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poured down into the fertile plains below—rarely to return, mostly to remain and form the peoples whom we now call the Indians. From Delhi to Peshawar it is all one long road of history marked with forgotten decaying forts—rich with traditions of old wars and incursions.

Not so Kashmir, which lay to the north of the natural route, hidden behind its snowy walls, descried far off from the dusty plains where the armies marched—

Crossing on divide between Sind and Salonai rivers (14,200 feet)

AN emerald set in pearls.” Thus have the poets of many ages described Kashmir—land of rich forests and upland pastures—slow-flowing rivers and glittering mountain torrents—ringed with an almost unbroken girdle of mountains, snowcapped through all the year—a garden set between the wide sunbaked plains of the Punjab and the maze of the great Karakorum ranges—the giant ribs of the gaunt roof of the world hung above the black plateaux of Thibet.

Mythologically speaking, Kashmir was once the abode of myriad water gods, water-dwelling snake divinities from whose fabled stories we see once again how often folklore is built up on a substratum of fact, for when the Himalayas were first driven up through the earth’s crust they formed a huge lake which is now the walled depression of Kashmir. After long ages the waters cut their way out through the limestone hills and made the great gorge nearly two hundred miles in length through which the Jhelum river carries off the drainage of all the vast encircling mass of snowy mountains that is the glory of the vale of Kashmir, until at last the roaring torrent slows down in the plains to turn into the wide river whereon stands modem Jhelum. There, Alexander fought his great battle with Porus, the first time on record where India came face to face with European arms and organisation—forerunner of the many battles since that have seen the same result repeated again and again—the success of the few against the many—of cohesion and discipline over mere numbers.

The Punjab has been the route of countless invasions—the path of race after race who have swept in over the mountainous barriers of the north-west and

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Srinagar

the abode of snow, and hence— since man has always pictured his gods as living upon the heights of earth — home of the Gods.

Kashmir’s history therefore is less one of war than of oppression, for its inhabitants are not of the fighting races of the world. A soft and smiling land, it has fostered none of the virtues which the barren hills of the north-west of India have engendered in the races of the Punjab— nor has there been the call of the sea which has kept alive in the modem Briton the stout qualities of the original Angle and Saxon pirates who conceived the world as something from whose living flank a man might hew his fortune by the strength of his own right arm and the grey nine carved steel.

Kashmir was a garden, and gardens are not common in Asia—least of all in

those parts whence came the many folk, who through the ages have ruled or sought to rule India. So when the dust of conflict had settled down, and in various methods mostly ruthless, they had consolidated their power over Hind and set up their thrones — albeit perhaps only temporarily, in Delhi, the conquerors bethought them of Kashmir, of the delights of cool uplands, and of the country whose women have been famed since all time for their beauty. Mahmud of Ghazni—stoutest of cut-throat swashbucklers held Kashmir in the nth century. Other Pathan kings from time to time held sway there; later on the Moghul Emperors made her famous in song and story, for that strange family joined somehow to their undoubted qualities of stem courage and thirst for war, a love of the beautiful in

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Shadipur^r~

all things, a love of beauty and a love of dreams. Needless to say, therefore, they went to Kashmir and in their heyday made it their summer capital and have left their traces in the Moghul gardens dotted about the valley —places of utmost beauty which they made in a country whose natural beauty is to many people’s minds still without peer.

Then when the Moghul empire crumbled away and the Sikh power arose, Kashmir came under the Sikhs and they ruled there until in their turn they came into conflict with the British and Kashmir fell into our hands and was bestowed for a nominal sum upon our ally, Gulab Singh, the Dogra ruler of Jammu. This was the beginning of the history of modern Kashmir, for the ruler whom to-day we call the Maharajah of Kashmir, is primarily Maharajah of

Jammu and descendant of the original Gulab Singh.

Whether the Kashmiri originally possessed any fighting attributes one does not know— the classical writers do not mention them — they credit him solely with great skill in magic—but if he ever had, those centuries of rule by invading northerners eliminated any such qualities and the Kashmiri of to-day is noteworthy only for his industry which is of a high order. Artistic he certainly is, as one can tell from the products of his hands, the weavings, embroideries and carvings which more and more are finding their way to the markets of Europe and America.

