Eccentric Explorers
Michael Buckley
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Email: buckeroo555@yahoo.com
Copyright 2008 Michael Buckley
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Contents © 2008 Michael Buckley
Year of the Earth-Mouse: All rights reserved
Text © 2008 Michael Buckley
Photos and artwork © 2008 Michael Buckley
unless otherwise indicated
see listing of Illustration Sources at back of this book
Book design: Michael Buckley
Typesetting: John McKercher
Cover design: Diane McIntosh
Maps, artwork: Naz Ali, Teresa Nightingale
Eccentric Explorers
Travel: Adventure | Biography | History: Tibet
The British imperial system of miles, feet, inches, pounds and other abnormalities has been used throughout this book. A splendid reason for this is that the British were heavily involved in mapping and exploration of pre-1950 Tibet. Names like Calcutta (instead of Kolkata) and Peking (instead of Beijing) have been used because those were the names current at the time. The $ symbol appearing in this book indicates US dollars; the £ symbol indicates British pounds sterling.
Abbreviations
HQ—headquarters
PLA—People’s Liberation Army, the national army of China
POW—prisoner of war
RGS—Royal Geographical Society, UK
WWII—World War II
Eccentric Explorers
Being the amazing Adventures of fanatical & fearless Explorers & barmy Visionaries on the Rooftop of the World & their sometimes-painful Peregrinations as they attempt to unlock the Secrets of Tibet—closing in on the enigmas of Trance-runners & Monks with occult Powers,stumbling into long-lost Kingdoms,hunting for rare Butterflies & exotic Flora,or heading into unknown Terrain in the deepest Gorges & the highest Mountains on Earth—the latter Forays incurring the Wrath of the Goddess of the Snows— in Tales related by the Author, who followed in their Footsteps...
Michael Buckley
If we are facing in the right direction,
all we have to do is keep on walking
—Buddhist saying
Table of Contents
Mission Impossible on the Tsangpo
Hot Chocolate for the Mystical Soul
Tales from the Three-Eyed Lama
Chapter 1: Heading into the Unknown
The Tibetan plateau is a bizarre place—a world unto itself. It is a place that was long cut off from the rest of the world—never colonised until the Chinese invaded in 1950. A place where the accumulating of wealth and material goods was of little importance—where the attainment of enlightenment was the ultimate goal. Ruled by a line of reincarnate ‘god-kings’, the Tibetans believed that the world was flat—and that a huge mountain lay at the centre of the universe, with a glittering city of the gods crowning it.
The exploration of Tibet has long fascinated the West. During the Victorian era, with the mysteries of the Nile solved and Africa trampled over, Tibet’s rivers and mountains remained untouched. Tibet hosted a wealth of unknown fauna and flora—due to startling adaptation to the harsh environment and the rigours of high altitude. This was Terra Tibetana Incognita. With the discovery in 1856 that Mount Everest was the highest mountain yet sighted, fascination increased. The imperial powers of Great Britain and Russia had their eyes on Tibet for other reasons: for strategic and trade purposes. Neither power had adequate maps of the region—explorers were recruited to gather this intelligence.
Tibet held a host of strange riddles and secrets to unlock. Very little was known about arcane Tibetan Buddhist rituals, or Tibetan art—or, indeed, much about this reclusive culture at all. Can monks run non-stop—for days on end—in a trance? Can High Lamas direct their reincarnation? What do Tibetans believe about the goddess of Everest? Do yetis trample the foothills of Himalayan peaks? Where does the wondrous wool tus come from? What new mammals and birds might be discovered in Tibet? What miraculous medicinal plants? Is there any truth to the ancient story of the gold-digging ants of Tibet? Is there a huge waterfall lying along the Tsangpo river? Where do the sources of Tibet’s major rivers lie? Some explorers found answers—but others came back with more questions. And they all had strange tales to tell.
In this book, the rich culture and history of Tibet are viewed through a rather special lens—through the eyes of these eccentric explorers. The book encompasses the curious encounters—some might say clashes—of two very different civilisations: East and West. And in the end, who has more to learn? The west is far advanced in technology, but the Tibetans are more highly evolved in the quest for ‘inner space’—studies of the nature of the mind, of compassion, of inner peace. Tibet is like the Black Box of Central Asia, if you take in the broader definition of ‘black box’—a kind of complex equipment not normally maintained or modified by its operators, yet vital to their existence. For over a thousand years, Tibet was the ‘black box’ of Buddhism. Tibetans were the custodians of its teachings and sacred texts after the faith was snuffed out by Muslim invasion in the place of its birth, India. Mongolia drew on the black box. India respected it. China attempted to smash it. And if this legacy disappears, the world will be a much poorer place without it.
With its bizarre culture and beliefs, Tibet became a magnet for the most eccentric explorers. Missionaries, mystics, batty spiritualists, moody mountaineers, geographers, spies, secret agents, charlatans, serious scholars, wacky misfits—and plain sensationalists: Tibet drew them all. It is quite possible that these eccentrics felt quite at home there because of the oddball nature of Tibetan culture itself. And conversely, time spent in high altitude zones has been known to amplify eccentric traits. A number of these explorers, agents and misfits make an appearance in cameo roles in this book—crossing paths with the main explorers profiled, inspiring them, or triggering fierce rivalry.
Tibet is a land of extremes: extreme altitude, extreme weather—and extreme people. To the northeast of Lhasa live the Amdowas, called ‘people of the extremes’ by sophisticated Lhasans. By this, they mean people living at the extremities of the plateau, but from the way the Amdowas dress—with wild unkempt hair and dishevelled sheepskin cloaks—you might also be led to believe these are extreme people. The nomads from this area must be among the hardiest in the world, living in conditions of harsh cold and wind. One of the major reasons that explorers could not make headway into Tibet was because of nomads like this—whose favourite pastime was banditry. On the fringes of Tibet, several explorers met a grisly end at the hands of the much-feared Golok or Khampa tribesmen. Anyone who made it through the bandit-infested extremities of the plateau would invariably be spotted and captured by Lhasan soldiers, and turned back with a stern warning. The government of Tibet was fanatically vigilant in preventing foreigners from reaching Central Tibet.
