SIKHIM AND BHUTAN
travellers, but more especially for the Tongsa monks, who journey to Bya-gha for two months every year. On a low spur, to the north-west, a prettily built house surrounded by trees was pointed out to me as the home of a powerful family who had plotted to murder the Tongsa. The plot was discovered in time, but Sir Ugyen, although he had narrowly escaped the fate of his uncle, was merciful, and merely banished the ringleaders to a more distant valley. Nemesis overtook them, however, as their leaders commenced a drunken quarrel with their neighbours and were killed, and their adherents dispersed. Dr. Griffiths says: “Fasia [as he calls Gya-tsa] is a good-sized village, comparatively clean, and the houses better than most I have seen.” He adds: “We were lodged in a sort of castle, consisting of a large building with a spacious flagged courtyard surrounded by rows of offices; the part we occupied fronted the entrance, and its superior pretensions were attested by its having an upper story.”
My camp was prettily arranged on a maidan half a mile beyond the village of Fasia, or Gya-tsa, and there I was met by the Bya-gha Jongpen, who was married to the Penlop’s sister.
It was difficult to select a mount next morning, owing to the large number of waiting mules, as not only were the Tongsa's animals there, but his sister and her son the Zimpon, whom I had seen at Tongsa, had also sent mules. Having made our selection, an easy and good road took us over a saddle on the Ki-ki-la (11,700 feet), and an equally easy descent brought us to an opening in the pine-forest, from whence we looked down on the broad vale of Bya-gha, through which the river Chamka-chhu flowed tranquilly. On the right bank was a large house and chapel, surrounded by trees just bursting into leaf, the home of Sir Ugyen’s sister, and close by the site of the old house in which he was born. On a bluff on the central ridge, some 500 feet up, was the castle, entirely rebuilt, though on a smaller scale, after the total destruction of the old one in 1897;
162
