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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Friday, 15 August 1902
It snowed all the following night, but in the morning we were able to march to Paiyu. On the glacier I was prostrated with a sudden attack of fever, which kept me on my back for about three hours. I managed to crawl into camp in the afternoon. I had been altogether sixty-eight days on the glacier.
When we reached Bardomal I was obliged to stop there with the Doctor [Jules Jacot Guillarmod], while the others went on. Eckenstein [Oscar Eckenstein], through some misunderstanding, left no food with us, and we had to dispatch a messenger. On this day the remainder of the party tried to cross the Puma Nala as we had done on the ascent. Eckenstein and four coolies got across roped with some difficulty; Knowles [Guy Knowles] attempted to follow, but the people who were managing his rope let it trail in the water, with the result that he was swept away. Luckily he escaped with a couple of rather sharp knocks from stones, one on the thigh and the other on the neck, which latter very nearly rendered him unconscious. He very pluckily wished to try again; but the nerve of the others had been shaken by his misadventure, and they would not go; so he went round to the rope bridge, which, after all, was only a couple hours’ détour, Conway’s map being quite untrustworthy, and they reached Korophon that day.
I felt a bit better and marched with my coolies to the hot spring, avoiding Askoli on account of the cholera. I may as well say here that this cholera business was a most mysterious affair. The officials at Skardu denied absolutely that there had been any epidemic at all or even any single case of cholera in the Valley during the whole summer, but the natives were unanimous that some sixty men had died in Askoli; and it is certainly unlikely that the lambadar to whom we owed money should not have turned up for payment if we was alive! A still more striking incident is that of the Chaprasi at Paiyu. This man was interviewed separately by Eckenstein and myself. To Eckenstein he told a long yarn about the cutting off of the Valley and the difficulty we might find in removing the property we had left at Askoli, while to me he said there was no difficulty. Further Eckenstein succeeded in bringing his Askoli coolies to Shigar, and was informed that the order permitting this had only just been issued. I, however, descended by the Valley route; and not only had no trouble whatever, but heard that a few days before a British officer who had been shikaring in one of the nulas had descended in front of me also without trouble. Knowles and Eckenstein in presence of the reputed epidemic completely lost their heads. Instead of taking the Doctor’s advice to go and have a general clean up at the hot spring, they declined with horror “to remain in the affected district an hour longer than was necessary,” but all the Askoli men were allowed by them to mix with our own coolies and the men of Sté Sté, the village opposite Askoli on the other bank of the Bralduh. The doctor believed in cholera as much, or as little, as I did, but, as a matter of form, he disinfected all the luggage we had left behind. Even this did not satisfy Eckenstein. He threw all our tea into the river, as well as a good many other things which we needed seriously afterwards. As soon as I arrived at the camp, which we pitched actually on the borders of the lake, I made a regular rush for the water, and had my first bath for eighty-five days!
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