National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

Then he talks again of the flocks and shepherds and the great amount of
butter that goes from this region to Lhasa and other places. On the 22nd of De-
cember he came to another plain where he also found several tents and shepherds
wandering about with their flocks. In spite of the desert being arid enough and
totally devoid of sedentary population, still the Grand Lama has a great profit from
its gold and butter as well as from the tolls levied from the merchants of Gartok.
³January the 4th, 1716, having finally terminated to descend the whole of this great
desert we arrived to the first population in the third Thibet.³

In Serchià,¹ which was a big fortified place and the capital of the province of
Zang-to and where there was a great governor, they had to stop on account of the
sickness of the princess. On January the 28th they left Serchià and travelled through
many villages and inhabited places, but they had to travel slowly for the prin-
cess' sake.

Fifteen days from Serchià they reached another big fortified place, which is
the beginning of the kingdom of Sechia.² From here they had 4 or 5 days to the
great city of Giegazzè,³ ³the capital of the old kingdom of Zang-to, which nowadays
is divided into 2 provinces: Zang-to, the capital of which is Serchià, and Zang-me,
the capital of which is Giegazzès.⁴ Over Chiangzé (Gyangtse) the party finally
arrived in Lhasa on the 18th of March 1716.

A special chapter in the valuable publication of Desideri's narrative has re-
ceived the title: Difficoltà del viaggio, and contains a perfectly admirable description
of all the hardships Desideri and his fellow travellers met with on their way, where,
during 3 months, they did not see a single village and where they had to bring
with them all the necessary provisions, tea, butter, roasted corn flour and mutton,
which was excellently preserved by the cold. The horses had to be fed with flour
and corn as no grass could be found on account of the snow. They obtained water
by melting ice and snow, which, however, can only have been for a certain part of
the road; as for the rest they had the Tsangpo near at hand. No firewood worth
mentioning could be found and they had to collect droppings of horses and yaks.
Camping was cold and uncomfortable on the snow-covered ground. They used round
Tartar tents. But whether these were pitched on sand or on frozen ground, they
were very much exposed to the furious wind. Desideri tells us how they were
dressed and how difficult it was to save one's nose, hands, and feet from being
frost-bitten.

The journey is described as specially hard, as one has to be in the saddle
before sunrise and ride the whole day till sunset. Amongst innumerable mountains
one has to proceed in ice and snowfall, and from scarceness of grass the horses