Abdul Kerim came into my tent very cast down and asked if we should fall in with nomads within ten days, for otherwise he considered our condition desperate. In truth, I could give him no consolation, but could only tell him that we must go on as long as there was a single mule left, and then try to drag ourselves along to the nomads with as much food as we could carry. Now we thought no longer of pursuers behind, or of dangers before us, but only wished to preserve our lives and come to country where we could find means of subsistence. Behind us the snow obliterated our tracks, and the future awaited us with its impenetrable secrets.
The storm howled round us all night long, and our thin tent canvas fluttered in the blast. Gulam awaked me with the information, "It is nasty weather to-day; we can see nothing." Even the nearest mountains were hidden by the snow, and if I had not already taken a bearing along the valley in the direction south, 35° E., we could not have set out. This day, January 30, we had to keep together, for the driving snow obliterated the tracks immediately. We had two leaders, and I rode last along the trail, which at first was marked as a black winding line, but farther on, where the snow lay 2 feet deep, no ground or rubbish could be seen. A brown horse which carried no burden lay down and died in the snow. We could see the snow making ready its grave before it was cold. It vanished behind us in the dreadful solitude.
We move forwards at a very slow pace through the snowdrifts. The fury of the storm carries away the warning shouts from the lips of the guides and they do not reach our ears; we simply follow the trail. Lobsang goes first, and he often disappears in the dry loose snow and has to seek another direction. In the hollows the snow lies 3 feet deep, and we can take only one step at a time after the spades have cut us a ditch through the snow. One or other of the animals is always falling, and the removal of his load and readjusting it causes a block, for all must follow in the same furrow. All, men and animals, are half-dead with fatigue and labour for breath. The snow sweeps round us in suffocating wreaths; we turn our backs to the wind and lean forwards. Only the nearest mules are plainly visible, the fifth is indistinct, and those at the front are seen only as slight shadows amidst the universal whiteness. I cannot catch a glimpse of the guides. Thus the troop passes on a few steps till it comes to the next block, and when the mule immediately in front of me moves on again it is only to plunge into a hollow filled with snow, where two men wait to keep up its load. The direction is now east and the ground rises. A few such days and the caravan will be lost (Illust. 312).