With the aid of an interpreter a pleasant conversation would ensue. The officer would then probably produce his hand-camera and snapshot the head lama, after which he would try to get to business. He would ask how much of such and such article the monastery could sell us. The monks would shake their heads, flutter their skirts, jerk up their thumbs, and in a shrill falsetto repeat the word 'Menduk' (which means 'nothing'). After a little more parley they would confess to having, say, twenty bagfuls of tsampa or whatever was required. Even the naming of a high rate and the jingling of a bag of rupees in their faces would not make them raise the above figure. You would then, if you were the officer, proceed within the monastery and demand to be shown the said twenty bagfuls. You would be led with great pomp and circumstance upstairs and along dark passages and past rows of cells till you were ushered into a small pantry or storeroom, where, with a gesture of pompous satisfaction at having so completely fulfilled your requirements, the head monk would point to a few handfuls of tsampa lying at the bottom of a small elongated wooden trough. You would feel a little annoyance at this, and show signs of it. The head monk, as by a happy inspiration, would suddenly beckon you to accompany him, and, after another long meandering through the monastery, would lead you to a large doorway into a large darkened hall, which, when your eyes became accustomed to the dim light, you would recognise as the main 'gompa' or temple of the monastery. Here his hand would steal into yours, which he would caress, while with his free hand he pointed to the chief image of Buddha, which he was apparently wishing you to admire. Of course you admired him, but you wanted tsampa, and this was obviously merely a ruse to detain you from your quest. British choler would then rise, and, going out of the temple with somewhat irreverent haste, you would begin to express yourself forcibly in terms which you made the interpreter translate. The interpreter had probably an axe of his own to grind, and it was doubtful how many of your trenchant phrases, even if fit to repeat in a monastery, got actually translated. But after a great show of meaning business, and a few threats of stronger measures in the background, you probably got, say, fifty maunds of tsampa from a proper storeroom which the lamas had previously refrained from showing you. A little later a few more threats and the threatening crack of a whip round the head of a 'chela' or two would send the monks all skipping about in trepidation, and the door of the main storeroom would be opened to you, in which you would find, it might be, two hundred maunds (or three days' supply for the force) of the desired article. After this you were all friends. No ill-will was borne on either side. The junior monks or 'chelas' would assist in bagging the flour, and in carrying it down to the place where the mules were waiting for it.