'A Grandfather's Tale: Memoirs being mainly concerned with service in the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service in India and the Persian Gulf from 1932-1947' [‎39v] (78/118)

Ponigur she went down with bronchitis so I had to go off on my own for ten
days or so. We had a very primitive telephone line between Panjgur and the
various Levy posts, maintained in miraculous fashion by an ancient havildar Custodian; police sergeant; jail or prison guard.
(sergeant) in'the Levies, who had been doing this job for about thirty years,
so I was able to keep in touch with my Headquarters (and Jane) while I was
away. It was probably just as well that I was on.my own as the station wagon
kept breaking down miles from anywhere and conditions, at least until I
reached Jiwani, were not very comforiable. Jane had her troubles too as t e
generator for the electric light broke down soon after I had le.t, and the
only man who could mend it was my driver, Habibullah, who was with me.
At Jiwani I established friendly relations with the R.A.F. and U.S.A.F.
and dealt with a few local cases. One curious incident happened while! was
there. A twin-engined aircraft came in to land and while it was circling
the airfield one of the engines dropped off and fell only a few hundred yards
from where I was standing. Happily the pilot made a safe landing with his
one remaining engine and no one seemed unduly troubled but it all seemed ratner
too casual to me. From Jiwani I did a round about trip to Pasni, almost a
hundred miles East of Jiwani along the coast but much further by road. There
apart from inspecting the Levy Post and dealing with a few local problems, I
went out sailing for a couple of hours with the local fishermen. The headman
was a delightful old boy, Khoda Lashkaran, who looked just like a stage,
pirate, complete with a coloured handkerchief on his head, but he sometimes
wore in addition a crownless straw hat which gave him a curiously benevolent
appearance. There was no keel on his boat. Instead a plank was run out on
the windward side and one of the crew had to sit on this and adjust his
position as required to keep the boat in trim.
I arrived back in Panjgur in the third week of October, having covered
900 miles over pretty grim roads and tracks, but I had managed to visit most
of my outposts, as well as Jiwani and Pasni, and had thoroughly enjoyed my
tour. I was summoned to Quetta for consultations early in November, so we
all went up there and saw Jane's mother off by train at the end of her
protracted leave. Quetta was the usual mixture of business and pleasure but
this time we were only there for a few days. After two weeks back in Panjgur,
I went off on tour again to the South, and this time the family came with me.
We had a lorry accompanying us as well as the station wagon and discovered
that although Christopher was car-sick he was perfectly all right in the
lorry so he and the bearer used to travel in that while Jane, Elizabeth, the
ayah and I went in the station wagon. The ayah was a stickler for propriety
and even in the midst of the desert, when Elizabeth wished to spend a penny
a potty was always produced.
On the way to J<twani we spent one night at Turbat, one of the few small
towns in Mekran, and about a hundred miles South of Panjgur. In November the
climate was quite pleasant but in the summer it is one of the hottest places
on earth, and on my last tour there in 19^-5 I remember recording a temperature
of 135 ° in the almost non-existent shade and it was well over 100 ° at midnight*