The province of Kashmir proper is confined to the old lake bed, now a rich fertile plain at an altitude of about 5,200 feet above sea level, through which the

The Shah Hamadhan Mosque, Srinagar

Jhelurn river flows in great lazy curves navigable for the most part and bearing on its placid bosom multitudes of rough timber craft, great grain barges, light shikar as carrying market produce, or ornate houseboats on quasi-English lines which form the dwellings of the bulk of the many visitors who flock from India and elsewhere to pass the summer in Kashmir.

But there are further provinces beyond, where dwell people other than Kashmiris, all of whom come under the ruler of Jammu. The remains of the great prehistoric lake now show in the big Wular Lake down stream from Srinagar the capital, a lake diminishing in „    .

size year by year as more and more    *

reclamation work is carried out. From the northern shore of the Wular, the road runs out over the passes under the flanks of Nanga Parbat’s 26,000 feet pinnacle of ice and snow, through Astor into Gilgit, through the Dard states of Hunza and Nagar and so in time through Central Asia eastward to China.

North-east of Srinagar the road runs up the fertile Sind valley over the Zoji La pass and so through the high

Kolohoi from San gam, Liddur Valley

lands of Purigh and Ladakh which are inhabited by folk of common Thibetan stock and which until comparatively recently were part of Thibet itself as was also Baltistan, the province between Ladakh and Gilgit. From Ladakh it passes on through Central Asia—the old, old road to China, and from Leh one arm of it goes into Great Thibet. But none of these countries resemble Kashmir, being countries of true middle Asian type, giant mountains, deep gorges and high bleak plateaux, countries void of forest or tree, freezing in winter and broiling in summer. They are almost devoid of rainfall and support human life only where , .    . it is possible to lead down the glacier water

ndge, Kashmir _rocj_c hewn channels to water the old

alluvial fans where crops may be grown, lands where people pray for sun to relieve drought since drought means the cloudy or rainy time when the ice no longer melts.

But taking the sum total of it all, Kashmir with its sub-provinces is essentially a holiday land that can meet nearly all tastes, a land where the hunter,the mountaineer, the lover of wild hills and of solitude, fine rest and

View at Tannin, Liddar Valley, Kashmir.

refreshment equally with the lover of society and the man and woman who demand natural beauty only as a background to the joys of constant social intercourse with their own kind.

Srinagar and Gulmarg cater more and more for this latter type who come in ever increasing quantities now that the motors run to within a few miles of Gulmarg and actually reach Pahlgam in the Liddar valley.

Thus one can enjoy all the beauties of mountains and mountain rivers without undergoing the discomfort of riding prehistoric animals sucb as ponies, or travelling on such antiquated things as feet. In Srinagar and Gulmarg one can almost forget that one is in Kashmir at all, if, that is, one has sufficient faith to ignore the clamorous Kashmiri vendor of shawls and precious

stones, carvings, embroideries and the like treasures.

On the other hand, if one is of more mediaeval mind and thinks that holidays are times when one should recreate one’s soul and stimulate one’s body by going out into the wilds shooting, fishing, or merely climbing among glaciers and snow peaks, well you can have whole valleys to yourself for weeks on end with scenery unrivalled and know the supreme joy of carrying all your worldly belongings on the backs of a few diminutive ponies and of being beyond the reach of posts and telegraphs and all the myriad annoyances of modern life.

Should you be of a class between the two extremes and want something of the charm of the wild, tempered by the amenities of civilisation you can find it in

and relaxing and it is well then to move higher into the hills. August, when the monsoon comes into Kashmir, is generally rainy. September and October are in many ways the best months since after the middle of September the weather clears and cools, and for climbing, after the winter snow has gone, these are really the most favourable weeks, though the nights are beginning to get cold and late October can be distinctly chilly, even low down in the valley.

Spring gives you the new blossom and the low snows which enhance the landscapes so much but autumn gives you the wonderful glory of changing leaf with background of newly fallen snow on the hills. It is hard to say which season to choose but if one can only see one or the other, then perhaps autumn, from the middle of September onward, is the best.

