Arduous Royal Tour Of India Nearly Over

Press, Volume C, Issue 29452, 2 March 1961, Page 15

Arduous Royal Tour Of India Nearly Over

(Rec. 11 p.m.) KATMANDU, March 1. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will leave Katmandu for New Delhi by air today for their final afternoon in the Indian capital.

Big crowds are expected to wave them farewell after their long and exhausting tour of India and Pakistan. They will return to London on Monday.

Last night the Queen gave a banquet for King Mahendra of Nepal and was guest of honour at a Government reception.

In a meeting with the Queen and the Duke at the British Embassy, a headman, Sherpa Khumjo Chumbi, aged 48, presented the Royal couple with a collection of rich Sherpa costumes for themselves, Princess Anne and Prince Charles.

The Queen showed considerable interest in a “yeti paw." Which looked like that of a bear.

The Queen also took a keen interest in questioning Mr Chumbi’s wife, Pelli, about her baby son born during the 180mile trek. Mrs Chumbi told her that she resumed the walk about an hour after the birth. Mr Chumbi. who is headman of Khumjung, a village

near Mount Everest, travelled around the world recently as custodian of the “yeti” scalp taken to the United States and Britain by Sir Edmund Hillary for scientific investigation. In return for the Sherpa couple’s gifts, the Queen gave them an autographed photograph of herself and the Duke, and another big coloured portrait for the village. Meeting With Hillary

The meeting took place after an Embassy tea party at which the Queen met Sir Edmund and Lady Hillary and asked about his plans to scale the 27.790 ft Makalu Peak without oxygen.

A highlight of the party was the cutting by the Queen of a big iced cake in the shape of Everest.

A London message says the tiger-hunting exploits of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, became national news in the popular newspapers with the absence from the shooting scene of the Duke of Edinburgh, whose witlow removed him temporarily from the journalistic sniping area. Descriptions of the latest shoot range from “A great silly undignified flop,”. “A dull dusty escapade,” to a “Tragicomedy” with Lord Home as the principal actor.

“Lord Home made rather a muggins of himself,” said the ‘ Danly Herald.” “He had four shots at a tigress and missed each time. It was a day’s shooting which cost a fortune and probably also cost the Foreign Secretary his reputation as a hunter.”

The “Daily Sketch” says: "Lord Home went shooting. The Duke of Edinburgh didn’t

—which was a stroke of luck for the tigers. For Lord Home, a terror on the grouse moors, looked anything but a big shot in the jungle. He had four cracks at a tigress driven into the target area and missed each time. Fortunately, 325 elephants who had spent two hours finding a tiger, managed to drive one towards the Royal guns.

"This one didn't know Lord Home and ended up in front of Rear-Admiral Bonham Carter, who. in the best traditions of the Navy, sank it with a single shot. “When the party retired for the night, there were Gurkha sentries all around with fixed bayonets—just in case the tiger Lord Home missed thought nobody could , shoot straight.”

The "Daily Mail’ 1 says things could hardly have been made easier for Lord Home. The hunt had everything except a signpost saying “Point your gun this way.” Nine times a tigress was driven past the guns. Five times Lord Home brought his gun up but did not shoot. Four times he shot.

“Then, as one spectator put it, the tigress was getting desperate. So apparently were the other hunters for when the tigress made her positively final appearaance. three guns blazed together. “The Queen, on an elephant, used a binocular occasionally to follow the confusing saga of Lord Home and the tigress She used both still and movie cameras to record what may become a classic of her private collection.”