# St. Nicholas/Volume 41/Number 1/Traveling in India

Imagine spending the whole night in the train to go one or two hundred miles! Imagine, also, A BULLOCK CART. everybody's surprise if some traveler should attempt to take with him into an American sleeping-car a roll of bedding, a box of ice, sawdust, and bottles of soda-water, a huge lunch-basket, spirit-lamps, umbrella-cases, hat-boxes, suitcases and bags without number, a talkative parrot, and a folding chair or two! He would be thought quite mad, of course, and would not be allowed to enter the car. Yet this is how people travel in the trains of India. Sometimes, to be sure, the chairs and noisy parrot are left at home, but quite as often golf-sticks and a folding cot are substituted. Native travelers often carry their cooking utensils and stoves with them. No one is in a hurry, and the train often waits quite long enough at stations for them to install their stoves on the platform, and cook a good dish of rice.
Most trains have first-, second-, and third-class carriages. Europeans and Americans usually travel first-class, for the best in India is bad enough when compared with the luxuries of travel in Western countries. Most of the carriages are about half as long as those in America, and divided into two compartments without a corridor, each having a lavatory at one end. Running along each side of the compartment, just under the windows, is a long, leather-covered bench, which serves as a seat during the day, and a berth at night. It is equally uncomfortable in both capacities. Above this, folded up against the side of the car, is a leather-covered shelf that lets down to form the upper berth.
My first experience in Indian trains was at night. My turbaned servant arranged my bedding on a bench in a compartment reserved for ladies, switched on an electric fan, salaamed, and went off to find his place in a servants’ compartment adjoining. Most trains have special compartments for servants. It is impossible to travel comfortably in India without native servants.
While I was in the dressing-room, preparing for the night, I heard a noise outside, and, looking out, saw an old man with a lantern, down on his knees looking under the berths. He said that he was looking for me, that he was afraid I had missed the train,
Finally, after a great ringing of bells, tooting of whistles, waving of lanterns, and chattering ​ A GROUP OF EKKAS—A WRETCHED SORT OF CONVEYANCE USED THROUGHOUT INDIA. of natives, we pulled out into the darkness and heat. The electric fan burred, mosquitos hummed and bit, the train rocked wildly from side to side.
I was just dozing off, when lights were flashed in my eyes. More bells, whistles, and chattering natives! The door burst open, and an Englishman ordered his man to put his luggage in the compartment. I called out that it was reserved for ladies, and he disappeared with a “Sorry!”
Out into the darkness again, only to be aroused at the next station by the guard, who shouted, “Tickets, please!” The night was one prolonged nightmare of heat, noise, jolting, and mosquitos. By five, I was beginning to sleep, when I was startled by a cry of “Chota Hazree!” I sat up in alarm, wondering what those dreadful-sounding words could mean, when the shutters by my head were suddenly lowered, and a tray of toast and tea thrust in at me. I accepted it, and gave up all idea of sleep. The dreadful-sounding words, I found, meant “little breakfast.”
Sometimes we had our meals from a tiffin basket which we carried with us, sometimes from a restaurant car, or again at the station café while the train waited, and sometimes, when all of these failed us, not at all. During the winter, traveling was more comfortable. It was so cold that we needed heavy rugs over us. Some of the express-trains go from twenty to thirty miles an hour. Each time that the train stops, there is great confusion. The natives arrive at the station hours ahead of time. Here they squat patiently until the train arrives, when they quite lose their heads. In an attempt to find places in the crowded carriages, they run excitedly up and down the platform, clinging to one another, clutching at their clumsy luggage, and screaming at their servants and the trainmen. Equally agitated groups pour out of the cars and scurry off to find bullock carts or ekkas to drive them to the town, which is usually some distance from the station. Boys and women with sweets, fruit, drinking-water, toys, cheap.jewelry, and various articles of native production cry their wares at the car windows. Others sell newspapers, which are apt to be weeks old, if the purchaser does not insist upon seeing the date. The platform ​presents a riot of strange costumes, bright colors, quick-moving figures with jingling bangles and anklets, unholy odors, and clamorous sounds.
At the stations, we were met in different parts of India by the greatest imaginable variety of conveyances—carriages with footmen and drivers in state livery, sent by the native princes, hotel and public carriages after models never dreamed of in America, bullock carts, elephants, camels, rickshaws, and, in Calcutta and Bombay, by taxi-automobiles.
When your driver starts off down the street at a reckless gait, clanging a bell in the floor of the carriage with his foot, and a boy on a step at the back calls out “Talivay!” as you bowl along, you wonder if you have not taken, by mistake, a police wagon or an ambulance. But it is all right: you hear the same shouting and clanging of bells from all the other carriages along the route. This noise is necessary to make the idlers who stroll along the streets hand in hand get out of the way of the carriages.
There are so many horses in India that one A HAUGHTY MEMBER OF THE CAMEL CORPS. wonders why any one should ever walk, and, in fact, very few do. They are of all grades, differing as much as docs the shabbiest beggar from the most gorgeous raja. The conveyances to which they are harnessed range from the rickety public ekkas to the royal gold and silver coaches used A PARTY OF AMERICANS MOUNTING AN ELEPHANT. on state occasions. One secs these wretched-looking public carriages that can be hired for a few cents filled with lazy natives and pulled along by a poor little pony that looks as if it were half-starved. Contrasting with these poor, over-worked creatures are the thoroughbreds which literally die in the stables of the princes for lack of exercise.
