Himalayas Motor Exploration

In Urumchi, with winter setting in and the cold desert route to Peiping lying ahead, both groups of the Citroen - Haanlt Trans - Asiatic Expedition were happily united.

With the Jhelum on a rampage and the Kashmir Valley a lake, the cars which had blazed an unbroken trail eastward from Beyrouth were stranded in Srinagar. The relief cars from Peiping, which were to meet us in Kashgar, were immobilized in the Turfan Depression, a thousand miles away by an air line which no crow could follow and live.

The probable impossibility of crossing the "Roof of the World" by motor was the reason for having two sets of tractors, driving toward the heart of Asia from both sides at once. In Srinagar all expert opinion was that we would not go far toward Gilgit. But M. Haardt, the leader, decided to push on with two of his seven cars until some definite barrier or lack of time should stop the adventure.

The Gilgit trail is reserved for the favored few, But never were any more favored than we. British officials of the Government of India did all in their power to assist us, and their personal hospitality was one of our chief delights. Never had the scanty population helped so unwieldy a caravan on its way. Never had the syncopated rhythm of pioneering motors been yoked with the slow hut familiar progress of horse and coolie along this daring path.

Travelers as far as Gilgit may have wondered why motor traffic is not common; for, on the whole, the route is surprisingly good. But interrupting the general excellence are grades too steep, hairpin turns too sharp, trails too narrow, underpinning and side walls too infirm.

Nor is this condition subject to facile, or final, amelioration. The engineers who see their erratic highway start its hibernation under the winter's snow have no idea where they will find it when summer comes. Theirs is the never-ending toil of Sisyphus. Just before our passage, the worst landslides in many years had buried…"