Many of us who serve in India have, for considerations of health, which to the Englishman at home seem absurd, but are nevertheless proved by Anglo-Indian experience to be imperative, had to abjure the cold bath. For such a hot bath is the only form of complete ablution. Your tent, if you do not exceed your scale of transport, will be small and will have no bath-room attached; then for preparing the bath, you have to remove all the ordinary contents of the tent outside into the open. Then will follow the setting in position of whatever form of camp bath you may possess, or may be able to borrow. Meanwhile an extra allowance of firewood has to be procured and the water made hot. By the time all is ready and you are beginning to take off your clothes a considerable time will have passed. If, during that period, some exigency of field service does not arise which requires you to leave all those preparations regretfully, and postpone the bath to another day, you are lucky. Even if you get through with your project without being disturbed, it is as likely as not that the day for getting your clothes washed being a movable feast, you will have nothing to put on that will not seem a defilement to your freshly polished skin. Getting water hot enough was sometimes difficult when you wanted as much as is necessary for a bath, if the wind blew high and firewood was scanty. But this was nothing compared with the difficulty experienced in such forms of cookery as were associated with boiling water. The temperature at which water boils at an altitude of, say, 15,000 feet is, I believe, some forty degrees lower than boiling point on the sea-level. I wondered for a long time why my tea never seemed to have been made with boiling water, and I am afraid a certain faithful youth who used to make it for me got rather harsh treatment till my scientific education was sufficiently advanced to absolve him. Tea that is served up at a temperature of forty degrees below the normal boiling point can never be very nice. And it got cool very quickly, which of course was natural. When I returned to India the other day, I could not make out why I was always burning my tongue over my tea, till I remembered that of course the tea which I was now drinking was made with water that boiled at an ordinary boiling temperature, and so remained too hot to drink till it had been allowed to stand for a decent interval. It was in its effect upon rice as part of the natives' ration that this low boiling point was really of serious import. Rice well boiled is a good ration for natives, but there was many a case of indigestion and colic attributed to the rice which had been spuriously boiled at one of these high altitudes, but never really cooked. CHAPTER XV LAKE PALTI: DRAWING BLANK: PETE-JONG