But since the country is, comparatively speaking, small, one may follow the climate of one’s choice, simply by going higher as the summer advances and then gradually descending, again later in the year as do the shepherds and their flocks, following the melting snow upward until in autumn the new snow drives them down again. It is fascinating thus to follow spring from the valley into the hills, to be always level with the first new blossoms until at last you come up to the passes, the winter snow clearing ever before you, and a rich carpet of mountain flowers ever about your feet—wild flowers

that have gone from the places where you camped only a fortnight earlier.

Autumn gives you the small game shooting, and there are few better ways of spending the last week in September than in shooting the chikor—the Himalayan partridge —over the hills around the Wular lake when the birds are not yet as gun-shy as they become later in the season. In October you can get the fighting duck, for the Wular is one of the halting places of the myriads of duck who come down into India for the winter months from their breeding grounds in the far North. For fishing, however, the earlier months are better.

Should you feel that you want a holiday and that Kashmir will fill your bill, and surely you will be hard to please if one or other of its varied aspect, does not fit your taste, the question arises of how to get there. There are, of course, many ways in for those who like to take the mountain tracks and travel slowly with their baggage on pony or coolie. But nowadays in this hurried life few of us can afford the time for that—if we are going to camp or march we want to do it in or from Kashmir and not on the way there. So the only two routes worth considering are the motor roads, the main Jhelum valley road and the Banihal route from Jammu which was only opened a few years ago.

I he Jhelum valley road is the more commonly used and may be reached from either Pindi or Abbottabad for

which the railway station is Haripur. The first passes over the Murree hill at an altitude of 6,500 feet, and then drops again to the Jhelum river at Kohala. The Abbottabad route joins the Jhelum valley one at Domel, twenty miles beyond Kohaku The length of each is about the same, a shade under 200 miles and a good car will do it in the day but two days is preferable and there are many good rest houses en route where one may pass the night.

The Banihal route takes off at Jammu and is about the same distance, reaching Srinagar from the East instead of from the West. The scenery of the Jhelum valley

road is very fine as one swings along under great limestone cliffs with the river boiling its way down below one’s feet—rushing water carrying the great logs, tree trunks hewn from the Kashmir forests and water-borne to India for distribution. The logs are marked in Kashmir, thrown into the stream and then weeks, sometimes months, later taken out again at Jhelum, and they bring in a big revenue to the State to whom all the forests belong.

Practically all the way from Kohala, some seventy miles from Pindi to Baramula, the road has been a hundred miles of mountain-enclosed gorge, but at Baramula the valley suddenly opens out and one passes into the ever widening expanse of the true Vale of Kashmir, the river changing from a fast flowing torrent to a slow-paced stream between lush meadows, bearing many boats on its surface, while on the other bank stands a fascinating crazy looking wooden town, utterly different from the mud-built Eastern villages you have seen everywhere else in India. Far away on the Horizon rises a long chain of snowy peaks and all about are trees, poplar and willow, mulberry, walnut and great chenar, and if it be springtime orchards gay with fruit blossom and masses of white and blue iris everywhere among the green fields, while the roofs of the houses will be gay with flowers.

Hidden from the actual road, but easily discernible from any of the low hills on either side, away to your left lies the great sheet of water of the Wular lake with high above it the 16,000 feet snow summit of sacred Harancukp, the second highest mountain in Kashmir. If you like you may abandon your car at Baramula and take to a houseboat at once—it will be wise to have ordered it down from Srinagar—and, fringing the Wular lake, do the remaining thirty miles into the capital by water. There is hardly anything so wonderfully beautiful as the dawn coming up over the Wular even from a lazily moving houseboat. You watch the sky coming to golden life and all the snows of Ivajnag range and the Pir Panjal, through whose gorges you have come, flushing into warm rose from the still hidden sun above the cobalt and mauve shadows of the hidden lower hills until at last the sun's rays strike on the snow and fling them up clear and sharp against the cloudless sky. As you drift along silently among the slightly rippled waters, steel and lilac waters among rich green of water plants, and if it is July or August, among floating drifts of the great pink lotus flowers, you will get, as perhaps never again so vividly, a real lasting impression of the opening charm of Kashmir— the first charm which is perhaps one of its strongest—

although year after year if you seek you will find fresh charm after fresh charm ever newly revealed.