As a consequence, the explorers in this book all—at one time or another—travelled in disguise, freely dispensing any lies necessary to reach their goal. And given the chance, they kept firearms handy. The skill of bluffing was high on the survival agenda. Thomas Manning, dressed in long Chinese gowns, pretended to be a Chinese physician—though nobody took his disguise seriously. Peter Aufschnaiter first bluffed his way out of a prisoner-of-war camp in India, and then bluffed his way past Tibetans keen on keeping foreigners out. Alexandra David-Néel travelled disguised as a beggar, but one who packed a pistol in her purse—and wasn’t shy about using it if the going got rough.
The explorers profiled are driven by a restless curiosity—a wanderlust that renders them unable or unwilling to stay in one spot for long. They are largely self-taught—learning along the way because they are venturing into realms where no Westerner had been before. And they’re gifted ‘code crackers’—some are master linguists—intrigued by riddles, obsessed with getting the answers. Some came looking for rare plants or animals, some tackled riddles of geography, and others came to decode the secrets of Tibetan religious knowledge.
For all these adventurers, Tibet felt like home. No matter that it was full of dust and bandits and the food was terrible. No matter that you could perish in extreme cold or die from altitude sickness. It felt like home. Alexandra David-Néel left her heart there, and were it not for her arthritis and the Chinese invasion of Tibet, she would have gone back. Joseph Rock, on his brief visits to America, would complain about an ‘automobile-crazy society’ and scamper back, ego bruised, to the remote regions of the Tibetan plateau, where he could play at being king. Peter Aufschnaiter hoped to live out his days in Tibet as an estate-owner. Michel Peissel has been drawn back time and again.
The ten explorers presented include some who are famous—and some whose tales have not seen much print at all. They are united by their obsessive infatuation with Tibet, by their loner approach, and by their eccentric character and methods of exploration. Other adjectives that would apply: cantankerous, hot-headed, bad-tempered, stubborn, crackers, and absolutely fearless. The word ‘impossible’ does not figure in their vocabulary—even when impossible means life-threatening. They are all tough as nails, and unwavering in their quests—drawing on an incredible inner well of strength in the face of great hardship. Eccentric Explorers is a tome about the hilarious escapades of these quirky adventurers.
Chapter 2 Blundering Into Tibet
A zany Englishman bags the explorer’s trophy—by accident
In the 19th century, Tibet was a blank on the map. This huge blank was particularly annoying to the British, seeking trade links beyond India—and perhaps with colonial expansion in mind as well. The exact altitude and location of Lhasa was unknown. Six of Asia’s great rivers—the Brahmaputra, Indus, Mekong, Salween, Sutlej and Yangtse—were known to have their sources in Tibet, but none had been adequately mapped. Worse yet, between 1783 and 1903, only one Englishman managed to enter Tibet. And he refused to say anything...
Thomas Manning
1772–1840
linguist, scholar, Sinomaniac & comedian of the Land of Snows
Manning in his clean-shaven days, before Sinomania set in—redrawn from a portrait, artist unknown
In the winter of 1811, British scholar Thomas Manning blundered into Tibet. His dream was actually to reach Peking, where he hoped to advance his study of the Chinese language. Manning was a classics scholar who, having exhausted the study of Latin and Greek—and mathematics and philosophy—had turned his mind to the ultimate linguistic challenge. He decided to tackle the entire literature of China. After a spell at the centre for oriental studies in Paris, he was determined to get to the source—he set sail on an East India Company ship in 1806 for Canton. There was only one snag: the Celestial Empire was closed off to foreigners by the xenophobic Manchus. In fact, even the study of Chinese language was forbidden to foreigners—Manning got around this by enlisting a Chinese tutor from Macau.
Dressed in a long Vietnamese gown, Manning mounted a bizarre attempt to disembark from a boat on the coast of northern Vietnam and enter southern China, but this plan was aborted. Frustrated in his attempts to get to Peking from Canton, the tall, brooding Englishman decided to try his luck from India. He hatched the harebrained scheme of travelling through Tibet to Sining, and thence to Peking. The distance was over 3,000 miles—something that the wildly impractical Manning didn’t dwell upon at the outset. At the time, the only foreigners allowed into Tibet were Chinese diplomats and troops. After the outbreak of war between Tibet and Nepal in 1788, the position of the Chinese in Tibet was greatly strengthened, and Tibet’s doors became as tightly closed as China’s, with Chinese troops garrisoned in Lhasa and other large towns.
The Holy City of Lhasa was one of the most secret places on earth. It had attained a mythical aura—reaching it proved the ultimate explorer’s challenge, on a par with sneaking into Mecca. Although 19th-century explorers crisscrossed the Tibetan wasteland, attempts to gatecrash Lhasa were firmly repulsed.
Manning hated travelling, had no financial backing, and made no preparations. He did, however, take along a pair of ice-skates in anticipation of winter sports in the Himalayas. For company he had a Chinese valet—the same man he’d employed as his Chinese tutor in Macau and had dragged along for the ride. In his diaries, he doesn’t name him: he starts off referring to him as ‘the Chinaman’ and then switches to ‘the Munshi’ or ‘my Munshi’ (munshi is the Hindi term to describe a teacher of native languages or interpreter—and also a term denoting a native secretary). The valet was a sullen character with whom Manning argued much of the way, and who finally parted ways with him in Lhasa—under dire circumstances. The two argued in Latin, and Manning made footnotes in his journal about his servant’s misuse of Latin grammar: ‘In Latin he used the words non potes. He ought to have said, non licet. My response was, at verberabo.’
* * *
Some background here: Manning was a master linguist who could’ve carved out a brilliant career as a scholar in England. He was born in 1772, the son of a clergyman in Norfolk. At Cambridge, he struck up a friendship with Charles Lamb, who thought him more extraordinary than Wordsworth or Coleridge. Though brilliant at his studies, Manning left Cambridge without a degree because he disliked the oaths and religious tests required. As a tutor he published a highly regarded book, Introduction to Arithmetic and Algebra. Around 1800, he abandoned all interest in mathematics and did a complete about-face: he decided to pursue the study of Chinese literature. That meant decoding complex Chinese characters—a task akin to cracking Egyptian hieroglyphics.
