At Tingri I found Wollaston and Morshead. The former had been very busy all the time I had been away in collecting insects, butterflies, rats, mice, birds and flowers, and had amassed quite a number of specimens. Morshead had been out a good deal with his surveyors to the North and to the West, but had been driven in by the bad weather of the last few days. This had apparently been general and we might say that the rainy season this year had begun on July 7, which the Tibetans considered very late for those parts. The following afternoon Heron arrived, and my kit also, which I was very glad to get, as I had only had a spare tent to roll around me the previous night.
The next day or two was spent mostly in reading letters and newspapers. Our postal arrangements were at first rather complicated, there being no regular postal service to the provinces in Tibet. We had, therefore, to make an arrangement with each Jongpen to forward on our mail. Phari was the last post office, and the postmaster there had to arrange with the Phari Jongpen for a messenger every week to go with our posts to Khamba Dzong; we had left money with him for the purpose of paying the postman. At Khamba Dzong we had arranged with the Jongpen there that he should forward our letters to Tinki, and at Tinki we had made further arrangements for them to be sent on to Shekar Dzong and from Shekar Dzong they were to be sent to Tingri. We had left money for this purpose with the various Jongpens, and each Jongpen as he received the mail bag was to affix his seal on it and send it on as quickly as he could to the next Jongpen. This system worked very well for the first two months, but after we had moved to Kharta, partly owing to floods, and partly perhaps to the laziness of the Shekar Jongpen, our mails were all held up and we eventually had to send coolies back from our camp to Phari to bring them along. The best plan another time would be to take with the Expedition a certain number of coolies to be used purely for going backwards and forwards with the mails. On July 13 Morshead and Wollaston left to go to Nyenyam in response to a cordial invitation from the Jongpen, asking that some of the Expedition should visit the place. We were glad to accept, and this should be a very interesting part of the country botanically.