Means of Travel

Litters, palanquins and basket-chairs were popular modes of transportation for the ruling and socio-economic elite, especially before the arrival of the railways in the late-nineteenth century. Litters were wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for carrying people. They were often used for longer journeys and required bearers to carry them on their shoulders. Litters could take the form of open chairs or larger, covered palanquins with silk covers, with some taking the form of a miniature hut. Sedan chairs were also used, which were closed litters for one passenger. These modes of transportation were used by British residents too, including sportsmen, in colonial India to signify a symbolic conquest of the physical geography of India. In India, a palanquin, also known as palkhi, was a covered sedan chair, or litter carried on four poles.

What were conditions of travel like in the pre-Railway days? David Arnold writes in The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: ‘Most pre-Mutiny travel was more leisurely, averaging ten to fifteen miles a day, thus allowing for close observation of the passing countryside, coupled with frequent stops along the way, at scenic temples or in the obliging shade of mango trees. As a naturalist, Joseph Hooker, who had his first taste of palanquin travel in 1848, was rapidly convinced of the physical discomfort of traveling in a conveyance ‘horsed by men.’ ‘Then, too,’ his complaint continued, ‘you pass plants and cannot stop to gather them; trees and don’t know what they are; houses, temples, and objects strange to the traveller’s eye, and have no one to teach where and what they may be; no fellow-traveller with whom to change one curious remark.’

' Others, by contrast, like Emma Roberts, regarded palanquin travel as providing—at least to a woman—unique opportunities to see India first-hand, to stop at and savor its remoter, more romantic, places. The best time to travel, she explained to her readers, was just after the rains, when the doors of the palanquin could be kept wide open: ‘various beauties of the jungles display themselves to view; every spot is covered with the richest verdure, and creepers of luxuriant growth, studied with myriads of stars, fling their bright festoons from tree to tree. Those beautiful little mosques and pagodas, which in every part of India embellish the landscape, look like gems as they rise from the soft green turf which surrounds them . . .’'

The temple, located in the Trikuta Mountains in Jammu and Kashmir, has been a pilgrimage center for centuries. According to Hindu mythology, the original abode of Vaishno Devi was Ardha Kunwari, a place about halfway between Katra town and the cave. It is said that she meditated in the cave for nine months. The temple is one of the 108 Shakti Peethas dedicated to Durga, who is worshipped as Vaishno Devi. Today, pilgrims travel from the city of Jammu to the village of Katra, which is well connected by helicopter, rail, and road.

In the early 1900s, the journey would have been much more difficult and time-consuming. However, the spiritual significance of the pilgrimage would have been just as strong, if not stronger, as it is today. As we can see from Dhurandhar’s record of Mavji’s journey, however, the pilgrim had much help from a train of porters and bearers even as he posed imperiously for the artist’s sketches.

The book is also known for its humorous anecdotes and satirical style, which are characteristic of Twain's writing. Here is what he had to write about his trip to Darjeeling: ‘Some time during the forenoon, approaching the mountains, we changed from the regular train to one composed of little canvas-sheltered cars that skimmed along within a foot of the ground and seemed to be going fifty miles an hour when they were really making about twenty. Each car had seating capacity for half-a-dozen persons; and when the curtains were up one was substantially out of doors, and could see everywhere, and get all the breeze, and be luxuriously comfortable. It was not a pleasure excursion in name only, but in fact. After a while we stopped at a little wooden coop of a station just within the curtain of the sombre jungle, a place with a deep and dense forest of great trees and scrub and vines all about it. The royal Bengal tiger is in great force there, and is very bold and unconventional. From this lonely little station a message once went to the railway manager in Calcutta: “Tiger eating station-master on front porch; telegraph instructions.”’

After stopping for a brief hunting expedition, he writes, ‘The railway journey up the mountain is forty miles, and it takes eight hours to make it. It is so wild and interesting and exciting and enchanting that it ought to take a week. As for the vegetation, it is a museum. The jungle seemed to contain samples of every rare and curious tree and bush that we had ever seen or heard of. It is from that museum, I think, that the globe must have been supplied with the trees and vines and shrubs that it holds precious.

Elsewhere he gives us another anxiety-inducing account of travelling downhill on a ‘handcar’ that was attached to the railway tracks, followed by a train: ‘We traveled up hill by the regular train five miles to the summit, then changed to a little canvas-canopied hand-car for the 35-mile descent. It was the size of a sleigh, it had six seats and was so low that it seemed to rest on the ground. It had no engine or other propelling power, and needed none to help it fly down those steep inclines. It only needed a strong brake, to modify its flight, and it had that. There was a story of a disastrous trip made down the mountain once in this little car by the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, when the car jumped the track and threw its passengers over a precipice. It was not true, but the story had value for me, for it made me nervous, and nervousness wakes a person up and makes him alive and alert, and heightens the thrill of a new and doubtful experience. The car could really jump the track, of course; a pebble on the track, placed there by either accident or malice, at a sharp curve where one might strike it before the eye could discover it, could derail the car and fling it down into India; and the fact that the lieutenant-governor had escaped was no proof that I would have the same luck. And standing there, looking down upon the Indian Empire from the airy altitude of 7,000 feet, it seemed unpleasantly far, dangerously far, to be flung from a handcar.

Everything looked safe. Indeed, there was but one questionable detail left: the regular train was to follow us as soon as we should start, and it might run over us. Privately, I thought it would.’ (Mark Twain, Following the Equator)

Benode Behari had ample time to wander around the streets of Kathmandu, the capital city, observing its temple architecture, its people and associating with friends and fellow-artists like Chandraman Maske, who knew the Bengali language due to his stint at the ‘Calcutta Art School’. Due to his struggles with vision, he was largely reliant on the help of porters and bearers. If the physical impact of mountainous terrain made an impression on Benode Behari’s mind earlier, the sacred circumambulations of the people anchored his idea of Nepal—and the Newari people especially—to the country’s religious architecture.

‘During the seven days of holidays I wandered about the town with the bearers. There was gambling going on, on both sides of the streets. Everywhere there were stupas of various shapes and sizes which people went round and round. Chandraman took me ff the hands of the bearers and said, ‘Come, let me show you around.’ (Chitrakar, Benode Behari Mukherjee)

Many Indian artists depicted travel scenes across the many mountainous regions of South Asia. From academic artists like Dhurandhar, Abalal Rahiman, J. P. Gangooly and his students, such as Kisory Roy, to those who worked largely in the post-independent era, such as Sunil Das or K. C. S. Paniker, depicting travel and movement in general became a great mode of experimentation. Indra Dugar was another artist known for his extensive travels across the Indian subcontinent. He painted several plein air views, often depicting travelers, pilgrims or processions making their way across difficult but fulsome landscapes. In this work he paints a view of Rajgir in the state of Bihar, associated historically with Buddhism and Jainism; and once again includes a train of travellers, giving the landscape a sense of movement and being lived-in, instead of the desolation championed by the colonial picturesque aesthetic. With the advent of quicker modes of travel, most mountainous areas are now easily reachable by trains, aeroplanes or automobiles. Does this encourage a new way of looking at the scenery unfolding around us?

What are some of your favourite depictions of mountain travel by artists?