The old woman’s name is Sonam: her husband, Chang Rapke, and her daughter Karima Poti have gone away to winter in Saldang, and Sonam lives alone in the abandoned hamlet up the mountain. Namu says that before the snows there were forty people here, including twenty-odd monks and two lamas: all are gone across the mountains to Saldang, from where—is this a warning to outlandish men who come here without women?—her husband will return in a few days. Namu’s husband has the key to the Crystal Monastery, or so she says, and will doubtless bring it with him when he comes to visit, in four or five
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