IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sand-Buried Ruins of Khotan : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
44 THROUGH HUNZA [CHAP. III.
short distance above Ataabad the river passes along a series of cross-spurs which at their foot are almost perpendicular. So the path climbs up their sides, and clings to them where they are too steep by means of narrow galleries. These are carried in parts over branches of trees forced into fissures of the rock and covered with small stones. Elsewhere narrow natural ledges are widened by flat slabs packed over them. In some places these galleries, or ` Rafiks,' as they are locally called, turn in sharp zigzags on the side of cliffs where a false step would prove fatal, while at others again they are steep enough to resemble ladders. To carry loads along these
galleries is difficult enough,
and for cattle as well as ponies, surefooted as the latter must be in Hunza, they are wholly impassable.
At more than one place
RAFIK ABOVE ATAABAD,
even ` Yolchi Beg,' my
little terrier, had reluctantly to submit to the indignity of being
carried, though on our climbs in Kashmir I had
found few rocks
that would re-
fuse him a foothold. Scrambles of this kind alternated along the whole march
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