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Updated: May 3, 2025
No locust horde of personally-conducted "trippers" pollutes its ways and byways, nor has the khansamah of the dâk bungalow as yet felt constrained to add sauerkraut and German sausage to his bill of fare for which Allah be praised! The world is growing very small, and the globe-trotter rushes round it in eighty days. Egypt has become his footstool, and the shores of the Mediterranean his wash-pot.
It is, in fact, beyond the bounds of discretion to be riding any distance in the present season here; fifty miles is overcome to-day only by the exercise of almost superhuman will-power. The average native, when asked for the dak bungalow, is quite as likely to direct one to the post-office, the kutcherry, or any other government building, from a seeming inability to discriminate between them.
Still less would any ordinary Hindus be capable of laying a dâk, or post route of relays, over a hundred miles long in twelve hours. Once prepared, it was a mere matter of physical endurance in the rider to cover the ground, for the relays were stationed every five or six miles.
The jeddak, Bar Comas, who was comparatively young, was the object of the fierce and jealous hatred of his old lieutenant, Dak Kova, the jed who had captured me, and I could not but note the almost studied efforts which the latter made to affront his superior.
Oh, good Lawd 'a' mussy! my po' back! my po' back! Oh! don't dra ag you ain't a-needin' to drag me. I'll walk, Mahse John Wesley, I'll walk! Oh! you a-scrapin' my knees off! Oh! dat whip ain't over dak! You can't re'ch it down! ef I bite " There was a silent instant and the mulatto screamed.
Such comforts can only be appreciated when one has journeyed for months in a country where they do not exist. Our last night on the road was spent at a dâk bungalow near a village only a few miles from Bhamo. We were seated at the window, when, with a rattle of wheels, the first cart we had seen in nine months passed by.
O, would that Warhoon were ruled by a real jeddak rather than by a water-hearted weakling from whom even old Dak Kova could tear the metal with his bare hands!"
We had abandoned our chapaya which, we may add for the benefit of future travelers, we had greatly improved as against jolting by causing it to be suspended upon a pair of old springs which we found, a relic of some antique break-down, in a village on the route and after a short journey on elephants were traveling dak; that is, by post.
For three days from Bhamo dâk bungalows are available, and to a man knowing the country it would be an easy matter to arrange his comforts.
It is possible to compress a good deal of discomfort into six hours: and the Dak Bungalow, in its noonday quiet and comparative coolness, seemed an Island of the Blest after the glare and riot of the road.
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