England has produced more than its fair share of eccentrics over time—indeed, the country prides itself on fostering such characters. And here Manning was definitely an innovator: his obsession with China and things Chinese was an eccentricity completely unknown in England at the time. He was suffering from a condition that could best be described as ‘Sinophilia’ or ‘Sinomania’. He qualifies for the dubious privilege of being England’s very first Sinomaniac. He simply had to get to the source—he had to get to China. His friend Charles Lamb, trying to dissuade him from such foolish purposes, wrote in a letter:
Believe me, ‘tis all a poets’ invention. Pray try and cure yourself. Take hellebore. Pray to avoid the fiend. Read no more books of voyages, they are nothing but lies.
But Manning could not be swayed. Manning was a skilled and witty writer with a keen eye for detail: his writing is tempered with a fine sense of humour. But he refused to tell a soul of his Tibetan exploits: the only records are letters, and a short journal that surfaced after his death. Although he was considered the foremost Chinese scholar in Europe, Manning published only a slim tract of Chinese jokes in translation. Among the unpublished material was a paper on the consumption of tea in Bhutan, Tibet and Tartary, and his Tibetan journal.
The journal was never intended for public consumption and mostly contains trivia of a personal nature. It had to be reassembled posthumously to make it somewhat coherent. Manning’s scrawl was copied out in clearer longhand script by his sister. Much later, the text was passed along from Reverend Manning (nephew to Thomas Manning) to Clements Markham, of the Geographical Department of the India Office. Markham cobbled together Manning’s scattered journal and notes, along with accounts of several other pioneering explorers in Tibet, and packaged everything under the unwieldy title Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet and of the Journey of Thomas Manning to Lhasa. Manning’s account runs to 80 pages. Markham’s book was published in 1876, which was 36 years after Manning died and 64 years after his Tibetan adventure. But the journal—though brief and fragmented—reveals an extraordinary story.
Reading that story is a bit like watching a stand-up comic. Manning is the comedian of the Land of Snows, delivering some classic one-liners and delightful double-entendres—but failing to deliver anything of geographical substance. The prose is not the chest-thumping bravado of a great explorer on a momentous mission: it is a whimsical account of a man distracted by gossip and petty problems—and occasionally addressing the more serious issue of his own survival. As the editor responsible for bringing this ground-breaking account to the public, Markham must’ve pulled his hair out. Manning was the jester in the court of the Geographical Department of the India Office. Markham was so frustrated by Manning’s lack of attempt to furnish pertinent geographical data, or stray bits of scenery—or even an attempt at describing a Tibetan temple—that he felt obliged to insert footnotes to cover these black holes in the text. Because Markham was editing Manning’s work some 60 years after the actual journey, he was able to draw on details furnished by Indian pundits sent in disguise by the British to spy out the land.
Manning and his valet started this lunatic trip in September 1811, departing from Calcutta. Calcutta was, at the time, the capital and chief port of the British territory of Bengal. Bengal had started life as the personal fiefdom of the East India Company, which held a monopoly on the India trade until 1813. The transport modes open to Manning and his valet: travel on horseback, on foot, or by ‘chair’. A chair was simply strapped to the back of a porter. This was rather like sitting on a train: the person being transported could read a book to pass the time if it was not raining and if the going was not too bumpy. Manning was a hopeless horse-rider: more than once on the journey his steed bolted—with himself hanging on for dear life. The pair of travellers made their arduous way by horse up through Tassisudon, the old capital of Bhutan and site of present-day Thimphu. Then they moved on to Paro. The clans of these parts were partial to kilt-like robes, an oddly Scottish touch. Some wore tam-o-shanters decorated with yak-tails dyed red. The Bhutanese were very keen on textiles—and to Manning’s chagrin, they took most of his textile stock, intended as gifts for Tibetans.
An engraving from 1811 showing the grand fort of Tashichodzong, seat of the ruler in the Bhutanese capital of Tassisudon.
Despite setbacks like this, Manning was actually in a fine mood. After being cooped up so long in the city of Calcutta, the trip north was a breath of fresh air for Manning. The change of people, the change of scenery and weather: all this was a tonic. Manning revelled in the changes, finding himself in a peculiar emotional condition—perhaps due to the effects of altitude:
Strange sensation coming along: warm and comfortable. Horse walking in a lane between two stone walls. The snow! Where am I? How can I be come here? Not a soul to speak to. I wept almost through excess of sensation, not from grief.
Ahead lay more strangeness—at Phari, the Tibetan border town. Phari provided a macabre introduction to the ways of the Tibetans. The village consisted of a fort, a few hundred hovels, and a couple of centuries of garbage. The people of this town—clothed in greasy rags and sheepskins—with faces blackened and ingrained with dirt—were in the habit of throwing all their refuse immediately outside their doors. The garbage was so high that holes had to be dug to give access to doorways, leading to subterranean cellars. The air was rank; the stench was pervasive. Eagles, kites, ravens and vultures wheeled around an open-air funeral site, where chopped-up bodies were offered to the birds. But contrasting with the filth and stench of the place were sublime views of distant snowcapped peaks.
Manning glossed over Phari in his journal, but later European travellers fill in the gaps here. John Noel, pioneer of the early British Everest expeditions tells us that Phari’s hovels were built of mud reinforced with the horns, hair and skin of dead cattle. Everything was coated with greasy soot from yak-dung fires; children were dressed in rags and matted in filth. This extreme filth seemed to be lovingly cultivated—and topped off with the smell of rancid yak-butter. What Noel did not know was that the face-blackening layer derived from a red paste smeared on the face: the paste turned black as it oxidised—and was intended to protect the skin from damaging rays of the harsh sun. There was one redeeming facial feature that defied explanation: no Tibetans used anything remotely resembling a toothbrush, but when they laughed, they showed off exquisite pearly-white teeth. These teeth greatly impressed Europeans—who could not fathom how this was possible in a place where the concept of dentistry revolved around yanking out any tooth that caused pain.
It’s not clear why Phari was so spectacularly filthy compared with other towns like Gyantse, which were relatively clean. Noel describes two governors of Phari, outstanding because they wear gorgeous flowing robes of Chinese silk:
One wears a headdress that is nothing other than an enormous purple lampshade. They hold the rank of the Backward-sloping Peacock Feather and the Order of the Crystal Button. They wear their sleeves long, reaching almost to the ground and hiding their long, carefully manicured nails. Such are the marks of their dignity. They sit in their castle and extract taxes, for which there is no fixed scale or rule, from the traders who collect here from India, Bhutan, Nepal and Tibet.
