The unfortunate Jane—always a popular person—is especially so with insects; and if there is a flea or a mosquito anywhere within range it immediately rushes to her.
She paid dearly for her fatal gift of attractiveness at Palhallan—her eyes, usually so keen, being what is vulgarly termed “bunged up,” and every vulnerable spot in like piteous plight!
We quitted Palhallan as the Lot family quitted Sodom and Gomorrah, but with no lingering tendency to look backward; we cast our eyes unto the hills, and kicked the best pace we could out of our “tattoos,” halting for breakfast soon after crossing the hot, white road which runs from Baramula to Srinagar.
As we left the steamy valley and wound up a rapidly ascending path among the lower fringes and outliers of the forest our spirits rose, and by the time we had clambered up the last stiff pull and emerged from the darkly-wooded track into the little clearing, where perches the village of Babamarishi, we were positively cheerful.
Once more the air was fresh and buoyant, the spring water was cool and “delicate to drink,” and from our tents we could look out over the valley lying dim in a yellow heat-haze far below.
Babamarishi is a picturesquely-grouped collection of the usual rickety-looking wooden huts, no dirtier, but perhaps noisier than usual, owing to the presence of a very holy ziarat much frequented by loudly conversational devotees. We spent the crisp, warm afternoon peacefully stretched on the sloping sward in front of our tents, and making the acquaintance of the only good thing that came out of Palhallan—a charming quartette of young geese which Sabz Ali had bought and brought.
These delightful birds evinced the most perfect friendliness and confidence in us, and we became greatly attached to them. They and the fowls seemed excellent travellers, and after a long day’s march would come up smiling, like the jackdaw of Rheims, “not a penny the worse.”
This morning we had but a short and easy march from Babamarishi to Gulmarg, along a good road, through a fine forest of silver fir.
CHAPTER XII
GULMARG
Somehow one’s preconceived ideas of a place are almost always quite wrong, and so Gulmarg seemed quite different from what I had expected. It seemed all twisted the wrong way, and was really quite unlike the place which my imagination had evolved.