At the railway station at Darjeeling you find plenty of cab-substitutes
--open coffins, in which you sit, and are then borne on men's shoulders up
the steep roads into the town.
Up there we found a fairly comfortable hotel, the property of an
indiscriminate and incoherent landlord, who looks after nothing, but
leaves everything to his army of Indian servants. No, he does look after
the bill--to be just to him--and the tourist cannot do better than follow
his example. I was told by a resident that the summit of Kinchinjunga is
often hidden in the clouds, and that sometimes a tourist has waited
twenty-two days and then been obliged to go away without a sight of it.
And yet went not disappointed; for when he got his hotel bill he
recognized that he was now seeing the highest thing in the Himalayas.
But this is probably a lie.
After lecturing I went to the Club that night, and that was a comfortable
place. It is loftily situated, and looks out over a vast spread of
scenery; from it you can see where the boundaries of three countries come
together, some thirty miles away; Thibet is one of them, Nepaul another,
and I think Herzegovina was the other.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79