I would not have minded that, if he and his wife had not set about nesting just then. Towards the middle of April when vacation for the hot weather began, I received Ghond's letter. "Your Gay-Neck," he informed me, "should not nest yet. If there are eggs, destroy them. Do not let them hatch under any circumstances. A sick father like Gay-Neck--diseased with fright--cannot but give the world poor and sick baby pigeons. Bring him here. Before I close, I must say that I am better. Bring Gay-Neck soon; the holy Lama wishes to see you and him. Besides, all the five swifts have arrived this week from the south; they will surely divert your pet bird." I took Ghond's advice. I put Gay-Neck in one cage and his wife in another, and set out for the north. How different the hills were in the spring from the previous autumn. Owing to the exigencies that had arisen, my parents had opened their house in Dentam months earlier than usual. After settling down there towards the last week of April, I took Gay-Neck along with me and set out in the company of a Thibetan caravan of ponies for Singalele, leaving his wife behind, so that if he were able to fly again he would return to her--just the thing needed to cure him. She was to be the drawing card. He might do it, Ghond had hoped, in order to return and help her hatch the newly laid eggs, though the day after our departure my parents destroyed the eggs; for we did not want sick and degenerate children who would grow up to shame the name of Gay-Neck. I carried my bird on my shoulder, where he perched all day. During the night we kept him safely locked up in his cage, which proved beneficial to him. Twelve hours of mountain air and light improved his body, yet not once did he make the effort to fly off my shoulder and return to his mate to help her hatch the eggs. The Himalayas in the spring are unique. The ground glittered with white violets, interspersed with raspberries already ripening here and there in the hot moist gorges where the ferns were spreading their large arms as if to embrace the white hills lying like precious stones on the indigo-blue throat of the sky. Sometimes we passed through thick forests where stunted oaks, prodigious elms, deodars (cedars) and chestnuts grew in such numbers that their branches shut out all sunlight. Tree against tree, bough against bough, and roots struggling with roots fought for light and life. Below them in arboreal darkness many deer grazed on abundant tall grass and saplings, only to be devoured in their turn by tigers, leopards and panthers. Everywhere life grew in abundance, all the more intensifying the struggle for existence among birds, beasts and plants. Such is the self-contradictory nature of existence. Even insects were not free of it.