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Everything else is either here or in the ekkas. 'The brute! Never mind they're not much use in a railway journey. You can pick up another at Bombay. Then I suppose I'd better get in. 'I suppose you better had. Unless you think of walking, she laughed, and he took the place beside her. Ram Singh again unquestioningly took up the reins. 'Nobody else going down? 'Not another soul.
For a minute we held our breath as one of the near wheels lipped the edge of the chasm, but the thing was judged to an inch, and in due time the sturdy chestnuts, the two ekkas, and all the luggage were assembled on the right side of what proved to be the last of the really bad slips.
Ekkas small jingling vehicles with a dome-shaped canopy and curtains at the sides drawn by gaily caparisoned ponies, and containing fat, portly Baboos, jingle and rattle over the ruts on the side roads.
Kashmir seems to be as difficult to get out of as to get into! What was our amazement and disgust to find neither landau nor ekkas, nor, apparently, any chance of getting them!
The train stops six miles from the town, so that we had to finish our journey in six two-wheeled, gilded chariots, called ekkas, and drawn by bullocks. It was one o'clock A.M., but, in spite of the darkness of the hour, the horns of the animals were gilded and adorned with flowers, and brass bangles tinkled on their legs.
On Friday morning we rattled out of Rawal Pindi about seven, and slowly wound through a rather stony and uninteresting country, until we arrived at the end of our railway journey about ten o'clock, and scrambled out at the little roadside station. Our excellent factotum, Sabz Ali, awaited us with a capacious landau, and informed us that the heavy baggage had gone on in the ekkas.
At Mile 46 we were held up for an hour until a ramp was made over a bad slide, and the carriage and ekkas were unloaded and got across. The landau looked for all the world like a great dead beetle surrounded by ants, as, man-handled by a swarm of coolies, it was hauled, step by step, over the improvised track.
I telegraphed to Sir Amar Singh for authority to engage ekkas, and I sent for the Tehsildhar of Baramulla to complain of my ekkas being taken. He appeared in due course a somewhat pert little person who promised to do what he could, which I knew would be nothing. A farewell dinner on board Walter's ship concluded a fairly busy day. Saturday, October 7. A strenuous day, to say the least of it.
Here is a fountain, and the point is a centre of life and action; crowds of people surge back and forth, almost trodden underfoot by the ever-present, ponderous elephants, camels, and bullocks, drawing the little ekkas, every one disputing the right of way.
The tourist returns to the bazaars and in the midst of them, amid the dust and clatter of ekkas and tongas, probably passes by a sight more interesting than Residency ruins and abandoned palaces inasmuch as it deals with the living present rather than the dead past.
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