"'Once you leave Khatmandu,' said the mess president, 'you are
outside the pale as far as British influence is concerned. I
suppose you understand that?'
"I told him I quite understood it.
"'You can't reach Tibet that way,' he said.
"'Never mind, sir,' I answered. 'I can try, if I feel like it.'
"Three days later I set out. I am not superstitious, and if I
take a long time to make a plan, once I've made it I generally
stick to it. But right at the very beginning of my expedition I
had a warning, if ever a man had one. The country through which
my route lay is of very curious formation. If you can imagine a
section of your own west country viewed through a giant
magnifying glass, you have some sort of picture of the territory
in which I found myself.
"Gigantic rocks stand up like monstrous tors, or towers,
sometimes offering sheer precipices of many hundreds of feet in
height. On those sides of these giant tors, however, which are
less precipitous, miniature forests are sometimes found, and
absolutely impassable jungles.
"Bordering an independent state, this territory is not at all
well known, but I had secured as a guide a man named Vadi--or
that was the name he gave me whom I knew to be a high-caste
Brahmin of good family. He had been with me for some time, and I
thought I could trust him. Therefore, once clear of British
territory, I took him into my confidence respecting the real
object of my journey.
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