If you wield a rod you may dally above Sopur on your way into Srinagar and try your luck for the mahseer— the biggest of all Indian fish and a fighter whose weight runs up to a hundred pounds and more. Or you may content yourself with the smaller fish and lazily toy with light line for clmsh and chiru and other local inhabitants of the water.

Should you be a painter you will find the days all too short and your palette too utterly limited, to compete with all the wondrous wealth of colour spread out around you with lavish hand—the infinite variety of colour of the ever changing hills and waters—the dawns and sunsets, the endless types of blossom including all the wild flowers of home that you meet almost nowhere else in all the East.

Leaving the Wular lake you come presently to Sumbhal either following the main stream of the Jhelum which flows through the Wular or else by the Neru canal where if you feel energetic, you may leave your boat for a while and walk along two paths reminiscent of those at home, under heavy drooping willow and great mulberry and walnut trees.

Should you feel that time is nothing and dream gardens much, than halt at Sumbhal for a day and visit Manasbal lake, one of the most beautiful of Kashmir lakes where still sleeps the old ruined garden of Lalla Rukh—famous from Moore’s poem.

Next day you will reach Srinagar, and your boat will be poled up slowly through the crowded town whose quaint wood and brick houses line the water front—a regular city of waters linked by seven bridges of varying dates from old, old timber structures in typical Kashmir style such as may be seen all over the country, to the first bridge—the Amira Kadal—a modem stone and iron structure. Above this lies the European quarter of Srinagar, with endless little waterways where boats may tie up for weeks and months on end—grassy spaces shaded with immense chenar trees—first brought from Persia by Nur Jehan, the lady of Jehangir—where you may, if you prefer, change your boat for a tent. Or best of all make your way into the great lake of Srinagar, the Dal, a big expanse of clearest rush-fringed water largely lotus-grown and surrounded by old gardens of Moghul times under a wall of hills whose highest summit, Mahadev, 12,000 feet, stands up, sharp cut snow against the translucent sky.

Moored round the shores of the lake, which is about five miles long, in the season there will be perhaps a couple of hundred houseboats whose inhabitants lead the arcadian life—bathing, lazing, and idling generally, and making endless water excursions in the little Kashmir shikaras—sort of punt canoes. On the north-west shore are the two most famous of the Moghul gardens in Kashmir, the Nishat and the Shalimar. The Shalimar was the Emperor’s garden, the Nishat was that of the Empress Nur Jehan and each in its own way is beautiful—most beautiful, with fretted marble water slides, long fountain filled water channels, masses and masses of flowers all through the summer, lilac and rose and a hundred more, with chenars of immense size casting their shade over velvet lawns where you may lie and gaze over the clear waters of the Dal to the distant snow-capped hills.

If you like colour and life and animation generally, then go to the gardens of a Sunday, when the fountains will all be playing and the gardens thronged with the inhabitants of Srinagar in the most gorgeous of raiment. The Kashmiri like all Easterns, loves holidays and colours and the women’s garments vie with the clustered flower beds. Moreover with few exceptions the Kashmiri women, although Muhammedan, are unveiled, and they live up to their historic reputation of beauty.

On other days you can wander on the waterways of the city and once you are inured to the smells of an Eastern town built upon a river you will really enjoy yourself if you have any sense of the picturesque. Moreover, you are among a laughing people which is rare in India. The Kashmiri man and woman and especially child enjoys fife thoroughly and laughs over it which is strange because it is sometimes hard and by our standards he is poor—very poor for all that he is no longer oppressed as he was for so many centuries. You may visit the old buildings of the city, the old mosques, and see the workmen carving, embroidering, weaving or hammering out silverware in the way that they have done from father to son for countless generations.

Should you prefer, from time to time to return among your own kind, then there is a club, golf links, polo, tennis and all the various kinds of social amenities of civilisation, including dancing and jazz teas.

