four o'clock
Besides , he was repaid for his good offices by the deference shown him by the staff at the railway station . At three in the morning we arrived at Kara Bouran , where the train stopped but a few minutes . Here the railway crosses the route of Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orleans across Tibet in 1889-90 , a much more complete journey than ours , a circular trip from Paris to Paris , by Berlin , Petersburg , Moscow , Nijni , Perm , Tobolsk , Omsk , Semipalatinsk , Kouldja , Tcharkalyk , Batong , Yunnan , Hanoi , Saigon , Singapore , Ceylon , Aden , Suez , Marseilles , the tour of Asia , and the tour of Europe . The train halts at Lob Nor at four o'clock and departs at six . This lake , the banks of which were visited by General Povtzoff in 1889 , when he returned from his expedition to Tibet , is an extensive marsh with a few sandy islands , surrounded by two or three feet of water . The country through which the Tarim slowly flows had already been visited by Fathers Hue and Gabet , the explorers Prjevalski and Carey up to the Davana pass , situated a hundred and fifty kilometres to the south . But from that pass Gabriel Bonvalot and Prince Henri of Orleans , camping sometimes at fifteen thousand feet of altitude , had ventured across virgin territories to the foot of the superb Himalayan chain .