When we were visiting in the native states, the chiefs sometimes offered us saddle-horses. The first time I rode one of these, I started off gaily, nothing fearing. From a gentle canter my mount suddenly broke into a dead run. Supposing that horses in all countries understood the same language, I said “Whoa,” first mildly, persuasively, then loudly, imploringly: but without the slightest effect. On he sped faster and faster, until he overtook another horse, apparently a friend of his, for he slowed down to a walk beside it. I learned afterward that a sound similar to that used in America to make a horse go is used in India to make him stop. So the poor dear did not understand in the least my frantic cries of "Whoa!”
The only other swift-moving animal that it was my misfortune to encounter in India was a camel. This was in the north, in the desert of Rajputana. We were going to visit some tombs about five miles from the city. The others went in carriages, but I preferred to try the “fleet-footed camel” The creature knelt docilely enough to let me climb into the saddle back of ​the driver; then he unfolded his many-jointed legs and rose, throwing me forward and backward in a most uncomfortable manner.
He walked haughtily about the grounds of the guest-house a few minutes, turning up his nose at everybody, then suddenly let his hind legs collapse, almost throwing me off. The driver succeeded in making him understand that there was no use making a fuss, that he would have to take us. Off across the desert he started, at a gait so rough that I know of nothing with which to compare it. At first, I tried to hold to the saddle, but it was too slippery, so there was nothing to do but to throw my arms about the driver, and hang on to him with all my might. I returned in a carriage!
At Mpysore and several other places, we saw camel-carriages. They make a queer sight, these ungainly, loose-jointed animals shambling along in the harness. In Bikanir, we watched the camel corps drill. The natives in this part of India are very finely built men, and they look most imposing in their gaily colored uniforms CAMEL-CARRIANGES OF THE LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF THE PUNJAB. and turbans as they sit erect on the arrogant camels who snub even their masters.
There are so many slow, lazy ways of traveling in India that it is difficult to say which is the slowest.
Perhaps the builocks, when they walk, are the A JUTKA, A PUBLIC CONVEYANCE SEEN IN MADRAS. slowest of all. They do, however, sometimes trot, and that at a rather brisk pace. They are beautiful animals, and very different from those in America. Their skin is wonderfully soft and silky. Between their shoulders is a large gristly hump. From their chin down between their fore legs hangs a loose, flabby fold of skin.
​ THE PUSH-PUSH, A STREET CONVEYANCE OF PONDICHERRY.
Of these, the most beautiful are the huge white bulls sacred to the Hindu god Shiva. These lead a life of leisure and luxury. They roam about the streets unmolested, eating from the fruit and vegetable stalls at will. Some are housed in the temples of the god.
Those who are not so lucky as to be held sacred have a rather hard time of it. They do most of the heavy hauling, and often suffer very cruel treatment from their drivers. In fact. no other animal is so much the victim of the cruelty and ignorance of the natives as these poor bullocks.
We drove in all sorts of curious-looking conveyances behind these somewhat refractory creatures. Once we drove out into a desolate region to visit some deserted temples, seated on the floor of a bullock cart with an arched cover of plaited bamboo over us. The men along the road walked faster than our bullocks, which went so slowly that, had it not been for the jolting of the cart, we would scarcely have known that we were moving.
In the southernmost part of the peninsula, along the Malabar coast, where there are no trains, we traveled in cabin-boats rowed by natives. It took them all night to row from Quilan to Travandrum, about fifty miles along the back-water. They sang from the moment they began to row, timing the stroke of the oar to the rhythm of their song. In the morning, they appeared as smiling and fresh as they had the evening before when we started.
In Madras, we rode in rickshaws like those of China and Japan. In many parts of India, men take the place of animals, both in carrying people and in transporting cargo. Several times we were carried up mountains in dholies by coolies. These dholies consist of a scat swung between two poles by ropes. They are carried by two or four men, who trot off up the hill with the poles resting on their shoulders, while the passenger dangles between them. They used to come down the mountains so fast that we were quite terrified. The seat would twist and sway, hit against trees, graze along the side of rocks, while our porters would dance along, talking and laughing, without paying the slightest attention to us. Then there are various kinds of pushcarts used in different parts of the country.
At Jaipur, Gwalior, and a number of other towns where there is a fort on a hill, elephants can be hired for the ascension. The huge creatures knelt down while we clambered into the howdah with the aid of ladders. When they rose, it seemed like an earthquake to us on their backs. They climbed the hill so slowly that the others of the party who walked arrived ahead of us. Our huthi would smell about carefully with his trunk before taking each step, then he would put a huge foot forward cautiously, and throw his great weight onto it slowly, as if afraid that the earth would give way under him. It took him so long to accommodate his four feet to cach step, that I was thankful he had not as many as a centiped.
To appreciate an elephant in all his glory, one should see him in the splendor of princely procession. Designs in bright colors are painted on his forehead and trunk, trappings of silver ornament his tusks, head, and ankles, a rich cloth of gold and silver embroidery hangs over his colossal sides, and on his back is perched a rare howdah, often of gold and silver, with silk hangings. Aloft in the howdah rides the prince, resplendent with gold, silk, and jewels. In front, on the elephant’s neck, sits the mahout, urging him on with strange-sounding grunts, and prods from a short, pointed spear.
The elephants are reserved for state occasions. Most of the princes now have automobiles, which they look upon much as a child does its latest toy. The mass of the people depend upon the bullocks and horses to cart them about. There are now, also, in most parts of the empire, telephones and telegraphs: but they are such ancient systems and so unreliable that they are not to be compared with ours. India is through and through a lazy country, where nobody is in a hurry.