On arrival in Phari, Manning ran into Tibetan officialdom. He immediately claimed to be a pilgrim from Bengal. The local officials had no idea what to make of the pale-skinned apparition that had arrived on their doorstep—due to Manning’s Chinese attire, they assumed he was a tall, strange Asian with a big nose and a beard. They left the matter to be decided by a Chinese mandarin—a high-ranking military officer who was due to arrive shortly. An advance guard of the mandarin showed up, causing Manning and his companion to be bumped out of their humble lodgings to make way for them. Manning describes his new digs thus: ‘Dirt, dirt, grease, smoke. Misery, but good mutton.’ Several days later, the big man himself appeared: Manning refers to him as ‘the General’.
Although Manning was woefully unprepared for a winter trip to the Tibetan plateau, he possessed two skills that dazzled the General. He spoke good Chinese, and he seemed to know a lot about medicine. The Chinese troops badly needed medical attention: Manning set up an impromptu clinic. There was perhaps some method to Manning’s madness. Back in Cambridge, before he embarked on a serious study of Chinese, Manning had taken a course in medicine, figuring that this skill would prove useful in the Orient. Though minimal, his knowledge of Western medicines and techniques indeed gained him considerable status in the eyes of the Chinese.
As luck would have it, the General and his entourage were on border patrol: they were headed back for Gyantse. Two bottles of cherry brandy donated to the cause got Manning a passage that far. The General even persuaded Manning to have some warmer Chinese clothes made up, as they were heading into the bitter Tibetan winter. His new robe was made up by the general’s soldier-tailors:
It was an ample coarsish red woollen-cloth robe with fur cuffs; it was lined with cotton cloth, and upon the cotton cloth was stitched a dressed sheepskin with all the wool on. I had also brought stockings of the same kind of sheepskin, under which, if I pleased, I could put one or two pairs of common worsted or cotton stockings, and over all draw my Chinese boots, so that I was able to keep my feet cosy whatever weather might ensue. I had a sort of fur tippet, and a quilted cap to defend my face and ears...
Between Phari and Gyantse, Manning mentions a lake which he sized up for skating, though this might have proved difficult given the foregoing ponderous mass of clothing he had acquired:
The lake was frozen; at least that part we were next, and would certainly have borne me. My skates were not many miles off... We stopped but a few minutes and proceeded on to where the lake becomes a river...There were many fine, fat ducks on it, which were very tame, and let us come close to them. The people of Tibet never disturb them: they eat no birds, but, on the contrary, let the birds eat them.
Manning was referring to the Tibetan custom of sky burial, which involves chopping up the body and crushing the bones, and then feeding the pieces to the vultures. Manning now assumed a role as a Chinese physician, complete with long Chinese gown and Chinese spectacles—although nobody took his disguise seriously. His copious beard was out of character with the disguise but he couldn’t bring himself to part with it:
He [the Chinese General] was greatly taken with my beard, and seemed as if he could never sufficiently admire it. He adverted to it both then and afterwards on other occasions. He named such and such a mandarin, such a one he thought had better moustaches; in fact, I had kept mine cut short in India, for convenience of eating soup and drink, and they were not yet full grown.
Although he was 39 years old at the time, Manning must have appeared somewhat older to both the Chinese and the Tibetans due to the length of his beard—normally associated with much older men. Night rests were at wayside inns—which were smoky, dirty and dusty, and windowless. Many families would share the inn. Manning noticed, to his delight, that women and girls would come in, make up their beds and then strip without any concern for modesty. The Tibetans slept naked under the covers. ‘I now and then took an impertinent peep, but the smoke was so thick and the light so bad, I could discern nothing.’ Manning himself didn’t bother to undress—he slept fully clothed, claiming it was too cold to do otherwise. At any event, he quickly became preoccupied with another bedtime problem: bedbugs. He had picked them up from the soiled bedding and couldn’t quite get rid of them.
Manning devoted two pages in his journal to problems with his horse and saddle—the journey was obviously a pain in the butt. He was a poor rider: at one point his horse bolted, leaving him grimly hanging on for dear life. The entourage finally reached Gyantse. Setting up shop in Gyantse, Manning dispensed herbal remedies, opium and solution of arsenic to needy patients, mostly Chinese. Gyantse Dzong was the major defense fort on the southern approach to Lhasa.
* * *
The last Englishmen to get this far were George Bogle and Samuel Turner, East India Company envoys dispatched on separate trading missions in 1774 and 1783. These missions managed to fill in some details about the route from Bhutan to Shigatse. Maps of the plateau were exceedingly rare. Between 1725 and 1735, independent Dutch adventurer Samuel Van der Putte had twice crossed Tibet in caravans—from Ladakh via Lhasa to Peking, in disguise. But despite their value to colonial powers desperate to fill in blank spaces on the map, Van der Putte ordered all his notes destroyed: all that remains from the journeys is a rudimentary sketch-map (now in a Dutch museum) and some indecipherable bits of paper.
The only thing that came close to real cartography of Tibet was the D’Anville map of 1733. This effort was published by French cartographer Jean D’Anville as part of a collection on China—based on the Great Lama Survey ordered by Chinese Emperor Kangxi in 1717. The lamas had been trained by Jesuit missionaries, but the map was rather vague when it came to details like the rivers of Tibet, which tapered off in the middle of nowhere. When George Bogle entered Tibet in 1774, he carried the D’Anville map.
Section of a map published by cartographer Jean D’Anville in Paris in 1733, shows Lake Yamdrok Tso (to the southwest of Lhasa) as a circular shape—when it is actually shaped like the claws of a crab. Passing by the lake in 1811, Manning could easily have corrected this data, but the error continued with all maps of Tibet prior to 1880.
The British saw Tibet as a back door for trade with China—with its treasures of silk and tea, which the British wanted to trade for English cloth and woollens. And they were interested in direct trade with Tibet for items such as sheep-wool (known to be of fine quality), goat-wool, minerals such as borax, and medicinal plants. Highly prized for its medicinal properties at the time in both England and Russia was rhubarb, which was only available in the East: Tibet was rumoured to be a place where a giant variety of this plant grew. If Tibet was a blank on the map, so was its high-altitude fauna and flora and culture—there was a possible treasure-trove of new drugs to be derived from unusual plant life.
