INDIA JOURNEY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 84, 21 January 1936, Page 7

INDIA JOURNEY.

SCENES OF ORIENTAL BEAUTY. A TRADITIONAL WELCOME.

In the autumn and winter of 1905-6 Their Royal Highnesses visited India, leaving Genoa on October 21, 1900, in the Renown. On November 9 they reached Bombay, the coincidence of His Majesty’s Birthday being noted and welcomed throughout India as an augury of good fortune. The welcome to the Prince of Wales in Bombay was warm and unmistakable, and everything contributed to make the landing of the Prince one of tke most brilliant occasions that our great dependency has ever known. After a stay of four or five days in Bombay, the Prince and Princess proceeded in tlio luxuriouslyequipped train to Indore. From Indore tlio Royal visitors travelled rapidly and easily to that dream of all Oriental beauty, tlio lake city of Udaipur. . The Makarana, the unquestionable chief of all the kingly caste of India, 250th in direct descent from the Sun himself, welcomed their Royal Highnesses in the traditional manner. At Jaipur, His Royal Highness, like his father before him, shot his first tiger, and so Hie tour proceeded. - » Burma and Benares. Leaving Calcutta on January 13, the Prince and Princess of Wales rejoined the Renown at Diamond Harbour. Three days’ easy steaming brought the Royal travellers to Rangoon. There is, perhaps, no more picturesque edifice in ill the East than the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, which lifts its huge extinguisher of gold and gems from the. nest of exquisitely-carved tazounds at its base. In Southern India the Prince spent some pleasant weeks. He was ible to obtain some good shooting, and i kheddah of captured elephants interested him intensely at Mysore. A stay was made at Hyderabad and the British troops at Secunderabad were reviewed. After a farewell to the hospitable Nvzain, a long train journey across India brought the Royal party once more amid the more familiar scenes of Northern Indian travel. Benares put on her gayest holiday attire in honour of the visit, and both Prince and Princess showed the keenest interest, not only in the religious ceremonies practised on the banks of the holy river but in the ancient Buddhist remains which still exist at Sarnath, a few miles away, hfom this fioi.nt the last stretch of the long Indian journey was begun. Impressions of Tour. Their Royal Highnesses were four months in India, during which time they covered 8000 miles by rail, besides tbe sea voyage of 2000 miles from Calcutta to Rangoon, and thence hack bo Madras. The tour was admirably summed up by the Prince in his Guildball speech on his return home: “I was struck.” he said, “with the immense size of India, its splendours, its numerous races, its varied climates, its mow-capped mountains, its boundless ieserts, its mighty rivers, its architectural monuments, and its ancient traditions. I have realised the patience, Tie simplicity of life, the lo.val devotion, and the religious spirit which shnraeterises the Indian peonies. I cannot help thinking from all T have beard and seen, that the task of governing India will be made tbe more easier if we on our part infuse into it a wider element of sympathy.”