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It was stated in our travel permit that we wanted to go to Nepal. The idea seemed to please our questioners, and they promised to help us in every way. They said we could start on the following morning and by crossing the Korela Pass would be in Nepal in two days. This did not altogether suit us. We wished, at all costs, to remain in Tibet and were determined not to give up the idea without a struggle. We begged for right of asylum, hammered on the theme of Tibetan neutrality, and compared the situation of Tibet with that of Switzerland. The officials stubbornly, if courteously, insisted on the conditions laid down in our travel document. However, during the months of our sojourn in Tibet, we had become better acquainted with the mentality of Asiatics and knew that to give way early was against the rules. The remainder of our discussion passed off in perfect calm. We all drank endless cups of tea, and our hosts informed us modestly that they were there on a tax-raising journey and in Lhasa they were not such exalted persons as they seemed to be in Tradun. They were traveling with twenty servants and a great number of pack animals, so that one got the impression that they were, at the least, ministers.