A week from Aden, and fourteen days from Suez we reach Karachi.  The tide happens to be out at the time, and so we have to lay to till the following morning, when the Mandarin crosses the bar and drops anchor preparatory to unloading the now badly demoralized mules into lighters.

Karachi bids fair to develop into a very prominent sea-port in the near future.  The extension of the frontier into Beloochistan gives Karachi a strategic importance as the port of arrival of troops and war material from England.  Not less is its importance from a purely commercial view; for down the Indus Valley Railway to Karachi for shipment, come the enormous and yearly increasing wheat exportations from the Punjab.

Thus far my precise plans have been held in abeyance until my arrival on Indian soil.  Whether I would find it practicable to start on the wheel again from Karachi, or whether it would be necessary to proceed to the northeast, I had not yet been able to find out.  At any rate, it is always best to leave these matters until one gets on the spot.

The result of my investigations at once proves the impossibility, even were it desirable, of starting from Karachi.  The Indus River is at flood, inundating the country, which is also jungly and wild and without roads.  The heat throughout Scinde in July is something terrific; and to endeavor to force a way through flooded jungle with a bicycle at such a time would be little short of madness.

Under these conditions I decide to proceed by rail to Lahore, the capital of the Punjab, whence, I am told, there will be a good road all the way to Calcutta.  As the crow flies, Lahore is nearer to Furrah than Karachi is, so that my purpose of making a continuous trail will be better served from that point anyhow.

It is an interesting jaunt by rail up the Indus Valley; but one’s first impression of India is sure to be one of disappointment by taking this route.  It is a desert country, taken all in all, this historic Scinde; through which, however, the Indus Valley makes a narrow streak of agricultural richness.

The cars on the railroad are provided with kus-kus tatties to mollify the intense heat.  They are fixed into the windows so that the passengers may turn them round from time to time to raise the water from the lower half to the top, whence it trickles back again and cools the heated air that percolates through.

The heat increases as we reach Rohri and Sukhar, where passengers are transferred by ferry across the Indus; the country seems a veritable furnace, cracking and blistering with heat.  At Sukhar our train glides through some rich date-palms, the origin of which, legend says, were the date-stones thrown away by the soldiers of Alexander the Great.  They seem to have taken root in congenial soil, anyway, for every tree is heavily laden with ripe and ripening dates.  Reclining under the date-trees or wandering about are many dusky sons and daughters of Scinde, the latter in bright raiment and with children in no raiment whatever.  The heat, the fruitful date-palms, and the lotus-eating natives combine to make up a truly tropical scene.