A walk in the clouds

A sufficiently dramatic contrast. But in days before motors the journey was tiresome as all Indian journeys. By train as far as Wathar; in the hot weather an exhausting experience. The food in the restaurant-car if there was one seldom inspired confidence, so that it was necessary to take all one8217;s food with one, and if a child were travelling, too , a goat would be tied in the guard8217;s van and an orderly would hurry off to milk it when the train stopped at some station in the evening8230;..

At the foot of the hills there followed a long and slow ascent in carriage, cart or tonga. A steep climb and a steady thrashing of the horses got on the nerves of the more sensitive travellers who would complain to the Government. Government would then issue an order directing that horses should be less cruelly flogged on the ascent. This would lead to a strike of the carriage-owners who refused to run carriages up to Mahabaleshwar if they were to be hampered and harassed like this, and the order would be allowed to lapse. The road wound round the curve of the ghat until the jagged hills of the Deccan faded into the mist of summer afternoon. As the carriage turned the corner of the ghat towards Panchgani the wind came cool and sweet over the high plateau. The horses were changed here and as the travellers rested under the whispering Casurianas and admired the neat cottages and villas studded about8217;8230;..

Presently they set out once more. The road would wind slowly over the plateau, the wheelers ran muffled through thick red dust, and gradually the trees closed in and the evening was loud with the calls of hill-birds8230;. As they approached Mahabaleshwar they saw the famous strawberry beds on the left and on the right, the lake where the children would be sent with their ayahs to sail their boats and play at fishing.

Most of the servants would have been sent ahead to arrange about the tents and to unpack. For bungalows were scarce and expensive except for senior officials who could reserve one of the government bungalows and hotels were in those days regarded with horror by most Anglo-Indians. And justifiably: for there were not many European travellers except the tourists who visited half a dozen northern cities and no one cared how they were housed who could not stay with friends, or at clubs. So that even hotels which were inaugurated with a flourish of advertisements as up-to-date and under entirely European Management soon declined into seedy disrepair; the discouraged proprietor shuffled about the dusty sitting-room in shirt-sleeves and bedroom slippers, adjusting here the artificial flowers in a China vase and arranging there a Union Jack-patterned cushion to cover the rusty spring which had worked its way through the faded chintz of the sofa; and in the bedrooms, where mosquito curtains hung in tatters and aflock-oozing mattress was piled against the wall, unpaid servants squatted over a game of dice.

So if one could not reserve a bungalow the best thing to do was, as in most places in India, to live in tents. In Poona one would pitch one8217;s tents in a friend8217;s garden; but here one applied to the Superintendent for a plot in the jungle. Snakes and panthers were apt to be a nuisance; but they generally went for the servants or the goats first. With basket-chairs and camp furniture one could make the tents very homely; and to keep away the eyeflies one would burn sticks of insect-incense in vases. It was delicious in the evenings to sit outside the tents. A soft mist crept up from the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds sang. Gentlemen lay back full length in basket-chairs, lit cigars and called for chota pegs. Ladies sipped lemonade and looked forward to a strawberry tea at the Club on Friday8230;8230;