Added to this was the tantalising prospect of finding gold. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus recounted a strange riddle about ‘gold-digging ants’ coming from the Tibetan region (the solution to this riddle can be found toward the end of this book). There were indeed gold and silver mining fields in Tibet, but the Tibetans were not greatly interested in mining these precious metals other than using them for decorating religious statues. They believed that gold nuggets were the ‘parents’ of gold dust: if a nugget was accidentally excavated, it was to be re-buried.
Bogle was charged with bringing back any rare plant or seed samples, particularly those of walnuts, rhubarb and ginseng, and to keep an eye out for any curious natural products or animals. Prior to his departure, Bogle was given a pashmina shawl to keep him warm on the journey—and to act as a reminder that he was to commandeer a live pair of the animals responsible for ‘tus’, the wondrous wool used to make high-quality shawls in Kashmir. The textile-crazed English desperately wanted to find the source of it. And he was to procure two musk deer, valued for their musk-sacs.
Adding to this small zoo, if he could manage, he was to bring back one or more pairs of ‘cow-tailed cattle’, much admired for their rich meat and their bushy tails. The fine-haired tails of this animal were sought after by wealthy Indians and Nepalis as fly-whisks and dusters. They were also used for making tassels and helmet ornaments—tassels of yak-hair dyed red were treasured by Samurai warriors in Japan. The Tibetans rely on the yak for their survival, with ingenious uses of all parts of the animal: yak-hair is woven into cloth and rope used to make nomad tents, for instance. But nomads are not fashion-conscious—yak-hair was found to be too harsh in quality for Europeans. It would take time for the full potential of yak-hair to be realised—in the entertainment industry, where it is valued for making opera wigs. Dyed bright orange-red, yak-hair is also used to make wild-looking circus-clown wigs. In the pre-synthetic era, yak tails were considered the best material for making Santa Claus beards.
‘Cow-tailed cattle’ was an early reference to the yak: there was no specific word for the animal in Bogle’s time. It’s not clear where the ‘cow-tailed’ part came from, since the yak’s tail more resembles that of a horse. The Latin or scientific name assigned to this high-altitude bovine was Bos grunniens, or grunting ox—a reference to the grunting sounds the yak makes when agitated, hungry or calling its young. This comical creature—a cow with a shaggy skirt—was known as ‘gyagk’ in Tibetan. A German book of 1811 called it ‘buffalo with horsetail’, while it was identified in a letter of 1824 by British naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson as a ‘yak-cow’. Bogle was on an intelligence-gathering mission: he was to keep a pocketbook journal with a pencil, and take copious notes on the people, the land and the customs, and to inquire about what kind of trade the Tibetans conducted, and with whom. Further, he was to take samples of trade items along and show these to the Tibetans to whet their appetite for English goods like cloth, cutlery and glassware.
This engraving—from a book printed in Leipzig (Germany) in 1811—identifies the yak as a ‘Buffalo with a Horsetail’
Bogle proceeded into Tibet at the invitation of the Tashi Lama, spiritual leader of Tashilhunpo Monastery at Shigatse. Though he stayed in Shigatse for four months, he could not obtain permission to continue to Lhasa: he was informed that any trading would have to be arranged through the Chinese court. The xenophobic Chinese, fearing competition from the British and the Russians, had convinced the Tibetans that these two super-powers were aiming to destroy Tibetan Buddhism. Bogle whetted the appetite of the East India Company for trade with Tibet with his detailed descriptions of trade items. And then there was the question of gold and silver: upon his departure, Bogle was given purses of gold dust and silver talents (coins) by the Tashi Lama. Later in the year of 1775, the Tashi Lama sent an envoy to Warren Hastings, the Governor of Bengal and head of the East India Company, bearing silver ingots and gold dust as presents.
In Tibet, gold-mining operations were permitted on small scale if located well away from religious centres in Tibet. Bogle had seen numerous votive objects and large images of Buddha coated with real gold at Shigatse: this information would certainly have excited the interest of the East India Company. Bogle hunted the musk deer, and he saw numerous ‘cow-tailed cattle’ (yaks), but he failed to bring back the live animal samples he had been requested to get: the Tashi Lama promised he would send some animals along later.
As for the animal that produced the shawl wool, Bogle was still foggy about its identity—although he’d been told it was the highest priority to bring back live specimens. In Kashmir, the underwool of cashmere goats was used in making pashmina shawls. The animal was thus known as the ‘shawl goat’. North of Kashmir, the regions of Gar and Rudok in far-west Tibet did a roaring trade in supplying shawl-wool from domesticated cashmere goats. By the early 18th century, shawls from Kashmir were much sought-after by the élite in Europe, particularly in France where Empress Josephine was crazy about them. The biggest supplier of Kashmir shawls was the East India Company, shipping from Bombay. But something eluded the British traders. The finest shawls made in Kashmir used a mysterious high-grade wool from Tibet which was not from a domestic goat. Such are the secrets of the Tibetan plateau that it would take another few centuries before the wild animal that bore the tus wool would be identified—you have to read to the end of this book to find it.
In 1774, just getting into Tibet and dining with the Tashi Lama was a feat in itself. Bogle discovered much about the strange customs and beliefs of the Tibetans—he is credited with coining the word ‘polyandry’ to describe the occasional practice of Tibetan women having several husbands—usually brothers. The Tibetans also practice polygamy (more precisely: polygyny)—one man having several wives, usually sisters who wanted to keep the family wealth together. Tibetan society was remarkably tolerant of relationships between unmarried men and women, and Bogle noted in his journal that ‘Tibetan women are kind, tender-hearted and easily won.’ Bogle’s account does not elaborate on whether he availed himself of the charms of young Tibetan women, but he certainly had ample opportunity—being introduced to high-spirited females of the Tashi Lama’s entourage. Shortly after Bogle returned from his Tibetan mission in 1774, Hamilton advised him on how to deal with an inconvenient sexually transmitted disease—contracted either in Tibet or Bhutan.
