The railway that wasn't finished

The Great Indian Peninsula Railway runs from Bombay to Calcutta, or so the newspapers of London had assured me, the Morning Chronicle among them. I had no reason to doubt it. I had a ticket that said Calcutta on it and a brigadier-general who said the same. It was not until eight o'clock on Tuesday morning, in a clearing at a place called Kholby, that I learned the newspapers had been premature.

01 Across the Ghats

The train left Bombay at eight on Sunday evening, crossed the island and the mainland flats in the dark, and climbed through the night into the Western Ghats, where the line winds about the hills in a manner that Andrew Stuart, as an engineer, would have admired. Sir Francis Cromarty and I played whist with a third gentleman until he left us at a station whose name I did not catch, and thereafter talked a little.

Sir Francis is a man of about fifty who has spent most of his life in India and knows it as well as any Englishman can. He had heard of my wager on the Mongolia, and he told me plainly that he thought it an eccentric use of twenty thousand pounds and of eighty days, and that a man who travelled round the world without looking at it would have done as well to stay at home. I said I had not set out to look at it. He said that was precisely his complaint. We got on very well.

By daylight on Monday we were running across the high plain past Nassik, among fields of cotton and coffee and sugar cane, with palm trees and villages and now and then a temple on a hill. Passepartout, at the window, had recovered his spirits and was taking it all in. At Burhampoor, where we stopped for twenty minutes, he bought himself a pair of slippers embroidered with false pearls, and wore them with great pride for the rest of the day. He had decided, he told me, that he was going to enjoy India at last, and that his master's wager was the most remarkable thing that had ever happened to him.

02 Kholby

At eight o'clock on Tuesday the 22nd of October, about fifteen miles past Rothal, the train ran into a clearing among some bungalows and workmen's huts and stopped. The guard walked along the carriages calling for everyone to get out. Passepartout went to find out why and came back looking as though he had been struck.

The line, he reported, came to an end here. Between Kholby and Allahabad, where it began again, there were fifty miles of country with no rails across them at all. The newspapers had announced the opening of the whole line some weeks too soon. The railway company had not announced anything, on the reasonable ground that it was not finished. Every passenger aboard knew this, it appeared, except the ones who had come from London.

Sir Francis was very angry, and said several things about the company that I will not repeat. I was not angry. I told him I had expected some obstacle of this kind to present itself sooner or later, and that it was the reason I had been glad of my two days in hand. He asked whether I meant to say I had foreseen it. I said I had foreseen something. He looked at me for a while and then laughed, for the first time since Bombay.

The other passengers, who knew the line better, had already seized every means of travelling that Kholby possessed: carts drawn by oxen, a kind of carriage on four wheels pulled by zebus, palanquins, ponies. Within a quarter of an hour of our arrival there was nothing left in the village with legs or wheels. I proposed that we walk. Passepartout looked at his slippers, which were not made for fifty miles, and said nothing. He went off instead into the village, and came back twenty minutes later with his face alight. He had found an elephant.

03 The price of an elephant

The elephant belonged to a man who lived a few hundred yards from the station, and its name was Kiouni. He was large, calm, in excellent health, and, I was told, unusually fast for his kind. He was standing in an enclosure behind his owner's house eating branches when we came to look at him. The owner came out and was very civil. He was not, however, inclined to part with Kiouni.

I asked whether I might hire him. I offered ten pounds an hour. The owner said no. I offered twenty pounds. He said no. I offered forty pounds an hour. He said no again, though he took somewhat longer about it. Passepartout, who stood at my elbow and was translating each sum into francs, went pale at the third figure and remained pale. Sir Francis observed in a low voice that I was now offering more for an elephant's afternoon than he earned in a month.

I changed my approach and offered to buy him outright. I said a thousand pounds. The owner shook his head. I said twelve hundred. He said that Kiouni was not for sale. I said fifteen hundred. He said that Kiouni was very dear to him. I said eighteen hundred, and he did not say anything for some time, and I could see he had begun to think. Passepartout had gone from pale to a kind of grey, and Sir Francis took me aside and asked whether I had considered that I might reach Allahabad, at this rate, with no money left to go any further. I said I had considered it.

I offered two thousand pounds. The owner accepted. We shook hands on it, and I counted the notes out of the carpet bag in front of him. I do not think he had ever seen so many in one place. Neither, I suspect, had Kiouni.

It remained to find someone who could drive him. A young Parsi of about twenty, intelligent and well spoken, who had been watching the bargaining from the gate, offered his services as guide and driver. I accepted them on the spot and promised him a handsome fee on arrival at Allahabad, the size of which he did not ask, which I thought well of him. He fetched a pair of seats, a kind of saddle-basket that sits on either flank of the animal, and fixed them to Kiouni with ropes. I stocked them with provisions bought in the village. Sir Francis accepted my offer of the second seat, since he too was bound for Allahabad and his regiment would not wait for him either.

04 Riding an elephant

We left Kholby at nine o'clock: the guide astride Kiouni's neck, Sir Francis and I in the two seats, and Passepartout on a blanket on the elephant's back between us, holding on to the ropes. The guide took us off the line of the railway at once and straight through the forest, which he said would save us twenty miles. I took his word for it. I had paid two thousand pounds for the privilege of taking his word for things, and I saw no reason to stop now.

I will say plainly that riding an elephant at speed is not comfortable. Kiouni moved at a fast, swinging trot that threw us forward and back and from side to side all at once, and I had to hold to the side of my seat with both hands. Sir Francis, who had ridden elephants before, said that this one was going faster than any he had known, and that we would all be sore tomorrow. He was right. Passepartout, perched on top, bounced like a ball on a drum, and was advised by the guide to keep his tongue behind his teeth if he wished to keep it at all. He did so, and laughed the whole way without opening his mouth, which I would not have thought possible.

We stopped twice to let Kiouni drink and rest. Passepartout fed him lumps of sugar from his pockets, and the elephant took them very gently with the end of his trunk. By the end of the afternoon the two of them were on excellent terms. I confess I had begun to think well of Kiouni myself. He did his work without complaint and asked for nothing but water, which is more than I can say for most railways.

At eight that evening we had come twenty-five miles, half the distance, and the guide stopped us at a ruined bungalow in the forest for the night. We ate cold provisions and slept on the floor. The night was full of noises from the forest, none of them, the guide assured us, coming any closer. Kiouni slept standing against a tree.

Balance: two days in hand, less the time it will take to cover the second twenty-five miles. Two thousand pounds out of the bag. One elephant to the good.