This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

CHAPTER XXVII
THE CAVES OF ELLORA AND KARLI

WE touched the Western world at Bombay only for a day, and quickly took train again, spreading our razais for an all-night ride of one hundred and seventy-eight miles to Nandgaon. No bogie-car, no sort of spring or buffer, softened the thumps of the hard-cushioned couches, and the occupant of the upper berth, feeling a draft when she had climbed to her swinging shelf, unhooded the lamp and found that the side wall of the car consisted of wire netting only in its upper portion. Her bedding was removed to the floor, and as there was no way to check this generous ventilation, chill drafts swept the compartment as the train ran through damp fields and dark spaces, and the dust of the road-bed covered us an inch deep by morning. The feeble lamp flickered out soon after midnight, and it took vigorous shouting at two dark stations before we could get the station-master and his notebook to investigate, report, and reilluminate with a broken-down lamp that went out as soon as we left his station. As everywhere in India, there were steaming tea-kettles on the platforms and cups of tea

360