In July and August, however, Srinagar is hot and most people who can, get away from it, either to pursue the festive round in hut and hotel at Gulmarg, thirty miles away and three thousand feet up in the Fir Panjal.or

else to tented life at Pahlgam in the Lid-dar Valley. Would you rather remain in your Noah’s-ark-like houseboat; however, you may have it towed to Gandarbal and moor there alongside a grassy space shaded by huge chenar trees where the Sind river pours down from the snows and the grey ice water cools the air a good many degrees.

If so you will drift down stream again slowly until you come to Shadi-pur—'the city of the wedding ’—where the Jhelum and Sind rivers marry, and then work up the Sind itself towards the great hills which close in on the Sind valley.

Through the Sind valley runs the main trade route to Central Asia and at Gandarbal you may watch the caravans coming and going—the strings of laden ponies or sometimes of little diminutive oxen-like creatures showing more or less traces of their forbears, the great yaks of the high passes, laden with the tea and silks of China or the felts of Yarkand and Kashgaria, or outward bound with all the products of India, Europe and America matches, kerosene oil, cotton cloth and cheap lamps.

Should the wanderlust be in your blood, you may hire a few baggage ponies and take the road yourself—

a road in name for the most part, a mere pony track over grassy margs and along the sides of the rushing Sind waters, over old moraines, and long snow slides in the shadows of immense limestone gorges canopied with great fir trees. You will follow the slow stages up the rich Sind valley, past Kangan and Gund, Kulan and Gagangir, among smiling fields of rice under great wooded mountains, thick with forest of pine and fire and birch, lazing away the noonday hours by the side of little rivulets of old clear water under great walnut trees until in time you come at last to the glacier valley of Sonamarg and find again the tented camps of those who have fled from the heat of the lower valley. Here at 8,500 feet you will almost have caught up Spring again, and find blossom starred margs, little mountain alps, where come the nomadic gugar shepherds and their flocks. If you thirst after snow and glacier and the call of ice axe and rope, all around you are mountains running up to close on

16,000 feet, to be scaled, glaciers to be crossed, or pleasant forest rambles on the lower slopes of lazy days in the intervals of serious climbing. A short day’s march forward from Sonamarg will bring you to Baltal under the foot of the Zoji La whence the road leads out of Kashmir.

Baltal lies among thick groves of birch and is one of the most wildly lovely places in Kashmir. Here you may camp and make more excursions, climb up over the Zoji La's 11,500 ft. pass and from the Kain Pathri snow fields look back on the Sind valley and forward over the gaunt treeless hills of Purigh.

Or again you may pitch your tents in twenty different glades in the Sind, to climb the mountains on either side and explore the little used passes of the divides between the Sind and Lidar rivers, or between the Sind and the Salnai—passes that will for the most part be all your own, where even in summer your foot will be the first to tread the white blanket of snow and from whose summits you will have mountain views worth many days and weeks of marching.

Or you may prefer to go up stream from Srinagar and after three days’ slow towing, past Pampur, Avantipur and Bijbehara, leave your houseboat at Islamabad and in either motor or tonga drive the thirty odd miles through Eishmakam to Pahlgam and thence take pony or coolie transport up the East or West Liddar valleys. The West Liddar will bring you after two days to the snout of the big Kolahoi glacier which lies at the foot of the great Kolahoi Peak, the highest mountain

in Kashmir proper, 17,800 feet, a magnificent rock tooth with one side almost

4,000 feet sheer. Here camping at an altitude of 11,000 or so, you may make subsidiary explorations among the glaciers and ice falls and find new passes back to the Sind valley which lies only a few miles away over the divide,skirting glacier lakes of the most wonderful emerald hue set in little valleys gemmed with myriad wild flowers.

The East Liddar will bring you to lake Shisha Nag and the cave of Amarnath, most holy of Kashmir Hindu pilgrimage places, save perhaps only for the    lake    of    Gangabal    under    Mount Haramukh

where the devout Hindu mourner brings the ashes and finger bones of his deceased relative and casts them    into    the    lake    to    ensure    favourable rebirth

in the chain of life. Gangabal lake, under the Haramukh glaciers is a gem and a gem also is the halting place of Nara Nag which is the first march out of the Sind valley on the Gangabal track—ruined temples of old, old days set far from any human habitation in a forest glade with a mountain background of snow peaks and nearer hills of fir and pine.

A Landscape.

