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
186 . ON THE ROAD TO KHOTAN [CHAP. XI.
and other strange finds. But the inhabitants, when closely questioned, knew nothing of such sites and still less of such discoveries. So assured of the negative result of my inquiry I turned back to Gums. We took the track across the sand to Töwen-Bazar, one of the more northerly villages which merges imperceptibly into Guma Bazar. It was pleasant to ride in the shady village lanes, with a peep again and again into homely little fruit gardens. The profuse growth of melons and cucumbers was a characteristic feature of all. I passed several open-air paper factories, the pulp, prepared from the bark of the mulberry-tree, drying on little sieve-like screens.
I also met a. troop of fantastically clad ` Diwanas,' or
beggars, bent apparently on collecting in alms their share of the villagers' harvest. The lanes of the main Bazar through which I returned to camp looked singularly empty after the busy life witnessed on the preceding market-day.
When I left my cheerful Guma camp on the morning of the 6th of October the sky was of radiant clearness, with scarcely a trace of haze. So when I emerged from the shady lanes of the southern part of the Guma oasis on the open Dasht I was not surprised to find parts of the great snowy range distinctly visible. The tsnows I saw glittering
far away over the dark lines of the outer mountains evidently
belonged to the main range about the Karakorum Passes.
Distances seemed to shrink strangely when I thought that
behind those stupendous mountain ramparts lay. valleys
draining to the Indus. Mist and clouds hung over other
MENDICANT, OR ' DIWANA.'
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