The official diary of the Gould mission to Lhasa sent by the British government. Read more about the mission diary.
The weather has suddenly changed from summer to winter conditions. A week ago some of us were bathing in the Kyi Chu which in the last few weeks has changed from a swirling brown torrent to a sparkling blue stream. Today we woke up to find several inches of snow on the ground and a bitterly cold wind blowing.
We lunched with Tendong Shape. His house, like many houses here, has the living room separated only by a muslin curtain from an open verandah where flowers are grown. This is very pleasant in warm weather, but today we got colder and colder as dish after dish of the conventional Tibetan (or mere correctly Chinese) lunch followed with devastating tardiness.
In our thin European suits we envied our host in his long, silk, fleece-lined robes.
Author: Frederick Spencer Chapman [see handwritten annotations in Diary by Hugh Richardson in MS. Or. Richardson 2, Bodleian Libary, Department of Oriental Collections, University of Oxford]
Page Reference: Pt VIII p.2