ABSTRACT
We left Basgo later than we had intended, but the road was easy, almost all the time on the flat. Flat, and nearly on the level of the Indus: sand and pebbles, desert again. However, this desert, over which the two roads to Leh, the old and the new, now run together, was populated with chorten and mani. There is a forest of them on the way out of Basgo, but after that there are a few only, the largest in the whole district: these were built, not gradually, by the piety of the inhabitants, but created by the faith and power of a king, a ‘gyalpo'. There are mani hundreds and hundreds of yards in length, high, wide, regular, covered with innumerable stones with the usual inscription of the eternal Buddhist prayer, arranged in perfect order on the two upper slopes of roof, and at the end of each mani, a gigantic chorten, the lower part built in huge steps, the upper part consisting of an enormous globe, which is so large that it could quite easily give shelter to the whole of my party, servants included.
