The next day was Sunday—not a good day on which to start preparations. I had a great many things to do. The first was to visit the civil surgeon, and be examined for fitness for residing in high altitudes. He lived at the top of a steep hill himself, and as I arrived there on foot but alive, he passed me without difficulty. Then my pony who had come with me had to be despatched with the syce on two double marches to the railway terminus. Then I had to procure free railway passes from the station staff officer, whose office, the day being Sunday, was of course closed. There was also the putting of oneself, on the one hand, and one's wife and family on the other, on sound financial bases, preparatory to an indefinite period of separation. There was also a lot of sorting and packing to be done, and farewell visits to be made, where these were officially expected of one. (One's real friends, of course, one left without a thought.)

I got off on the Monday. People at home are often horror-struck at the speed with which the married officer has to leave his family when ordered on service. Fond parents have been known to forbid their daughters marrying soldiers on this very account. They are quite wrong. Given that you have to separate, it is much better to get the separation over as quickly as possible. In this case the speed with which those busy thirty-six hours passed between the receipt of the telegram and my departure was a real godsend. A long-drawn-out anticipation of separation would by comparison have been intolerable.

My wife came to the top of the road that leads to the plains to see me off. The quickest mode of conveyance was the 'rickshaw.' There ought to be some glamour of romance about a wife seeing her husband off to the wars, but how could there be when the husband started in a rickshaw? I stepped solemnly into the vehicle, and an officious 'jampani' tried to tuck me up with a rug as though I had been something very dainty and precious, while my wife, who still preserves a critical eye for Indian manners and customs, exclaims:—

'Oh dear, oh dear, this is a funny country, when one's husband starts for field service in a perambulator!'

The rickshaw carried me at break-neck pace to the plains, where, with my ears singing from the sudden drop of 6,000 feet, and the heat oppressing me, I took train to my former station, to which I had to make a detour before proceeding to the base.

It was a terrible two days that I had here. Dismantling a furnished house, packing and warehousing your household goods paying your outstanding bills, having parting drinks at your friends' expense, giving certificates of saintly character to every black man who has ever served you in any capacity during the past two years, and who drops from the clouds for his 'chitthi' as soon as your final departure from the station becomes known, sorting, repairing, and supplementing your camp kit, fitting out yourself, your servant, and your horse with warm clothing—these and countless other matters filled to the brim those forty-eight hours.

At last I was in the train for Calcutta. I met two major-generals of my acquaintance at different points during the journey. They both congratulated me warmly on the quest upon which I was going, each independently remarking, not upon the unexampled professional experience that I was likely to acquire, but on the fact that Tibet was an A1 place for curios! Nice and human of them, I thought, to put that first! One of them, I fear, was rather incommoded by the numerous articles of kit which I had with me in the carriage, and which overflowed somewhat into his portion of it. He was, I knew, a great authority on the scientific reduction of transport, and, when I apologised somewhat sheepishly for crowding him, made some grim remark about the liberal scale of baggage per officer that was doubtless being allowed to us; so I had to impress upon him that I stood an even chance of being kept at the base, and so had to be prepared for all emergencies, even a ten days' leave to Darjiling. Whereat he smiled more grimly than ever.

Don't travel from Northern India to Calcutta in May, if you can help it. It is not very hot when you start, but every mile you travel you find it growing hotter. You get baked as you traverse the dry plains of the United Provinces, you get fried as you reach a greasier climate further South, and in the humid atmosphere of Lower Bengal the sensation is that of being boiled. You get out of the train in Howrah station at Calcutta done all to shreds.

After a few hours in Calcutta I took the Darjiling mail train which was due the following morning at Siliguri, the latter being the base of the Tibet Expedition. In the train I was accompanied by a throng of Calcutta folk going up to Darjiling for their 'week-end.' Calcutta, apart from other attributes, is a great emporium of drapery and millinery goods, and it was quite natural to find myself sharing a carriage with a gentleman who in the course of conversation revealed himself as the head of a large firm of haberdashers. He was a delightful travelling companion, and regaled me with tales illustrative of the humorous side of his business. He was at his best when describing his most successful corset fitter, a damsel blessed apparently both with a slim waist and a strong arm. With the former she advertised the latest thing in corsets, and with the latter she fitted the said corset on to figures less graceful than her own. All went well till one day she surpassed herself by transforming a certain stately matron into a veritable sylph. This lady went home pleased and proud, but in an hour's time an indignant letter accompanied by the fragments of a corset reached the manager, the letter demanding the return of the money expended on the corset, on the ground that the latter, on the wearer having cleared her throat with a gentle cough, had burst in several places with a loud report.

But just then the train steamed into Siliguri station, and I had to leave my friend and his pleasant tales of frills and furbelows and plunge into war, bloody war.