One wondered, were they pursuing truth or were they petrified by ritual and routine? Did they regard us as immaterial reflexes, unsubstantial and illusory, passing shadows of the world cast upon them by an instant's illusion, to pass away again into the unreal, while they were absorbed in the contemplation of changeless and universal truths? Or were we noted as food for gossip and criticism when their self-imposed ordeal was done?
The reek of the candles was almost suffocating. 'Thank God I am not a Lama!' said a subaltern by my side. An Afridi Subadar let the butt of his rifle clank from his boot to the pavement.
At these calls to sanity we clattered out of this unholy atmosphere of dreams as if by an unquestioned impulse into the bright sunshine outside.
In the bazaar there is a gay crowd. The streets are thronged by as good-natured a mob as I have met anywhere. Sullenness and distrust have vanished. Officers and men, Tommies, Gurkhas, Sikhs, and Pathans, are stared at and criticised good-humouredly, and their accoutrements fingered and examined. It is a bright and interesting crowd, full of colour. In a corner of the square a street singer with a guitar and dancing children attracts a small crowd. His voice is a rich baritone, and he yodels like the Tyrolese. The crowd is parted by a Shapé riding past in gorgeous yellow silks and brocades, followed by a mounted retinue whose head-gear would be the despair of an operatic hatter. They wear red lamp-shades, yellow motor-caps, exaggerated Gainsboroughs, inverted cooking-pots, coal-scuttles, and medieval helmets. And among this topsy-turvy, which does not seem out of place in Lhasa, the most eccentrically-hatted man is the Bhutanese Tongsa Penlop, who parades the streets in an English gray felt hat.
The Mongolian caravan has arrived in Lhasa, after crossing a thousand miles of desert and mountain tracks. The merchants and drivers saunter about the streets, trying not to look too rustic. But they are easily recognisable--tall, sinewy men, very independent in gait, with faces burnt a dark brick red by exposure to the wind and sun. I saw one of their splendidly robust women, clad in a sheepskin cloak girdled at the waist, bending over a cloth stall, and fingering samples as if shopping were the natural business of her life.