Simplicity of travel was, then, at least possible twenty years ago, and I managed, after crossing the Pass, to get along with only one servant who cooked, performed every function of the numerous servants we employ in India, and carried a load himself in emergency. But he was the most faithful, and my favourite of all the servants I have ever had. His name was Shukar Ali, and I must ask my reader's indulgence for a digression to describe him. I picked him up in Yarkand, in Chinese Turkestan, but he was a native of Ladak. He was the most cheery, happy-go-lucky, easy-going man, who ever proved a good servant in spite of his carelessness. Always laughing, always chaffing with the pony-men or coolies, always losing something vitally necessary, but always ready to do the hardest and most dangerous piece of work when the crucial moment arrived, he was the only Ladaki who dared to cross the Mustagh Pass with me, and but for one incident I would have a most grateful recollection of his services then. That incident I have often since reminded him of. After crossing the Pass we had to cross a very full and rapid stream flowing straight out of a glacier. Immense blocks of ice were breaking off the glacier and floating down the stream. The bottom was also partly ice and partly boulder. Shukar Ali, with his usual readiness, volunteered to carry me across this stream on his back. But in mid-stream he slipped. I was precipitated into the icy water, while Shukar Ali, in his frantic efforts to regain his own footing, unknowingly kept pressing me under water. We both eventually gained the opposite bank all right. But I had no change of clothes, and every stitch I had on was wringing wet with ice-cold water.
When, two years later, Government sent me to explore all the northern frontier of Kashmir from Ladak and the Karakoram Pass to the Pamirs and Hunza, I again sought out Shukar Ali; and yet a third time, when I was sent on a political mission to Chinese Turkestan and the Pamirs in 1890-91. On each of these occasions he rendered unfailing service, and once both he and I were nearly drowned in an avalanche. We had been hewing our way up the steep slopes of an ice pass in a snowstorm, when suddenly out of the snow-clouds above us we heard a roar like thunder approaching nearer and nearer. We could not run if we would, for we were on an ice slope. We could only await our doom, for we knew it was an avalanche. But with a mighty rush it crashed past a few paces in front of us, and we were safe.
