"The climb was a hard one for the mules carrying heavy loads. The traffic over the pass is mostly carried on by coolies bearing long bamboo baskets on their backs with a pole on which to rest the load. On descending from the pass there were beautiful views across ranges of hills towards a big range to the south."
A British soldier for most of his life, Pereira served in China against the Boxers in 1900 and in France during World War I, emerging as a brigadier-general. He also served as military attaché in Beijing between 1905 and 1910 and during this time traveled extensively throughout China. In 1921 he retraced the famous trip to Lhasa made in 1848 by the French priests Huc and Gabet, leaving Beijing in January of 1921 and reaching Lhasa in October of 1922. Except for a six-month break hunting in western Sichuan, he spent the rest of the time on the road, traveling close to 7,000 miles and walking over half the way despite a limp incurred in a youthful hunting accident. His journey across the high-altitude passes of Tibet was the most dangerous and exciting part of his trip, but his travels along infrequently traveled branch roads of the Road to Shu between mid-April and late May of 1921 were also quite interesting. He spoke Chinese so didn’t need an interpreter, but he was accompanied by two Chinese servants, three chairs with eight bearers, six mules, and a soldier escort of three to ten men which varied depending on the number of bandits in the vicinity. By the time Teichman reached Lhasa, he was exhausted and suffering from blood clots in his leg. But after only two month’s rest in India, he returned to China, making his way north through Yunnan into eastern Tibet and western Sichuan. He died there in Garze, north of Batang, in 1923 of a perforated gastric ulcer. His journals were later written up by the famous explorer Francis Younghusband under the title Peking to Lhasa.
