Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/18

xii missionary, planter, and merchant has each his own India and view-point; and the British visitor, who is passed from home to home by the endless chain of Anglo-Indian hospitality, sees and thinks differently from the other tourists who suffer the drear hotels, the dak banglas, and the railway-station rooms.

The worst hotels in the world are those of India, and a British traveler has truthfully written: "You will enjoy your traveling in India if you have so many friends there that you need never put foot in a hotel. If you have not, you had better go somewhere else." Each winter the peninsula holds a growing number of surprised and resentful tourists, who, whether they land at Bombay or Calcutta, usually conclude that the shortest route across India is the best one. One month or six weeks is the average stay; and very few tourists ever go to the hills for the summer and come back to the plains for a second cold-weather season of travel. The average tourist sacrifices itineraries without compunction, and lives to warn away aged and invalid tourists and to convince those with weak lungs and impaired digestions that death waits in Indian hotels.

The glamour of the East does not often or for long enthrall one while touring Hindustan. Later it asserts itself, reveals its haunting charm; and then, be it months or years afterward, he "hears the East a-callin'." He forgets the ice in the bath-tubs at Agra and Delhi, the bitterly cold nights in drafty, dusty, springless cars, and in visions he sees only