On the other side of the Jhelum also you may make endless excursions into the hills either from Gulmarg or the lower places, though perhaps the northern side is the more beautiful and certainly the better known. Or you may cross the beautiful Wular and go out into the Lolab valley.

Do you fish, do you shoot, do you paint, climb hills or collect wild flowers or birds or butterflies, or do you merely want to laze in arcadian surroundings, Kashmir will supply your wants as perhaps no other country can do in so many varied ways. Above all it will give you the feeling of being in your own kingdom—undisfigured by funicular railways, picture post cards kiosks, and all the blatant excrescences that now disfigure the beautiful places of Europe.

And it is all reasonably easy, because much of Kashmir lives largely for and on the visitor—you can hire anything and everything—transport, tents, camp furniture, boats, from large electrically lit houseboats to fight draught dungas or the still fighter matted dungas used by the bachelor in search of big game who wants to move his kit by water and have a headquarters from which to make expeditions into the hills—long barges with roof and sides of rush matting.

Servants of all types may be got and so long as one does not expect over much honesty in the matter of accounts, and one keeps one’s store boxes locked, they will serve one well—marching hard and working hard and producing marvellous meals from nowhere boy scout fashion. The further removed they are from contact with Europeans the better they are apt to be—the men of Srinagar are probably the worst, those of the outer valleys the best, and better still the folk from further afield, more particularly the Ladakhis, pigtailed Thibetan Buddhists, a laughing cheerful hard working and amazingly honest folk.

Should you presently find Kashmir too tame and want something wilder then take the Central Asian road and push on into Ladakh to Leh, three weeks’ march from Srinagar and to come into what, in every way except politically, is Thibet — land of monasteries and lamas, of quaint images and quainter customs, of devil dancers and prayer banners, of prayer wheels and polyandry. There you will find the real high snows, the

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Krailipa.

valleys whose rivers run at 11,000 feet and’whose mountains tower another ro.ooo feet above the rivers, where the roads are mere tracks over great snow and glacier passes, 16,000 and 17,000 feet high and from the summit of whose lower hills at 18,000 and 19,000 you look up

4,000 and 5,000 feet above you to the crests of the giants, ice bound since the dawn of history.

Or follow the road eastward from Leh along the great lakes of the Thibetan border and come to lands where houses are all unknown and men live in little black yak-hair tents while their sole wealth is flocks of thick fleeced sheep and droves of great yaks and they light their fires of yak-dung from the flint and steel that swing at their coarse woven girdles.

Or turn westward into the lower valleys of Baltistan, where the moun tains run almost as high and the rivers run in stupendous gorges and the folk are no longer Buddhist but Muhammadans albeit that their slit eyes and high cheekbones still show the Moghul blood that has filtered in through the ages with invasion after invasion.

Thus will you learn the true charm of the road, camping each day in some new place, lying out at —r.    ' "

Sansar Nag, Liddar Valley, Kashmir

Mount Kolohoi from Generbal, Sind, Valley, Kashmir

night watching the stars swing up over the mountains with the acrid wood smoke ' your nostrils—the good scent of evening cooking fires, living as men and women of your own race used to five, and as the folk of these lands still do, owning nothing but what you and your beasts can carry, no thought of office or post or anything except the open road in the fresh dawn, the midday meal by the road side, the charm of the evening camping place, and the chat with the chance found wayfarer.

Like you folklore and quaint customs ? These lands are full of them—every turn in the roadway, almost every person you meet, will show you something of interest, something that gives food for thought if you are interested in mankind. And all the while you can reflect that the ages have dropped away, that you see the world of a thousand years and two thousand years ago in being, that should Alexander or Caesar or Marco Polo meet you marching along with your string-harnessed ponies and your homespun clad men, it would be you with your queer ways that would puzzle them and not your following.

Like you solitude ? You may have it in Kashmir day after day and week after week. Like you company ? .    .    . It is there within call whenever you want it.

Are you fond of old buildings ? They are scattered up and down Kashmir, ruins of great old temples of carved stones of enormous size built in Greek fashion in a Greek landscape of riotous colour and great snow hills, built by forgotten peoples who had absorbed something of the glory of Greece in the days when Northern India was a satrapy of the Persian Empire and the Macedonians gathered it into their hold and Hellenic art swept over half of Asia to leave its traces in the dying sands of the great deserts beyond the great Karakorum on the further side of Ladakh as it had left them in the rich vale of Peshawar—the land of ancient Gandhara.