Other interactive hi-jinks: Bogle can be blamed for starting up the Tourist Curse of Tibet. A number of times, he dispensed sweets to Tibetan children as gifts. Naturally, he was besieged by unruly urchins when this happened—a practice that endures to this day, when Tibetan children mob visitors in Landcruisers, demanding sweets or pens. But overall, Bogle got off to a grand start as England’s first ambassador to the Land of Snows: he established cordial relations with the court of Shigatse. He counted his six months in Tibet the happiest time in his life. On his departure, he wrote:
Farewell ye honest and simple people, may ye long enjoy that happiness which is denied to more polished nations, and while they are engaged in the endless pursuit of avarice and ambition, defended by your mountains, may ye continue to live in peace and contentment, and know no wants but those of nature.
Odd words indeed for a Scot in the employment of the decidedly avaricious East India Company with designs to exploit the Tibetans. Bogle saw great possibilities for India-Tibet trade but nothing became of his mission. In November 1780, the Tashi Lama died of smallpox in Peking, aged around 45 years old. Within five months, Bogle was struck down with cholera, dying in Calcutta in April, 1781. The important link with the Tashi Lama was lost.
Back in Calcutta, Warren Hastings decided to reforge the link by sending in another mission to congratulate the newly appointed Tashi Lama upon his reincarnation. The Tibetans believe that all high lamas can direct their rebirth. In December 1783, British envoy Samuel Turner had an audience with a child of 18 months—the reincarnate—in Shigatse. According to Turner, the child looked steadfastly at him with the appearance of much attention, and nodded repeatedly as though he understood every word. The handsome child conducted himself with ‘astonishing dignity and decorum.’ Decision-making from an 18-month-old was limited, and Turner was not allowed to proceed to Lhasa: his brief mission to Tibet did little to break the stranglehold of the Chinese and Kashmiris over trade with Tibet. But Turner’s report, published in 1800, was used as a reference work on Tibet for a century. Oddly, Bogle’s notes did not see the light of day until their publication double with Manning’s notes in the 1876 volume edited by Markham.
Bogle was only 34 when he died. He left behind two young daughters who were sent to be educated in Scotland at the Bogle family estate. And herein lies a mystery: the ethnic origin of their mother is not revealed in any papers left by Bogle. By some accounts, she was a ‘souvenir’ from his Tibetan visit; others claim she was Bogle’s Indian mistress. Bogle’s family descendents believe he acquired a Tibetan wife: although there is no trace of such a liaison in his journals or correspondence, women of concubine status often went unrecorded in British India.
* * *
In 1810, Manning had found his way to Calcutta through the assistance of the East India Company, but there was a falling-out of sorts. The Company probably figured that a man as wacky as Manning would never make it through to Lhasa. And if he did, would they want maniacal Manning to negotiate deals for them? The upshot of all this was that the Company would not back Manning or provide any assistance.
When he set off for Tibet in September of 1811, Manning was on no official mission: he had no agenda in Tibet save his own. He was driven by intellectual curiosity and his desire to get to Peking. He must have appeared harmless to the Tibetans, and the General was delighted with Manning’s apothecary skills. Manning requested permission to be allowed to proceed to Lhasa—astonishingly, he was permitted to do so, in the company of Tibetan guides. Manning even acquired a new servant as cook—a young man with the improbable name of Sid, a Chinese Moslem in the service of the general who wished to return to Lhasa. While in Gyantse, Manning was greatly impressed by the Chinese meals he was served. Sid claimed full credit for these culinary delights—trying to curry favour to get himself back to Lhasa. It would later turn out that a Tibetan woman in the kitchen was the real talent. Sid couldn’t cook worth a damn.
What Manning calls a ‘whirligig’ is a large prayer-wheel, spun by pilgrims at monasteries to send prayers heavenwards
The General accompanied Manning’s retinue partway and turned back to Gyantse. Manning was on his own. At this point, Manning was on hallowed ground: the last Europeans to see Lhasa were Capuchin friars, who were expelled from Lhasa in 1745 after the failure of their mission. Manning was on new ground, in a new world. There was no English vocabulary for the phenomena that Manning was seeing and experiencing, so he improvised. ‘Whirligigs’ (an oblique English reference to a child’s toy) was the term he irreverently used to describe the portable prayer-wheels twirled by pilgrims on their way to sacred sites, or else to refer to large fixed wheels found at temples and entrances:
There were whirligigs set up in the house, which the conductor piously twirled as he passed them. I do not know whether it was expected of me to twirl these machines. I certainly never did all the time I was in Tibet...
In his journal, Manning records a historic crossing of the Tsangpo, the river that was to preoccupy British geographers for a century. The anxiety-ridden Manning, however, is more concerned with seating arrangements than with geographic riddles:
I could not sit still, but must climb about, seat myself in various postures on the parapet, and lean over. The master of the boat was alarmed, and sent a steady man to hold me tight. I pointed to the ornamental prow of the boat, and assured them I could sit there with perfect safety, and to prove to them how commodiously I was seated, bent my head and body down the outside of the boat to the water’s edge; but finding, by their renewed instances to me to resist, that I made them uneasy, I went back to my place and seated myself quietly.
Manning appears to have suffered from restless-leg syndrome, which makes it impossible for a person to sit still during the day—and can cause jumpy legs during sleep at night. The Tibetans must have thought Manning a strange bird indeed.
The Potala Palace shimmers in the distance like a castle from a storybook
In December 1811, Manning finally reached the outskirts of Lhasa. In the distance, he sighted the lofty Potala Palace:
The road here, as it winds past the palace is royally broad; it is level and free from stones, and combined with the view of the lofty towering palace, which forms a majestic mountain of building, has a magnificent effect. The roads about the palace swarmed with monks; its nooks and angles with beggars lounging and basking in the sun. This again reminded me of what I have heard of Rome. My eye was almost perpetually fixed on the palace, and roving over its parts, the disposition of which being irregular, eluded my attempts at analysis. As a whole it seemed perfect enough; but I could not comprehend its plan in detail. Fifteen or twenty minutes now brought us to the entrance of the town of Lhasa.
Apart from the Potala description, Manning’s journal records the momentous arrival in the Forbidden City with these words: ‘Our first care was to provide ourselves with proper hats.’ Thus starts the first eyewitness account of Lhasa by an Englishman. Off they went to the hatter, who measured their heads for custom-made headgear. It is not clear from the diary whether Manning was aware that caps, hats and intricate hairstyles were part of a complex dress code denoting rank and social status. A minister, for instance, wore a brocade cap with a tassel for ceremonies, and a round fur cap while in his office. Servants could wear a wide-brimmed hat with red tassels around it, but only a minister could wear the same hat ringed with fur. Aristocratic women were weighed down with jewellery—their elaborate headdresses decorated with coral and pearl, their ears bearing ornaments of turquoise. Lhasa’s streets were crowded with pilgrims and traders dressed in a wide array of costumes from various parts of the Tibetan realm—with competition and jostling in the noisy downtown bazaar.
