Next day, with Bullock, I went to pay an official visit to the Jongpen at Kharta Shiga. He had made great preparations to receive us, and had put up a large tent in which Chinese carpets and tables were set out with pots of flowers arranged all round. Soon after our arrival we were given a most copious meal: bowl after bowl of well cooked macaroni and mince with pickled radishes and chillies were set before us. After we had finished this meal, I induced the Jongpen and his young wife to be photographed. She had a most elaborate head-dress of coral and pearls, with masses of false hair on either side of her head. It was not becoming. Barely had we finished taking the photograph when another meal was put in front of us: this time it consisted of Tibetan dumplings and mince patties, of which I gave the Jongpen's little dog the greater part surreptitiously; I then hurried off before I should be compelled to eat a third meal. On August 2 Mallory and Bullock started off with thirty-two coolies to explore the Eastern approaches to Mount Everest. It had been very hard to get any information about Mount Everest. The people knew the mountain by name, but told us that the only way to get near it was by crossing over the ridge to the South of the Kharta Valley, when we should find a big valley that would lead right up to Chomolungma. Where the Kharta River came from they could not tell me, and whether it took its source from the snows of Mount Everest they did not know. Tibetans' ignorance of any valleys outside their own was really extraordinary. I could seldom get any definite information about places outside their valley, and on asking two or three people, they would invariably give contradictory answers. It was the same as regards distance. They would tell you a place was one, two or three days' march away, but for shorter distances they had no time-table, and the nearest approach to this was a measurement by cups of tea. I remember one day asking a village yokel how far off the next village was, and he surprised me by answering, "Three cups of tea." Several times afterwards I got the answer to a question about distance given me in cups of tea, and I eventually worked out that three cups of tea was the equivalent of about 5 miles, and was after that able to use this as a basis for measurements of distances.