232 A Sportswoman in India 



of a small Mr a singh, but nothing else. He had been 

 up between fifteen and sixteen thousand feet, where I 

 should have found the climbing hard and the elevation 

 trying. 



Several more days brought us to Gurais, a village 

 of flat-roofed houses down by the river in the middle 

 of the valley, mountains on either side, and the Gilgit 

 road vanishing away at the end, shortly to cross the 

 Burzil Pass. Gurais boasts of a post office, a fort, 

 and a house belonging to the road engineer. The 

 log huts which constitute the village were built of 

 pine-tree trunks laid lengthways one on top of the 

 other, and dovetailing at the corners ; no plaster of 

 any sort being used, one could easily see into them. 

 There were no chimneys, and in most of the huts no 

 windows. The door was merely a square space sawn 

 in the logs ; glass, chairs, beds, tables, are unknown 

 to these Kashmiris. I saw a cow and a calf lying 

 down inside the " room " with a woman and two 

 children. Hens and cocks lived inside, of course. The 

 families themselves were clothed in a long woollen 

 garment each, of a dingy yellow mud-colour ; dirty 

 is too mild a word for their faces and bodies ; the 

 children went about naked. 



The few little fields round the villages can be 

 cultivated with little trouble, the soil is so rich. The 

 climate in the sheltered valleys is never extreme, 

 consequently without effort this lazy, filthy population 

 lives on from generation to generation in their wooden 

 pigsties, built all huddled together, anyhow, surrounded 



