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.