Book Excerpts: ‘High Altitude Heroines’ retells Henrietta Sands Merrick’s Dras trek, 1931...

We left Matayan about six o’clock the next morning, crossed a bridge and followed the left bank of the Dras river into the village of Dras which lies in another wind-swept plain at 10,660 feet. We descended gradually through open country with sometimes streams to ford, then mounted along narrow paths overhanging the river. The rocks were polished like fine granite and were brown, green, and black — entirely different from any we had yet seen along the road.

Dras villages are scattered over the fertile valley, and here live those hardy Dards and Baltis who have made history for the countryside as fascinating as the record of Cortez. They have few needs, and almost all that the outside world contributes to them is tobacco, tea and sugar. Along the road whenever we met men of any race, the request was for ‘ma-a-ches’, matches. Around Dras the women wear sunbonnets for all the world like those of our grandmothers’ days and they sow crops of buckwheat, pease, barley and lucerne in May and reap the harvest in August. We made the twelve and a half miles in five and a half hours of desperately hot trekking and entered a wide compound where were serai, post and telegraph offices, the second on our route since leaving Ganderbal.

The dak bungalow looked like a neglected barn, unpromising from the outside and badly planned but roomy and comfortable within… There were two bedrooms and a dining room to the right and two bedrooms to the left of the front hall. This led into a roomy kitchen. It was the best room in the building and I fancy the entire population must gather there for shelter during those cruel months when pitiless winds and snow make of Dras a prototype of the Buddhist Cold Hell.

We found the bungalow cheerless. Little light penetrated through the small windows set in walls that were 2 feet thick. We had no wood for fires and none was procurable. There are few trees in the countryside around Dras. The compound lies in a sandy, rocky plain flanked by a granary, serai, post and telegraph office. It was interesting to watch the postmaster holding hand scales up and weighing letters and my films against pieces of iron. All of this apparatus is kept in a hole in the plank floor when not in use. Here I had to part with Lalla and with all of the other ponies of the bandobast, the Res Rules being strict in that regard.

I hated so to part with Lalla; and I hated to part with my ‘syce’. Don’t picture to yourself such a groom as you are familiar with. Unless he be the private servant of a sahib who supplies his uniform, the syce is a man in rags and it never occurs to him to help you mount or dismount; you slide off and get on the best way you can though he stands at the pony’s head and holds the reins and then trudges ahead or behind as you ordain. I kept him ahead of me after he had several times prodded my pony with a khud stick, looking quite innocent when I turned to see what could have made Lalla leap forward suddenly. But I was used to him; he was so smiling and so willing, and now all my fears and antipathies awoke…

I selected as Lalla’s substitute an iron grey mare because of its important-looking saddle of red lacquer inset with ivory in finely worked design. I mounted with great pride and then recalled the saying that if pride goeth before a fall it vanishes more quickly after one…

The rising sun tipped just one peak of snow that showed between rifts of barren rock as we mounted next morning along a ridge where stone tablets carved with the image of Buddha flanked the roadside.

We saw never a bird, nor a flower. There was a good road up and down embankments, a bit monotonous until we came face to face with a lovely picture. Silhouetted against the sky, there on the crest of a hill before us was a man in flowing red robes mounted high on a Yarkandi saddle gay with brass trappings and heaped with brilliant saddle rugs. His head was held high; he looked over the countryside as if it were his own property; the long toes of his shoes curved upwards, their gold threads catching the glint of sunlight. At a respectful distance behind rode two women completely hidden with ‘burqas’.

Women of mystery! And what charm in the mysterious! Everything in India seems to be touched with it. Eyes hold unfathomable depths. Drums are muffled. Street calls blend into a droning wail. Unseen things are all about you. The passing show seems to be but the echo of a scene that you have just missed. Once ‘down in India’ while I was awaiting my train in the station of Udaipur I had seen a purdah cart drawn by oxen unload from behind its gold-fringed pink curtains a woman and three young children. The woman, her burqa drawn close, huddled into a corner by the wall while the children clung to her, gazing at me and calling her attention to the ungainly object in topi and short skirt with feet encased in walking shoes. Her own ankles were adorned with silver bangles and her whole diminutive person jingled beneath the burqa which she finally parted for a better view of the memsahib. An enchanting vision she was, with kohl-rimmed eyes and fabulously long lashes, a slender nose above red, red lips that smiled at me — Then the veil was quickly drawn as a burly man came up and directed his possession to the closed compartment on the train.

It took us four and a half hours to make the fifteen miles to Tashgam from Dras. Just before reaching the village we crossed a narrow bridge high above a turbulent stream. This led into a narrow lane that runs between high walls of stone which are really the walls of houses. Low openings lead into windowless rooms which are closed in winter with piles of stone. Mounds of clay on the flat roofs are perforated with holes, chimneys which let out the smoke and in winter time admit all the air that is desired; for it is bitter cold here in winter and during the long months, men, women and children hibernate until the snows that have banked them in have melted.

We passed a flat-roofed hut partly built into a cliff. A low door led into the utter darkness of a single small room.

‘A hermit’s hut,’ I cried.

‘Something more wonderful. The hut of a dak or mail runner,’ Sandy explained. ‘Each one speeds for his given number of miles after which he passes the sack on to the man ahead. In this way they keep open communication between Leh and the rest of the world until the snows render the service impossible. Heavy loads go in on ponies.’

It was a tedious trek of twenty-one miles from Dras to Shimshi Kharbu…

— Excerpted with permission from Speaking Tiger