Eric Newby - Slowly Down the Ganges

We set off again at four, and immediately, conforming to a ritual to which we had long become accustomed, came to another fall. These were the longest, most hazardous rapids we had so far encountered; but fortunately we did not know this. With the last dreary portage behind us we had hoped that we had turned the corner, crossed the high pass. Certainly the character of the river was changing. Boulders had become stones and now, where previously there had been shingle on the bottom of the river, there was sand with chips of mica in it that glittered in the afternoon sun.

There was no difficulty about entering these rapids. The top end was like the mouth of a large funnel. Into it the water was being sucked with a singularly powerful motion which gave the surface an oily appearance. For a moment the boat remained almost stationary at the top; the next moment it was thundering downhill. There was barely time to ship the oars. The channel was not more than a dozen feet from side to side, but in it the current was running between steep banks of gravel which accentuated the feeling of speed. As we went down a cloud of small white birds enveloped the boat uttering indignant cries. It was terrifying but at the same time it was wonderful. It was as I had always imagined the descent of the Cresta Run on a bob sleigh. High in the stern, Karam Chand was grasping the tiller with both hands and uttering cries of exultation. The two boatmen, Bhosla and Jagannath, were leaning on the bedding rolls ecstatically chanting something that sounded like a triumphal hymn. Wanda, as devoted as the boy on the burning deck, was grimly trying to finish the washing-up. G. was in the bows, at look-out. It was a superfluous office. We swept on. We were all set for a spectacular disaster.

It came. The water ahead was curling back on itself. Under it there was something dark. G. uttered a despairing cry of warning, but it was too late. There was a tremendous crash as we hit the rock and everyone was thrown forward on their faces. Cooking pots erupted from the bottom of the boat. It reared in the air; Jagannath, the young boatman with the moustache, shot clean out of it, presumably into the water. At this moment, irrationally, Wanda could be heard asking to be put ashore. It was like an old print of a whale-boat with a whale surfacing underneath it. But there was no time to worry about Jagannath, even if we had wanted to. The bows came down again on the water with a resounding smack and now we were approaching the bottom of the fall at an appalling rate. At the bottom there was a bend so sharp that it gave the impression of being a dead end. It was, in fact, a right-angled bend with a twelve-foot-high bank of sand and shingle across the bottom of it, but there was nothing anyone could do about avoiding it. Karam Chand had as much chance of turning the head of the boat from its course as the driver of an express train who sees the gates of a level crossing closed against him. The boat simply ignored his efforts at the helm. It cut straight across the right angle of the turn and buried its head with enormous force in the sand and shingle which exploded about our heads like shrapnel. For the second time we were thrown on our faces, then the current took hold of the stern and slewed the boat round so that it lay across it, with its starboard under water. For a moment I thought it was going to capsize, but the bows broke loose from the bank and it began to gather way and shot stern first into deep, comparatively still water. We had made it, and so had Jagannath who came limping down the bank towards us. In one hand he carried an aluminium saucepan. Through the bottom of the boat two stiff jets of water were rising like an ornamental fountain.

We put in to the shore and unloaded everything, and Karam Chand caulked the two holes in the bottom – the shock of hitting the rock had started two rivets. So far as we could ascertain, apart from the boat being full of sand and stones, this was the extent of the damage. It was a remarkable testimonial to the men who had built it. It was more like a battleship than a rowing-boat.

High on a sandbank above the pool in which we now floated, a solitary figure was crouched over a small fire in front of a grass hut. It was like one of those constructions that harbour beings, part human, part animal, part vegetable, in the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Although the exciting events of the last few minutes must have been abundantly visible, whoever it was gave no sign of being aware of our existence. ‘Sadhu,’ said the boatman. ‘Mahatma Ji.’ And uttered a prayer as we went down past his dwelling.

It was five o’clock; time to stop. Slowly we paddled a few hundred yards down a quiet reach, looking for a place to camp. On the left bank the trees on the outer edges of the jungle loomed redly, illuminated by the setting sun. No one wanted to camp on the left bank.

As we dawdled, four ragged-looking men loaded with wood came out of the shadow of the trees and down the beach towards us at a quick lope. ‘Oho!’ they shouted. ‘Thou with the boat. We have many kos to travel before night. Take us over!’

We ferried them over, one at a time because of their heavy loads. They came to gather fuel every day in the dry season, they said. At other times the river was a great sea, miles wide. Their village was far away on the right bank. If what they said was true then a great part of each working day must have been taken up in this way collecting wood. According to them there were two more rapids below this place and then one came to a village. They did not know its name. These men were full of fears: of other men, of the beasts of the jungle, of evil omens and portents of disaster that on many occasions made them turn back and pass the day in the shelter of their houses; but most of all they were afraid of being in the jungle with night coming on. To us their fears seemed perfectly legitimate ones.

We chose a camping-place on the foreshore of what seemed at first to be the right bank of the river (a place as sandy as the previous night’s had been stony), but was really one of a series of islands overgrown with grass and shisham trees a few feet higher than the dried-out bed of the river. As the light failed the long bands of wind-blown cloud that all afternoon had floated high in a pale sky turned first to bronze and then a leaden colour, all except the ragged edges which were tinged a daring shade of pink. The sky itself became darker and more opaque until it was a deep navy in which the evening star shone brilliantly and alone. To the west, over the line of false shore, the long, plumed grass waved in the dying wind, black against the last conflagration of a rather vulgar sunset. It was a memorable scene.

With the light gone from the sky, squadrons of Pteropodidae , fruit bats, began to pass silently overhead in horrible, undulating flight on their way to ravage some fruit garden. We counted them in dozens, then in hundreds and finally, when we reached four figures, we lost patience and gave up. In the morning, just before first light, they returned and later we found one dead on the shore. Perhaps the excesses of the night had been too much for it. Close-to it was even more loathsome than it had been in flight. It had a shrunken foxy head with long upstanding ears, in each of which there was an additional lobe of skin the shape of a small willow leaf, probably some kind of extra navigation aid. In death the mouth gaped displaying long indrawn teeth, deeply grooved to assist it in its orgies of fruit eating. Its wings had a span of more than four feet which, when the membranes were extended on their elongated, rib-like fingers, were like some ghastly surrealistic umbrella made of flesh and bone. The only member that was free from the membrane that embraced the three fingers, was the thumb which was split into two parts, each of which was furnished with a sharp claw.