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Updated: June 9, 2025
Shortly we made the acquaintance of the South Africander who furnished us our ox teams and wagon; and of a lank, drawling youth who was to be our "rider." The latter was very anxious to get started, so we piled all our stores and equipment but those immediately necessary for the night aboard the great wagon. Then we returned to the dak-bungalow for a very belated supper.
There are said to be two at Simla, not counting the woman who blows the bellows at Syree dak-bungalow on the Old Road; Mussoorie has a house haunted of a very lively Thing; a White Lady is supposed to do night-watchman round a house in Lahore; Dalhousie says that one of her houses "repeats" on autumn evenings all the incidents of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chair; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something not fever wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad.
He had forgotten the other word, I suppose. While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled myself down, after exploring the dâk-bungalow. There were three rooms, beside my own, which was a corner kennel, each giving into the other through dingy white doors fastened with long iron bars.
From far away, in the direction of the jungle, there came the desolate cry of a jackal; but near at hand there was no sound but the rush of the wind past his ears and the swish of the dust along the way. He came at length within sight of the dâk-bungalow and saw beyond it the lights of the native city. Nick's bungalow, tucked away amongst its trees, was not visible.
We took possession of the dak-bungalow maintained by the railroad for just such travellers as ourselves. It was simply a high stone room, with three iron beds, and a corner so cemented that one could pour pails of water over one's self without wetting the whole place. The beds were supplied with mosquito canopies and strong wire springs.
I went into the next room and the daylight streamed through the open door. I was immensely brave. I would, at that hour, have played Black Pool with the owner of the big Black Pool down below. "Has this place always been a dâk-bungalow?" I asked. "No," said the khansamah. "Ten or twenty years ago, I have forgotten how long, it was a billiard room." "A how much?"
"Let's see all we can and then find the nearest landing-place. Search all round for any sign of a tent or encampment. There may be a dak-bungalow somewhere down in the plains, too. The river-bed down on the right there, marks the border." Captain Digby-Soames "scoured" earnestly with his glasses. "Camel on the port-bow, at the foot of the hills," he announced.
And, by the roadside, in a compound fenced with camel-thorn, sat an aged and indigent dak-bungalow, marking the end of the first stage, the beginning of the second. It wore a look of Heaven to the traveller. In the shade of its veranda he read an urgent invitation to rest and surcease of sunlight.
"There is the dak-bungalow," said the Hindu gentleman as they passed a building of considerable size. "What is a dak-bungalow?" asked Louis. "It is one which answers the purpose of a hotel. I pointed one out to you at Baroda. Sometimes they are free so far as the rooms are concerned; but here the guest pays two rupees a day, or fifty cents of your money, and the food is furnished at a low price."
He had forgotten the other word, I suppose. While he was cutting up the dead bodies of animals, I settled myself down, after exploring the dak-bungalow. There were three rooms, beside my own, which was a corner kennel, each giving into the other through dingy white doors fastened with long iron bars.
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