Dr. Jules Jacot-Guillarmod Diary Entry

Thursday, 7 September 1905

We triple the pace and arrive at camp II, where we stay for two days, both to search for herbs and to allow the coolies to bring down to Tseram a certain number of extra loads of food, rice and flour, which we return to the official characters sent by the Maha Rajah of Nepal.

We find at Tseram these characters who were responsible for escorting us into their country, but who had not wanted to go up to the higher camps for fear of deprivation and lack of comfort. From Righi [Alcesti de Righi], for his part, he sells objects of worship and buys among others a prayer wheel, which on superficial examination he believes to be pure Tibetan. Once inside his tent, he realizes that it has been rebuilt: the handle of the said prayer wheel is made of a section of an umbrella handle, everything less Tibetan and not even English, made in Germany. He consoles himself from his misadventure by giving it as a gift to Reymond [Charles-Adolphe Reymond], but his mystification will often be the object of our benevolent though sarcastic compassion.

We would have gladly lingered in that delightful place that is Tseram; but each day costs us nearly 200 francs and we do not know what awaits us beyond Kang La. There is some vague talk of trails interrupted by landslides, swept bridges and considerable detours, in case these noises are confirmed. In normal times and in northern conditions, the natives count 11 to 12 days of walking from Tseram to Darjeeling via Kang La and Jongri, so we have only saved for 12 days of food for the coolies. We leave Tseram and its "officials", stripped of our presents, its shepherds of their jewels and its shepherds of their belts and we head towards Kang La, a pass of the height of the Mont-Blanc, quite frequented, between Nepal and Sikhim, but where the Europeans do not come, for lack of authorizations.

We arrive in the evening at the foot of the pass and the next day, we cross it under a violent snowstorm. We still graze and have the pleasure to put our hands on several new species of purple and wild primroses, blue and white gentians and blackish edelweiss. The stage is long, but the porters don't linger on the road and at four o'clock we set up the tents in the bed of an old lake that makes us think of Salanfe. We find there, next to a rich summer bloom of high mountains, the big rhubarb flowers that I hasten to photograph, because I can't dry them, given their size. After the passage of the Lang La, the most interesting part of the road is without a doubt the descent to the bottom of the valley that is watered by the river that comes from the Kabru (7324') and its glaciers. It is on this summit that Graham, in 1883, would have conquered the altitude record he held for many years. We had for a moment thought of following in his footsteps and controlling the somewhat diffuse and succinct account of his ascent; but the fresh snow and the still undecided weather distracted us from this project and well we took it, for the days that followed were no better than the previous ones and our efforts were useless.

So we left the Kabru valley on the left and went up to Jongri (4007') by a delicious path, under the rhododendrons trees, where we arrived around 2 o'clock. We are at the very foot of the southern slope of the Kangchinjunga, in a pasture as we meet hundreds of them in our Alps, with this difference however, that the Valaisan crosses are replaced there by the prayer flags of the Tibetans, the cows by yaks and the hotels by nothing at all. On the other hand, what Jongri has in its own right and that one would look for in vain in the Alps, is a circus of peaks that dominate it by more than 5000'. This hemicycle has the Kangchinjunga as its center, while on the left the Jannu (7716') rises like a pyramid next to which the Matterhorn would look like a small Jaman's Tooth. But if Kangchinjunga remains, by its altitude, the undisputed sovereign of the massif, on its right, that is to say to the east, rises another pyramid, worthy counterpart of the Jannu and which the natives call Siniolchum (6884').

Some good climbers, judging a summit from a photograph, have estimated its possible ascent; so be it! but I will not be the one to attempt the adventure. With equal expenditure of energy and rupees, I estimate that the one who will succeed in making, in the absence of his ascent, the tour of the Chomokankar massif will have done more, for the beautiful cause of geography and mountaineering, than the acrobat who would reach the summit of Siniolchum. Now that the path is open and we firmly believe that Chomokankar will sooner or later be visited by Europeans that the scarecrow of the forbidden country will no longer frighten, let's try to imitate Freshfield and march in his footsteps. The latter says, speaking of Jongri, that this pâtu-rage is destined to become, one day or another, the Zermatt or Chamonix of the Himalayas. In my opinion, given the mentality of the Anglo-Hindus, I am afraid that their children's children who will venture to Jongri at the end of this century will only find the two present chalets, a little more than they do today.

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