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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Monday, 24 July 1905
Under the constant personal supervision of M. de Righi [Alcesti de Righi] or myself the work went steadily on, till on July 24th and 25th 110 loads in all left for Jongri. Mr. White, of the Political Department, was kind enough to supply the coolies for this purpose; and I have also specially to thank him for the trouble he took in sending for his photographs from Gantok and Calcutta, so that I might have an opportunity of examining them. In spite of my continual ill-health—people who would go to Darjeeling as a health resort would go to Hades for the skating—the work went on steadily enough. Calculations, lengthy bargainings, careful weighings, more careful inspections, occupied days and nights—there is no "bridge" for the luckless man who is sent on ahead to make the bandobast. Whatever he forgets is finally forgotten. Neither wealth nor intellect will conjure up in the wilderness of glaciers a single ounce of sugar that has not been taken at the start and nursed carefully up to the moment it is needed. Lists, labellings, numberings, cross-checkings, weighings—where is Romance gone now? And I feel with a peculiar shame that nine-tenths of the population of London would do this job a great deal better than I can. Well done or badly done, however, it is done; and I have nothing to do but wait for my three old comrades, the shikaris Salama, Ramzana, and Subhana, who are coming over from Kashmir to stiffen the transport service, and the doctor [Jules Jacot Guillarmod], who with his two friends Reymond [Charles Reymond] and Pache [Alexis Pache], should soon arrive from Switzerland. Being extensively ill, I take ten days in Calcutta to recruit; and no sooner does the beautiful warmth of the plains get into my Darjeeling sodden carcass, than I feel fit to do anything in the world. As the Duke of Wellington pointed out long ago, Calcutta is only "unhealthy" for the beef-and-pork, guzzling, whiskey-swilling folk who insist on treating it as if it were Sussex.
I wish the rest of the party would turn up. But they have been shipwrecked in the Gulf of Suez—which is undignified—and I suppose will turn up four days late with a ton or so of provisions which they are bringing out from Switzerland. So that I have let this article run on, perhaps unduly; but what fun it will be in three weeks' time when I can go in for a thousand poetical descriptions of the march to the foot of the mountains!
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