PRELIMINARIES
The next day was Sunday--not a good day on which to start preparations.
I had a great many things to do. The first was to visit the civil
surgeon, and be examined for fitness for residing in high altitudes. He
lived at the top of a steep hill himself, and as I arrived there on foot
but alive, he passed me without difficulty. Then my pony who had come
with me had to be despatched with the syce on two double marches to the
railway terminus. Then I had to procure free railway passes from the
station staff officer, whose office, the day being Sunday, was of course
closed. There was also the putting of oneself, on the one hand, and
one's wife and family on the other, on sound financial bases,
preparatory to an indefinite period of separation. There was also a lot
of sorting and packing to be done, and farewell visits to be made, where
these were officially expected of one. (One's real friends, of course,
one left without a thought.)
I got off on the Monday. People at home are often horror-struck at the
speed with which the married officer has to leave his family when
ordered on service. Fond parents have been known to forbid their
daughters marrying soldiers on this very account. They are quite wrong.
Given that you have to separate, it is much better to get the separation
over as quickly as possible. In this case the speed with which those
busy thirty-six hours passed between the receipt of the telegram and my
departure was a real godsend. A long-drawn-out anticipation of
separation would by comparison have been intolerable.
My wife came to the top of the road that leads to the plains to see me
off. The quickest mode of conveyance was the 'rickshaw.' There ought to
be some glamour of romance about a wife seeing her husband off to the
wars, but how could there be when the husband started in a rickshaw? I
stepped solemnly into the vehicle, and an officious 'jampani' tried to
tuck me up with a rug as though I had been something very dainty and
precious, while my wife, who still preserves a critical eye for Indian
manners and customs, exclaims:--
'Oh dear, oh dear, this is a funny country, when one's husband starts
for field service in a perambulator!'
The rickshaw carried me at break-neck pace to the plains, where, with my
ears singing from the sudden drop of 6,000 feet, and the heat oppressing
me, I took train to my former station, to which I had to make a detour
before proceeding to the base.
It was a terrible two days that I had here. Dismantling a furnished
house, packing and warehousing your household goods, paying your
outstanding bills, having parting drinks at your friends' expense,
giving certificates of saintly character to every black man who has ever
served you in any capacity during the past two years, and who drops from
the clouds for his 'chitthi' as soon as your final departure from the
station becomes known, sorting, repairing, and supplementing your camp
kit, fitting out yourself, your servant, and your horse with warm
clothing--these and countless other matters filled to the brim those
forty-eight hours.
At last I was in the train for Calcutta. I met two major-generals of my
acquaintance at different points during the journey. They both
congratulated me warmly on the quest upon which I was going, each
independently remarking, not upon the unexampled professional experience
that I was likely to acquire, but on the fact that Tibet was an A1 place
for curios! Nice and human of them, I thought, to put that first! One
of them, I fear, was rather incommoded by the numerous articles of kit
which I had with me in the carriage, and which overflowed somewhat into
his portion of it. He was, I knew, a great authority on the scientific
reduction of transport, and, when I apologised somewhat sheepishly for
crowding him, made some grim remark about the liberal scale of baggage
per officer that was doubtless being allowed to us; so I had to impress
upon him that I stood an even chance of being kept at the base, and so
had to be prepared for all emergencies, even a ten days' leave to
Darjiling. Whereat he smiled more grimly than ever.
Don't travel from Northern India to Calcutta in May, if you can help it.
It is not very hot when you start, but every mile you travel you find it
growing hotter. You get baked as you traverse the dry plains of the
United Provinces, you get fried as you reach a greasier climate further
South, and in the humid atmosphere of Lower Bengal the sensation is
that of being boiled. You get out of the train in Howrah station at
Calcutta done all to shreds.
After a few hours in Calcutta I took the Darjiling mail train which was
due the following morning at Siliguri, the latter being the base of the
Tibet Expedition. In the train I was accompanied by a throng of Calcutta
folk going up to Darjiling for their 'week-end.' Calcutta, apart from
other attributes, is a great emporium of drapery and millinery goods,
and it was quite natural to find myself sharing a carriage with a
gentleman who in the course of conversation revealed himself as the head
of a large firm of haberdashers. He was a delightful travelling
companion, and regaled me with tales illustrative of the humorous side
of his business. He was at his best when describing his most successful
corset fitter, a damsel blessed apparently both with a slim waist and a
strong arm. With the former she advertised the latest thing in corsets,
and with the latter she fitted the said corset on to figures less
graceful than her own. All went well till one day she surpassed herself
by transforming a certain stately matron into a veritable sylph. This
lady went home pleased and proud, but in an hour's time an indignant
letter accompanied by the fragments of a corset reached the manager, the
letter demanding the return of the money expended on the corset, on the
ground that the latter, on the wearer having cleared her throat with a
gentle cough, had burst in several places with a loud report.
But just then the train steamed into Siliguri station, and I had to
leave my friend and his pleasant tales of frills and furbelows and
plunge into war, bloody war.