Only the faithful "Yellow Bag" was forthcoming, the tiffin coolie being
still "hull down," and from its varied contents we extracted the only
edibles, apricots and rock cakes.
Never have we enjoyed any meal more than that somewhat light breakfast,
washed down by water which was a pure joy to drink.
Alas! There were but two rock cakes apiece! Another half-hour's clamber,
along a pretty rough track, brought us to a point whence we looked down a
long green slope to our destination, Tronkol--a few Gujar huts, indistinct
amidst a clump of very ancient birch-trees, standing out as a sort of
oasis among the bare and boulder-strewn slopes.
The view was superb. To the right, the mountain-side fell steeply to where,
in the depths of the Wangat Nullah, a tiny white thread marked the river
foaming 4000 feet below, and beyond rose a jagged range of spires and
pinnacles, snow lying white at the bases of the dark precipices. "These
are the savage wilds" which bar the route from the Wangat into Tilail and
the Upper Sind.
Over Tronkol, bare uplands, rising wave above wave, shut out the view of
Gangabal and the track over into the Erin Nullah and down to Bandipur.
On our left towered the bastions of Haramok, his snow-crowned head rising
grimly into the clear blue sky.
We pitched our camp at Tronkol about two o'clock, on a green level some
little way beyond the Gujar huts, and just above a stream which picked its
riotous way along a bed of enormous boulders, sheltered to a certain
extent by a fringe of hoary birches.
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