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Chapter one. The Beginning |
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The weather cleared in a day or two, and, razor-back after razor-back, the ranges came out of their cloud. Where the Ukhrul side had been dry, with grassy stretches and oaks and pines, the country here was covered throughout in dense rain-forest. Blue and dark green, black, almost, where cloud-shadows crossed it, it coated everything. By Haochong and Lukhambi and the giant bamboo of the Irang valley, we came, on the fourth day out from Imphal, to Tamenglong. Struggling up the wicked ascent of Khebuching - stretch after stretch straight up without a bend to ease it - we met beer-bearing interpreters a little below the summit |