Hairstyles in old Tibet denoted a complex system of rank. This movie actress models aristocratic Gyantse-style haute coiffure, supported by a bamboo frame—which takes the cake for patience, due to large number of hours required in preparation time.
Monastic hat to ward off the fierce sun
While the Holy City impressed from a distance, up close it stank. Garbage piled up in the streets—which also served as sewers since there was no plumbing system. Dead animals were tossed into refuse piles to be fought over by ravens and other scavengers. The refuse was only removed once a year—transferred to the fields as fertilizer. Mangy dogs infested with lice roamed the streets. Not exactly Shangri-La, as Manning noted:
If the palace exceeded my expectations, the town as far fell short of them. There is nothing striking, nothing pleasing in its appearance. The habitations are begrimed with smut and dirt. The avenues are full of dogs, some growling and gnawing bits of hide which lie about in profusion, and emit a charnel-house smell; other limping and looking livid; others ulcerated; others starving and dying, and pecked at by the ravens; some dead and preyed upon. In short, everything seems mean and gloomy, and excites the idea of something unreal.
The magnificent masonry of the Potala Palace towers above Lhasa
In Lhasa, Manning’s bluff was almost called on a visit to the Chinese amban’s entourage. The amban was the representative of the Chinese emperor in Lhasa. Appearing in the court of the Tartar mandarin, Manning promptly performed a kowtow—falling to his knees and touching the floor with his brow. It was well-known that Englishmen were far too proud to kowtow to any Chinese, so this immediately allayed suspicion. The very first Chinese mission to China, in 1793, is said to have failed because British envoy Lord McCartney refused to prostrate himself before Emperor Qianlong. Imperial Chinese protocol demanded that he touch the ground with his forehead no less than nine times in the manner expected of ambassadors from vassal states—and McCartney would have none of it.
Manning didn’t care about pride—he would do whatever protocol demanded. Fortunately for Manning, the Tartar mandarin was half-blind. But there was a heart-stopping moment when one of the high officers stared at Manning for a long time and asked if he’d ever been to Canton. Manning was struck speechless by the question, but the Munshi quickly replied on his behalf that he had never seen the city—which got Manning off the hook. The Munshi came in handy sometimes.
Kowtowing was among Manning’s survival tactics. He had no qualms about doing whatever was necessary in local custom to make his presence acceptable, whether it be kowtowing or throwing himself full-length on the floor—as was the Tibetan custom in temples. ‘When in the temples of Bengal, if there were natives about, I always made a salam’. Salaam-ing here means full-length body prostration with face to floor—excellent practice for Tibet. Manning enthusiastically embraced Asian clothing habits and any customs involving religious formalities, but it was all cosmetic. Although he had no desire to embrace Tibetan religion (or any other religion), Manning threw himself to the ground before the principal statue in the Jokang, Lhasa’s holiest temple.
Such practices endeared him to the holiest man in Tibet: the Dalai Lama. Shortly after his arrival in Lhasa, Manning obtained an unprecedented audience with the 9th Dalai Lama, a boy of seven years old. Summoned to the Potala, Manning frantically searched in his bags for suitable gifts to present. He looked for things that would be rare to find in Lhasa: Smith’s lavender water, Nankin tea, fine broadcloth, and a pair of brass candlesticks. These actually belonged to the East India Company and had been lent to Manning in Calcutta: somehow they had been accidentally packed in his baggage by his valet. Manning wrote in his journal that he hoped the East India Company would not only acquit him of fraudulent practices, but would be very pleased with the honourable use to which their candlesticks had been put. He was offering the Dalai Lama stolen goods.
With the Munshi acting as his valet and interpreter, Manning made the long and tedious ascent up the 400 steps of the Potala—exhausting at this altitude—and eventually arrived at the Dalai Lama’s Audience Hall. When he was finally ushered into the presence of the god-king, Manning faced a delicate protocol problem: ahead was the youthful Dalai Lama, seated on his high throne, while beside him on a lower seat was the powerful Regent, a middle-aged monk in maroon and yellow dress. Not sure how much ceremony was required, or what kind, or to whom, Manning immediately flung himself in front of the Dalai Lama’s throne and performed three kowtows, touching the ground three times with his head. And for good measure, he repeated the same kowtows for the Regent. This performance seems to have passed muster with the rulers of Tibet. Manning was probably not aware of the exact protocol, but in the 17th century, the first Westerners to ever reach Lhasa—the Jesuit missionaries Grueber and d’Orville—did not meet the Dalai Lama of the day because they made it very clear that they would not prostrate themselves before the god-king.
Manning proceeded to offer his gifts, putting silk scarves with his own hands into the hands of Dalai Lama and the Regent. While he was doing so, he heard an ominous sound in the background: the Munshi, his nervous servant, had fallen and caused one of the gifts—the bottle of lavender water—to smash. Manning noted that the air was perfumed with lavender water, but he ignored the incident. Manning then took off his new hat, and humbly offered his clean-shaven head for the Grand Lama to lay his hands upon—the highest blessing possible in the Land of Snows:
The Lama’s beautiful and interesting face and manner engrossed almost all my attention. He was at that time about seven years old: had the simple and unaffected manners of a well-educated princely child. His face was, I thought, poetically and affectingly beautiful. He was of a gay and cheerful disposition; his beautiful mouth perpetually unbending into a graceful smile, which illuminated his whole countenance.
What the Dalai Lama made of Manning’s face we will never know, but with his clean-shaven head, long beard, long nose and Chinese spectacles, he must have looked quite arresting. Seated on cushions placed well below the level of the Dalai Lama’s throne, Manning and the Munshi were served some buttered tea, and while Manning rated this ‘most excellent’, he was astonished to see the cup whipped away from him before he was able to drain it.
