkash River by ferryboat before making camp on a gravel flat. Dash seemed to sense the impending separation, nestling up to Chiang for a final cuddle. The next morning, Stein, with his back to Turkestan, headed toward the mountains. “Then, as I rode on, the quivering glare and heat of the desert seemed to descend like a luminous curtain and to hide from me the most cherished aspects of my Turkestan life.”

12

Frozen

Stein’s high-altitude journey to India soon led him to the Kunlun Mountains, long rumored to be the site of great goldmines. Until he entered the Zailik Gorge on August 18, 1908, no European had ever seen the legendary gold pits, and what he encountered must have appeared like a scene from
King Solomon’s Mines
. The cliffs were dotted with hundreds of diggings. In this deep, gloomy valley, generations of wretched souls—virtual slaves—had lived and died digging for flecks of gold. Their graves extended over every bit of flat ground around the twelve-mile gorge. Others were entombed in abandoned pits.

Most of the gold had long been extracted, but about fifty impoverished men still worked the mines in summer, when the 13,600-foot valley was accessible. The miners were astonished at the arrival of outsiders in their frigid valley. Eight or nine of the miners agreed to abandon their burrowing in the dark pits to work as porters for a couple of weeks through the mountainous terrain. They helped map the glacier-fed rivers that coursed through the mountains to Khotan and emptied far away in the Taklamakan’s sands. On the movement of such life-giving rivers the fate of the ancient desert civilizations had depended. Even high in the mountains, Stein sensed a connection with the sand-buried sites. He suspected that long ago gold from these pits had been used to gild the temples of Khotan.

While he mapped the rivers, his murals from Miran and his manuscripts from Dunhuang, including the Diamond Sutra, were crossing the mountains via the main trading route between Turkestan and Ladakh. It was safer than his uncharted path. Nonetheless, the terrain that Stein’s antiquities had to negotiate posed considerable difficulties, not least repeated river crossings, sometimes up to forty a day. The rivers were full of deep holes, and loose rocks could easily fell a horse. (Von Le Coq, on this route from Turkestan to Ladakh in 1906, watched in dismay as a leather case carried on horseback burst open during one such crossing. A collection of kettles and his supplies of sugar and condensed milk floated away on the swift current.)

Not knowing the fate of the treasures he had acquired over two years of hard toil must have added to Stein’s worries when, having sent the porters back to their goldmines, he approached the most dangerous part of the mountainous journey. The going grew increasingly tough as he and his men were blasted with icy gales by day and endured temperatures that fell to fifteen degrees Fahrenheit at night. At the foot of a line of glaciers, 17,200 feet above sea level, Stein located the source of the Keriya River, the waterway he had found just in time on his hazardous shortcut across the desert eight months earlier. Once again fodder was running low and no grazing could be found. Several donkeys suffered in the cold and had to be shot.

Then Stein’s pony, Badakhshi, became ill. For more than two years of rugged travel, he had conveyed Stein through the most inhospitable of mountainous and desert terrain. With little food or water, the hardy mount had crossed the Taklamakan without any apparent ill-effect. His implacable temperament had wavered only once, when a blast of horns had farewelled Stein’s party from an oasis. What caused the animal’s sudden illness, none of Stein’s men knew, despite their knowledge of horses. Badakhshi was wrapped in extra felts and blankets for the cold night ahead. Stein gave him most of a bottle of port that he kept for emergencies. At daybreak, when Stein rose to check on him, the pony lay on the ground in convulsions.

“He recognized me when I stroked him, and on my holding some oats close to his mouth he struggled to get on his legs,” Stein wrote. He had hoped Badakhshi would one day graze on Kashmir’s lush grass. But just when the goal seemed near, the pony died in one of the most desolate places Stein had encountered.

“What he succumbed to I failed to make out. He was equal to the hardest of fares & would cheerfully chew even ancient dead wood. It was some consolation that he suffered but for a short time & had for his last night every comfort we could provide in that wilderness,” he told Allen.

The dispirited party trudged on the next morning until they spotted two small stone mounds, or cairns, half buried under sand and gravel. It was what Stein had been looking for—the cairns that marked a disused route to Ladakh. The party rejoiced at having finally found a path where men had passed before. For two days, they followed the stone cairns that led down to a valley. Finally, the welcome remains of an old rock shelter offered refuge from the bitter wind. There were signs in the valley of more recent life—fresh tracks made by wild yaks and donkeys. The valley had just enough vegetation for the hungry animals. And not before time; the fodder had run out. Would those two days have made a difference for Badakhshi? Stein had no way of knowing. But as he watched the hungry ponies graze, he mourned the loss of his own mount, frozen stiff in the forbidding wastes higher up the mountain.

There was relief for men and animals when a team of Kirghiz guides arrived with yaks, camels, and much-needed supplies. With them came word that Tila Bai and the heavy cargo of antiquities were waiting safely eighty miles ahead as arranged. After so much long and hard travel, Stein must have thought his troubles were behind him.

Just one expeditionary challenge remained. Stein still wanted to resolve inaccuracies in a map sketched by surveyor William Johnson, who had crossed the Kunlun Mountains in 1865. Stein’s attempt to do this on his first expedition had failed. He had been similarly thwarted two years earlier on his second expedition. This was the determined Stein’s third—and final—chance to solve the mystery. The task would also allow him to locate the watershed of the Kunlun Mountains. The side trip had to begin the next day or not at all. There was not enough food for the animals to delay. On the night before his departure, a bout of colic made for a fitful sleep, but the day dawned clear. Just after 5 a.m. he set out with four Kirghiz guides and two of his own men—surveyor Lal Singh and the surveyor’s assistant, Musa—all mounted on yaks. After three hours of climbing, the terrain became too difficult even for the yaks and they were abandoned for the final ascent up a glacier.

