The Mistery of Belicena Villca found out that Schaeffer ' s expedition was just fifteen days ahead of us : a short time for those latitudes where the duration of trips was measured in months ; a lot if it was a matter of saving Oskar Feil ' s life .
Fortunately , the good weather accompanied us throughout the journey and would stay that way until the end . We passed to the right shore of the Mekong and took the Path of the Lamas , hoping to shorten the distance that separated us from Schaeffer by marching faster than his column and stopping the indispensable to rest . Anyway , progress was slow to exasperation , because the famous " Path " consisted of a narrow and elevated road that barely allowed the yaks to pass , which we often had to unload . Somewhere on that route , at more than 4,000 meters high , we crossed the Chinese border . At last we reached Yushu , checking out that the other group of Westerners had left the city ten days earlier . The news , instead of rejoicing us for the time gained , despaired us , because that city was a point included in the Chang-Lam road , through which most of Tibet ' s trade with China was channeled and which could be traveled fairly quickly .
Since the previous year , July 1937 , China suffered from the invasion of the Japanese , who already ruled Korea and Formosa since the war with Russia in 1905 . In those days at the end of 1938 , Japan had conquered Manchuria and the entire Southern coast , threatening to extend inland : Canton , Nanking , Shanghai , Beijing , etc ., had fallen into their power ; with a formidable pincer movement they were now trying to occupy the enormous strip between the rivers Yang Tse Kiang and Hoang-Ho , that is , between the Blue and Yellow rivers . In the country social decomposition reigned , and , in the regions that the Japanese had not yet controlled , the civil war had broken out with singular violence .
Yushu , located on the Western border , was far from the Japanese , but not from the civil war . There was quite a lot of agitation in the city and it was by no means convenient for us to be seen too much , so we remained hidden in the house of a Kâulika family . They were the ones who gave us the information about the ten days ahead of the German expedition .
It would be impossible to reach them by traveling in caravan as before . According to Von Grossen , we had only one alternative : to separate ourselves from the load , and get ahead on horseback ; the advance would be made by the five Germans and eight monks , while two Lopas would stay to watch over the five Holites , the Daivas dogs , the yaks with their load , and the newly incorporated zhos , which are the hybrid males product of the cross of the yak with the cow . Following this variation of the plan , the Kâulikas acquired the biggest specimens they managed to get from the little Tibetan horses , and each one took the minimum provisions for ten days , since on that path of merchants the villages and the rest and supply posts frequently alternated . The greatest weight that we had to transport corresponded to the weapons , for which we allocated two horses .
That same day we left Yushu , having slept in turns for only a few hours . The next day we waded through the Yang Tse Kiang or Blue River and we hit the best road after forty days of journey , giving the horses , from that moment on , a considerable speed .
I suppose that to an experienced officer like Karl von Grossen it had not escaped in Yushu that we would never reach Schaeffer before the Lake Kyaring if this one was ten days ahead of us . He undoubtedly sought to please in the best possible way my desire to rescue Oskar Feil alive , perhaps secretly relying on the probability that for some imponderable reason , our pursued would stop more than the necessary in some route point . But such a thing did not happen and they kept the lead enough time to arrive at the Ashram Jafran , hand over Oskar Feil , and depart again heading to Lake Koko Nor .
When the Chang-Lam road crosses the Hoang-Ho , or Yellow River , which forms successively the lakes Kyaring and Ngoring , it is only about 20 km . away . of the West shore of the first . Next to that bridge we found a man who caught immediately the attention of the Kâulikas monks : he was one of the spies that the Kâula Circle had infiltrated into Schaeffer ' s expedition and that had just escaped a certain death at the hands of the duskhas . From him we learned that the Germans had left the Ashram three days earlier , guided by Master Djual Khul , a hierarchical member of the White Fraternity , who would lead them to the Shambhala Gate of Koko Nor .
According to the account of the courageous Tibetan , Ernst Schaeffer sent Oskar Feil ahead , in order for him to explore the region of the Ashram Jafran . Soon after leaving , he was captured by the Duskhas , who confined him in a Temple dedicated to the Cult of Rigden Jyepo , where he would be sacrificed just four days later , when the moon made its transition to the last quarter . Oskar was still alive ! Unexpectedly we now had a precious time to study the rescue .
Naturally , everything had been planned by Schaeffer in combination with the Duskhas : to avoid the predicament of openly handing over Oskar he made him fall into an infamous trap , of such effect that he was ignorant , for the moment , that he was betrayed by his boss . But it would not be Oskar he who intended to deceive Ernst Schaeffer , since he would die anyway , but some German officers
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