Martand temple, only a mile off the main Lidar valley road, is perhaps the finest example of all the ruins and must have been magnificent before it was ruined by the iconoclast Muhammadan King, Sikandar. But Shikast —‘breaker of images’— set as it is on a height looking out towards the eternal snows and catching the first rays of the rising sun, even to-day in ruin holds you spellbound as you catch your first glimpse of the great stone pillars that would tax a modem engineer to swing up into place, and consider the artistic marvel of the site.

There are endless books on Kashmir, innumerable also the pictures that one sees of it. Those who have never been there expostulate, the colouring is too impossibly beautiful to be true. Those of us who know Kashmir well expostulate also but in different terms—we complain that the pictures are drab and dull compared to the real thing. No living man can set down fully in our crude mediums the beauties that nature has spread about Kashmir with such a prodigal hand.

HINTS TO TRAVELLERS

The best period for visiting India is during the Winter months, that is December, January and February, when the days are bright and warm and the nights can be distinctly cold, to the extent that the early riser will find his teeth chattering and in Central India, the Punjab and the North-West Frontier hoar frost on the ground. Should the traveller arrive in India before November or stay in the country later than March, he must then expect to have the tropical sun exert its sway.

When travelling in India in Winter, it is necessary to have a supply of both warm clothing for night wear and light clothing for the day. Overcoats and rugs should also be kept handy. Light tweed or flannel suits can be worn until 5 o’clock in the afternoon. Bedding consisting of a “razai” pillows, two sheets and a blanket, is also essential.

For those to whom expense is not of primary importance and who wish to be independent of hotels, comfortable tourist cars can be reserved. This means that you have your own personal servants and their direct continuous service, your private parlour and bedroom throughout the trip; the meals you wish for cooked in any way you want them and you can dictate the menu in the same way as you would do in your own house. Tourist cars which are available give the maximum space and room possible for the comfort of their occupants.

The appointments are luxurious ; the saloon has fittings and upholstery specially designed for Indian requirements; the bathrooms with their white-tiled floors and walls, white enamelled baths with shower; the sleeping apartments with their bedsteads, and the pile carpets make “travel-de-luxe” a live-wire possibility for you.

The cars are fitted with electric fans, and electric lights and electric bells in all the rooms communicating with the servants quarters. The kitchen has a well-arranged cooking stove and an electric exhaust fan to keep the room cool. Filtered water is available and all appointments are similar to those of a high class kitchen.

There are different types of tourist cars, viz., 4 wheeler, 4 wheeled bogies and 6 wheeled bogies. The hire charges vary from Rs. 16 to Rs. 30 per car per day, and the cost of haulage varies from 12 as. per mile to Re. 1-8 per mile. If a tourist car is returned empty to its destination, the charge varies from 4 as. to 10 as. per mile. A free allowance of luggage is made of from 10 maunds to 25 maunds, according to the type of car.

Below will be found a sketch plan showing one of the latest touriug cars. This car will accommodate 8 tourists and 8 servants.

To give an idea of the cost of reserving a bogie tourist saloon (eight berths) the charge which would be levied for a journey from Bombay to Delhi and back (1,730 miles at the charge of Re. 1-4-0 per mile per car plus 4 days’ hire charge) would be Rs. 2,262-8-0. Eight Servants are allowed free. For each day’s halt at intermediate stations the additional charge would be Rs. 25 per diem only. A tourist car can be attached to mail trains and expresses. Catering arrangements in these tourist cars can be undertaken by railway refreshment room and dining car contractors at a reasonable cost, thus saving the tourist considerably time and labour. Detailed information in regard to contemplated tours, fares, timings, etc., can be obtained on application to the Chief Publicity Officer, Indian State Railways, Victoria Terminus, Bombay.

Distances between the Chief Places in India and the Main Ports and the Approximate Time occupied by the Journey by Rail.

Government cf India State Railways Department

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Tourists’ Map or India

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