As the sun rose higher, the snow softened and the men sank up to their thighs. Roped together for safety, they struggled for breath in the thinning air. Lal Singh especially felt the effects of the altitude and had to be hauled along, stopping after every ten steps to catch his breath. It took seven hours to climb four miles.

The panorama at 20,000 feet was awe-inspiring. They were surrounded by majestic snow-covered crests that dazzled under the intense light and cobalt sky. Some peaks appeared smooth, almost benign, under a blanket of virgin snow, others harsh and serrated. To the south were ranges whose rivers ended in the mighty Indus. Far away to the north, Stein glimpsed the yellow haze that hovered over the Taklamakan Desert. His mood was as elevated as the landscape.

“The world appeared to shrink strangely from a point where my eyes could, as it were, link the Taklamakan with the Indian Ocean,” he wrote. The grandeur before him united his two beloved ancient worlds. To the south was India, where Buddhism had been born. To the north was where it had flourished before the great civilization sank under desert sands.

But Stein could afford little time for reflection that day. There was photographing and surveying to be done, and it was already mid-afternoon. From his vantage point, he corrected the miscalculations of Johnson’s sketch. The temperature was down to sixteen degrees Fahrenheit at 4:30 p.m. when the guides insisted on starting the descent. They did not want to risk being stranded overnight on the glacier. Stein grabbed a few mouthfuls of food. In the rush, there was no time to change his boots, which had become wet during the ascent in the soft snow and then frozen as he worked. Nor did he have time to consider how fatigue, high altitude, and inadequate sleep might cloud his judgment.

It was already dark by the time the men rejoined the yaks and mounted the sure-footed beasts. At times the men dismounted as the yaks negotiated the rocky slopes. When they did, Stein struggled to find his footing, but attributed the difficulty to fatigue and slippery terrain. The six-hour descent seemed endless. When at last the camp came into view, he hobbled into his tent and removed his boots and two pairs of socks. The toes on both feet were frozen. He rubbed them vigorously with snow in an effort to restore circulation. A quick check of his medical manual had advised this as emergency treatment. It may have made matters worse. These days, friction is avoided so that injured tissue is not further damaged; immersing in warm water or wrapping in blankets is the preferred treatment. Nonetheless, the toes on Stein’s left foot gradually warmed, though the skin was badly damaged. He had lost feeling in the toes on his right foot.

The pain in his feet immobilized him the next morning. He again consulted his medical manual: “The aid of an experienced surgeon should be sought at once.” The advice was sound but hardly reassuring. He knew he was at risk of developing gangrene and must reach Ladakh and medical help quickly. But the town was two weeks’ journey away—nearly 300 miles—through some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain on earth.

Walking was impossible. He needed to be carried, but his guides refused to convey him on a makeshift litter. So first he was put onto a yak and later strapped onto a camel. His pain was excruciating as he was bounced and jerked around. Eventually an improvised litter was made with a camp chair suspended from bamboo tent poles fastened between two ponies. Four days later, he was relieved to be reunited en route with his cargo. Despite encountering flooded gorges and the challenge of the 17,598-foot Sanju Pass, every case was safe. But there was still a long way to travel. The caravan had to negotiate two even higher passes: the 18,176-foot Karakoram Pass and the 17,753-foot Sasser Pass. Word of Stein’s injury was sent ahead to the medical missionary in Leh as the explorer spent the next two days attending to vital tasks, issuing directives from his camp bed. The most important was to make onward arrangements for the cargo.

The Karakoram Pass, along the highest trade route in the world, was notoriously difficult. One nineteenth-century British traveler estimated he passed the skeletons of 5,000 horses, near which were vultures “so gorged they could hardly move.” Men, too, perished on the deadly trail, their remains covered with piles of stones. Von Le Coq noted that if a caravan encountered misadventure, its cargo was left nearby in as sheltered a spot as possible until it could be rescued. A code of honor forbade any interference with these abandoned loads, according to the German, who reported seeing many, each with a tale of misfortune. Von Le Coq also witnessed the vestige of another misfortune along the route: a lonely memorial to the Scottish trader whose murder there in 1888 inadvertently sparked the manuscript race. It was a small marble pillar atop a cairn with a brief inscription: “Here fell Andrew Dalgleish, murdered by an Afghan.” These days there are other attendant dangers. The route lies just east of the world’s highest and most improbable battleground, the disputed Siachen Glacier, where nuclear neighbors India and Pakistan have fought intermittently since 1984. So far the greatest battle has been to survive the conditions; more soldiers have died in avalanches than armed conflict.

Stein put Lal Singh in charge of transferring the antiquities onto yaks since parts of the steep, icy terrain ahead were impassable by camel. Stein watched as the caravan left to continue on its mountainous route before its descent into the safety of Ladakh’s fertile Nubra Valley. Meanwhile, the need for medical treatment was growing more urgent. Gangrene had set in to the toes on his right foot and he feared its further spread. The explorer shed most of his remaining party and baggage so he could be carried quickly along the same route as the antiquities. He crossed the Karakoram Pass on October 3, 1908, and the Sasser four days later. Like others before him, Stein witnessed how the skeletons of pack animals littered the route. It was a morbid sight at any time, but for a man with a life-threatening injury the sight must have appeared even more distressing. He had once dismissed the Karakoram route as a “tour for ladies”; now it was proving anything but.