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short cut, which enabled us to digress for a visit before the end of the day to a houseboat on Lake Dal. We turned off the main road just short of the city, climbed*pver a low hill occupied by the former British cantonments, now an Indian army post, and dropped down to a boatlanding on the shore of the lake.
There we stepped aboard a shikara, the local water taxi and all-purpose boat, rather like a small Venetian gondola except that it lacks the gondola's conspicuous steel prow, indeed any raised prow at all. It is paddled in much the same way by a man standing at the stern. I noticed that the paddle blade was of a distinctive shape—like a birch or poplar leaf.
We had read that, for people staying on a houseboat, the shikara is not only the sole means of going ashore but also the only handy grocery store. Even so. we were a bit startled when, in mid-coarse, another shikara pulled alongside us with an impressive collection of postcards, junk jewelry, souvenirs and so forth. I almost omitted to mention that we had one of the wicker-covered braziers on the seat cushion between us, and we needed it.
The houseboats are an eyeopener. They are ranged side by side, along what I took to be the shore of an island, facing across to the lakeside rqad. There are dozens of them, and they apparently come in three or four grades, from decidedly shabby to fantastically splendid. Over the verandah on the poop (or any rate the lake-facing end of the boat) all or most of them have their names painted up in large letters—surprising names like Rose of Texas and Grade Fields.
The houseboat we were taken to was clearly of the deluxe class. It had a huge living-room, a sizeable dining room, and three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. Above our heads the upper deck would have been fur(Continued on Page 10)
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