"أيام ثيم ولَّت" [و‎‎٢‎١] (٢٤٨/٤١)

21
CHAPTER 4
Soldiering on
In ^ th *. e ^ tumr l we loa ded up again and marched down the winding
road to the plains; and it was surprising what a sense of relief
and freedom it gave one to see flat land all round and to be able
to travel for miles without climbing or descending a precipitous
incline. Also the smells were different.
That winter we entrained at Ambala and travelled several hundred
miles south to Jhansi in the Central Provinces where we were to
hold our bi-ennial 'practice camp'. This meant that we were to
have the rare experience of firing real live shells from our
The country was markedly different. Gone were the wide rich
open plains of the Panjab : all was basically flat, but broken up
by small hills and shallow nullahs, and mostly clothed in thorny
scrub : and there were small patches of cultivation where water
could be brought to the surface.
Although the winter weather left nothing to be desired, the
cantonment gave me the impression of having only just recovered
from many months of blistering heat, and only briefly catching
its breath before bracing itself to suffer it all over again.
This was, indeed, the 'sloth belt', the name that Frontier
officers gave to all of India east and south of Delhi -the
implication being that only to the North-West could men remain
vigorous and active. This was the furthest south that I was to
serve in India, although, when one looks at the map of that vast
country, it is undoubtedly North India.
However there was plenty of game, and this more than made up for
the splendid pageant of Delhi. After we had satisfied
ourselves, almost to our surprise, that our guns could fire real
shells and that we could direct them with varying accuracy onto
their target, we entrained for Ambala and in due course took the
road again for Simla.
The summer took much the same course as the one before, except
that I was due for two months local leave, which I spent in the
delightful Hindu hill state of Chamba, some hundreds of miles to
the North-West of Simla and on the borders of Ladakh and Zaskar
It was inhabited by Hindus and Thibetans, but there was almost no
contact between the religions, because the great Himalayan Range
-with no passes under 20,000' - lay between them.
One reached the little hill-station of Dalhousie by road, and
there hired mules and walked along a well-graded but unmotorable
track down the northside of the range to Kajiar. This was a
charming glade in the cedar forest with a pleasant wood-built
Hindu Temple. While we were camped there some locals came in