The interview must’ve been quite circuitous: questions were posed by Manning in Latin, which was translated by the Munshi into Chinese, then picked up by a second translator and rendered into Tibetan. Replies were returned through the same language chain. Discussion was mostly small talk, although Manning sensed that the Regent was highly curious about the outer world. When asked by the Dalai Lama if he had met with ‘molestations and difficulties on the road’, Manning replied that he had encountered many, but now that he was in the presence of the Grand Lama, his troubles were amply compensated. Manning notes that the Grand Lama was most pleased by this answer. After making a request for assistance in learning more about the religion and history of Tibet, Manning and his valet took their leave, making their way backward out of the presence of the Grand Lama:
I was extremely affected by this interview with the Lama. I could have wept through strangeness of sensation. I was absorbed in reflections when I got home... I strove to draw the Lama; and though very inexpert with the pencil, I produced a beautiful face, but it did not satisfy me. I drew another which I could not make handsome, yet there was in some respects a likeness in it which the other wanted. From the two together, and instructions from me, a skilful painter might make a good picture of him.
Unfortunately, the sketches mentioned did not survive, or else Manning kept them secret. The rich visual knowledge that Manning possessed—about the inside of the Potala, the face of the Dalai Lama—could easily have been passed on to a huge audience in Europe, but Manning dodged the task.
The journal at this point shows a change of heart in Manning’s attitude toward the Tibetans. He had arrived bearing the Chinese disdain of the ‘barbarian Tibetans’ but now he was becoming charmed by their frankness and their bizarre ways. He was soon charmed by Tibetan women too: a few of them visited to consult him on medical matters, or so it seemed:
I had two handsome, well-dressed, clean-washed lasses come to my lodging with their mother to consult me. I could not find out that there was anything the matter with them, except superabundance of health and spirits. It was so long since I had seen female charms of this order that feeling their pulses rather disordered my own.
Manning asked many questions through his interpreter and gave the giggling young women ‘something innocent’ to take as medicine. A few days later they returned, bringing him a present of excellent mutton. Manning informed these high-spirited damsels that they were welcome to come back as often as they wanted, ‘without bringing mutton or anything but their own pretty faces.’
It appears that the curiosity was mutual: the Tibetan damsels were from a rich merchant family and wanted to see Manning with their own eyes. That was Manning’s appeal: he was the talk of the town—a great novelty for Tibetan monks and aristocrats. Everybody was keen to see this tall, long-nosed, fair-skinned phantom. With his flowing beard and Chinese gowns, he must’ve looked like Merlin the Magician—or, to give that a more Tibetan slant, Merlin the Grand Wizard.
Italian photographer Fosco Maraini summed it up this way:
The Tibetans are really xenophobes of a most curious kind. Their xenophobia is exclusively abstract and theoretical. They close their country to foreigners, and the most rigorous laws are issued from Lhasa to keep them out, but when a white man arrives in their midst they greet him with enthusiasm and make a tremendous fuss of him.
Manning was allowed to remain in Lhasa for several months. Having contracted rheumatism, he never put on his skates—indeed, he seems to have forgotten about them. The rheumatism reached the point where Manning had to administer drugs to himself. And slowly he recovered. He was now running very low on funds, though his medical practice in Lhasa provided some handy income. For simple cases he provided free consultations, but for more complex cases—such as venereal disease—that involved ‘expensive drugs’, he charged the patient. Once, when a ‘Chinaman’ tried to settle for a lesser amount with a few coins, Manning took his money and flung it out the door, bidding him to go after it:
He turned pale with anger; he advanced toward me in a menacing manner. I was on my legs in a moment and fronted him firmly. I told him if he came near me with his insolence, by heaven! I would knock him down. I believe I spoke English or Latin in my anger; but he pretty well understood me... The man poured out a torrent of abuse against me and my Munshi, very little of which I understood...
Luckily, the man’s servants held him back, and then bore him off. The story spread around town, and from that time on, says Manning, he had no trouble in Lhasa ‘with any man, Chinese or not.’
Manning’s medical practice brought him into closer contact with the Tibetans. There was great rivalry between Tibetan and Chinese-style physicians in the capital: Manning introduced a third, untried option—Western medicine. He was able to visit Tibetan nobles, eager to try the novel cures. Language proved a major headache for Manning. On arrival in Lhasa, the Munshi had suddenly reverted to speaking only Latin, claiming that Manning spoke poor Peking-accented Chinese, which was an embarrassment. The real reason was probably that the Munshi thought it too dangerous to continue their Chinese lessons. Whatever the case, Manning was by now pretty much on non-speaking terms with the Munshi. In any case, the Munshi was contemptuous of Tibetans, so on these sorties Manning would usually take Sid, who spoke an atrocious pidgin Tibetan, or a Tibetan servant boy, who spoke vile Chinese.
Not all of Manning’s patients benefited. The problem was that his patients—not familiar with his pills and potions—would rarely follow his prescriptions to the letter. He mentions in his journal that one of the Dalai Lama’s personal physicians summoned him—sending two horses to bring Manning and servant up the back path to his apartment at the Potala Palace. The man complained of ‘general debility.’ Manning prescribed an oily mixture, a glass of wine, and a Spanish-fly blister. Manning visited several times, but found that the physician had either taken only half the prescribed medicine, or none at all. ‘He was childish, they said; he did not like the taste or the smell [of the medicine].’ Some time later, when Manning inquired after his health, an aide held out four fingers, indicating that he’d been dead for so many days.
Not that Tibetan medicines would have been much better. In Lhasa, pills made from the urine of the Dalai Lama were highly regarded to cure diseases, and the faeces—mixed with fragrant musk—was made into golden pills that were dispensed to believers (these might be worn as amulets). Tibetan medicine was based entirely on herbal cures, allied to belief in the curative powers of the Medicine Buddha. If a healing lama could not lay his hands on the required medicine, he would write the prescription on a piece of paper, burn it, and make the patient swallow the ashes; in other cases, a cure was sought by getting a high lama to spit on the affected part.
By dispatching envoys like Bogle to Tibet, the British East India Company was seeking new commercial opportunities. The musk deer was little known at the time. Tibetans used its hide for making saddlebags. Much later, the musk deer would become almost extinct due to excessive hunting for the male’s musk pod. Musk is prized for its medicinal qualities and is used for the preparation of perfume. This engraving is from a book printed in 1811 in Leipzig.