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

of high spurs eastwards offered for the survey of a very imperfectly known portion of the
range overlooking the westernmost affluents of the Kara-kāsh river.
Rām Singh then crossed that range to the south by the Kiliān pass (17,910 feet),
Passage of
Hindu-tāsh-dawān. regularly used by traders to Ladāk but at that season still impracticable
for caravans, and ascended the Kara-kāsh valley to its junction with
the well-known Kara-koram route. ⁸ Here he secured Kirghiz guides
to the Hindu-tāsh-dawān, which had passed out of use for many years and had not been
crossed by any known traveller except the ill-fated Dr. Adolf Schlagintweit in 1862.
The passage (17,750 feet) was successfully accomplished in the face of great difficulties,
including the descent over a large and much-crevassed glacier on the northern side. ⁹ It
brought the surveyor to the valley of Pusha, previously known only from native reports.
In addition to some cultivation lower down, it proved to possess more abundant alpine
grazing than is found elsewhere in these high K'un-lun valleys. An ascent to the Ak-tāsh-
dawān (15,250 feet) permitted a distant view to be gained of the deep-cut Kara-kāsh valley.
It consists here and for a considerable distance lower down of a succession of narrow
Descent along
Kara-kāsh R. gorges quite impassable except in the depth of winter when a route
lies up the frozen river. In order to gain Khotan, our appointed
meeting place, Rām Singh had to take a difficult route to the north-east
passing over a series of high spurs which fall precipitously to the Kara-kāsh river. ¹⁰ A
number of dangerous crossings of big glacier-fed tributaries, such as the Karāz-daryā and
Panāz-daryā, were necessary; but in the end the surveyor's small party arrived safely at the
foot of our triangulation station of 1900 on the Ulūghat-dawān. ¹¹ Thence Khotan town
was gained by the route previously followed.
I myself had arrived there a few days before, on August 5th, from Kök-yār. I had
surveyed the outermost foothills of the K'un-lun with the oases of Yūl-arik, Ushak-bāshi,
Kiliān, Sanju, Puski and Duwa, which lie at the debouchures of the rivers descending from
the main range, ¹² before I struck the high road by Piālma at the foot of the great gravel
glacis.
The heat of the plains still precluded operations at ancient sites in the desert. Hence
Return to K'un-lun S.
of Khotan. I was free to set out into the mountains to the south, as soon as the
surveyor had had a couple of days' rest, in order to renew and extend our
explorations in the Karanghu-tāgh region. Our journey as far as Nissa
led necessarily by the same route as followed in 1900 in the inverse direction, a circumstance
which lessened regret at the persistent dust haze now hiding all the distant snowy peaks of
the main range to the south. No fresh plane-table work was done by the surveyor along this
already surveyed route. But I was able to profit by renewed visits to my photo-theodolite
stations of 1900 and to record on my panorama reproductions then awaiting publication
topographical details within the actual horizon gathered from the hillmen acting as our
guides. ¹³
Survey work was re-started from above Nissa and pushed up without serious obstruc-
Glaciers above Nissa. tion on the part of the local 'Tāghliks' to the head of the valley where
it is closed by high snowy spurs descending straight from the main
range. ¹⁴ Two glaciers of imposing size are here the main feeders of
the Nissa river. On August 19th I ascended the larger one, to an elevation of over 16,000
feet, and ascertained that it had its source on the north-eastern slopes of the triangulated
peak 3/52 M, 23,071 feet high, which, as subsequent surveys showed, forms a nodal point
at the junction of two main ranges of the K'un-lun.¹⁵ At the same time the survey now