The Imperial Guide to India, including Kashmir, Burma and Ceylon

Abstract

THE large and constantly increasing number of tourists and sportsmen who visit our Indian Empire during the winter, together with the smaller section who extend their trip so as to include a summer sojourn in Kashmir or some other Himalayan district, must create an extensive demand for a work like the one before us, and the wonder is that an attempt has not been made long ago to supply such a manifest want. In the present volume, which is got up in convenient size and shape for the pocket, and printed in small although clear type, with the chief items in caps, or block type, the anonymous author seems, on the whole, to have discharged a by no means easy task in a thoroughly satisfactory and painstaking manner. Indeed, so far as a somewhat extensive personal experience of the country permits of our forming a judgment, we may say that, as a viaticum and itinerary, which is, of course, its main purpose, the work is well-nigh all that can be desired so far as its somewhat limited space permits. Although necessarily brief, the descriptions of the towns, cities, and stations, and of the railway or other routes by which they are reached, are in the main excellent, and convey a very large amount of useful and necessary information. The various routes are also carefully planned and thought out, and will enable the tourist to find his way about and to visit much of what is most worth seeing with the least amount of discomfort and difficulty. Whether, however, the “selected Hindustani phrases” at the end of the volume will enable the tourist to make himself understood by the natives of even the Hindustani-speaking provinces may be more than doubtful.

The Imperial Guide to India, including Kashmir, Burma and Ceylon.

Pp. xi + 244; with illustrations, maps, and plans. (London: John Murray, 1904.) Price 6s. net.