Chander Pahar the movie

I got to see the movie a few months ago, and saw it again a recently. It's wonderful that someone's made a movie from the book - it's such a visual book that for decades it must have been screaming for the right film-maker. The film is a huge success and rightfully so - speaking for myself, the visual sense I had of Chander Pahar has been fulfilled for the large part.

It is shot on location in various parts of Africa; the cast is good, and gets really into the skin of the characters they are playing. The mise-en-scene looks authentic, though I'm not really an expert on this. The story has been trimmed, and in some places telescoped - that's fine, since it does not take away the dramatic flow of events and the relentless movement in the book.

There are two grouches I have about the movie - both are significant at least in my opinion. First, Shankar looks the same throughout the movie, except towards the end after the death of Diego Alvarez. Let me explain. When he left India, Shankar was a slightly podgy, comfortably well-padded young Bengali boy. The hard work on the Uganda Railways, his treks through the savannah, his travels with Diego Alvarez - these should have gotten rid of his fat, and made him into a hard-muscled, wiry, athletic man of the wilds. His deprivations, particularly after the death of Alvarez, should have turned him into an emaciated living skeleton, held together by skin, faith and hope. All that his later adventures have done is to have got him a dirty beard and unkempt long hair - his well-cushioned look didn't change.

After his recovery at the Salisbury hospital, he emerges into the streets the same comfortably well-padded young man who left Calcutta some years ago. There was not a line on his face to tell us of the difficult times he'd faced.

The other problem I have with the movie is the bunyip. Why the director wanted to show the bunyip passes my understanding. Great horror stories and movies have shown us that often it's best to suggest things and leave our imaginations to work out the worst of horrors for us. When the bunyip first appeared on the screen, our first reaction was "no, this can't be it! tell us it isn't so!"

However, let no one take away from the things that make the movie worth watching more than once. It's fun, it's exciting, it looks real in most places, including the little cameos of Jim Carter and Albuquerque. The huge lion is great (looks a bit well-trained though); the tribesmen look and feel real, and the Mountain of the Moon looks grand.

Really recommended!!

Shankar's journey - the full map

The journey that Shankar completes in Chander Pahar is an epic one. Starting from Mombasa, in what is now Kenya, he travels through countries in Central Africa, South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and leaves for India from Beira, in what is now Mozambique.

There may have been longer and more difficult fictional journeys, but I can't recall them. In comparison, the Odyssey is but a short, albeit fraught trip, among the little islands in Greece.

Here's the full map (drawn by me, hence inaccurate and purely indicative) of this journey.

Beira was established in 1890 by the Portuguese and soon became the main port in the Portuguese-administered territory. The Portuguese built the port and a railway to Rhodesia, Portuguese families settled in the newly-founded locality and started to develop commercial activities. Before Mozambique's independence from Portugal, as a city of Portuguese Mozambique, Beira was noted for its well-equipped seaport, one of the major facilities of its kind in all East Africa, tourism, fishing and trade. The city prospered as a cosmopolitan port with different ethnic communities (Portuguese, Indian, Chinese, indigenous Africans) employed in administration, commerce, and industry. During the colonial era, a large English-speaking population was the result of being a favourite holiday destination for white Rhodesians.

I found this picture in Wikipedia - "View of Rua Conseleheira Ennes, Beira, Mozambique. Photograph of original postcard c1905, published by The Rhodesia Trading Co. Ltd., Beira", dated1905.

Perhaps Shankar travelled from Salisbury to Beira in this very train.

                  














(Both these pictures are taken from Wikipedia and rights belong to their various owners).
You could buy my book in Flipkart.com, and other online book stores.

Crossing the Kalahari

Shankar's solo crossing of the Kalahari would have gone down in song and legend, if he had indeed done so in real life. Indeed, there are quite a few people who have actually done so and lived to tell the tale. William Leonard Hunt is supposedly the first white man to cross the Kalahari on foot and survive, at least according to Wikipedia here. Also known as the Great Farini, here's a fetching picture of the man with two pieces of arm candy; whether before or after his Kalahari crossing is not known.

At some point in time, perhaps not too long ago, crossing the Kalahari must have been one of those feats which must have been ranked along with climbing the Everest as one of five most foolhardy things to do. No longer, I guess. Nowadays, a few hundred people are climbing the Everest every suitable day, and judging from the books that get written after these expeditions, the route up the mountain on a bright Sunday morning must be sporting a traffic jam up and down the South Col.

Crossing the Kalahari is now a slightly more difficult journey than a walk in the park. Consider this; the author of Lone Journeys writes as follows:

"In February 1997, after travelling through South Africa and arriving in Windhoek, Namibia's capital, by bus from Capetown, I enquired about the possibilities of a desert trek in Windhoek's central tourist office. I did not seem to have any luck because distances are fast and transport is rare for that part of the world. Additionally, whilst the lonely landscape appeals to some, overall the Kalahari is not known to have many points of interest and therefore is not the destination of mainstream Africa excursions. Furthermore, the usual Africa traveller wants to see wildlife and in that regard the Kalahari does not offer as much as other areas.

"However, just as I was leaving the tourist office, a staff member who had overheard my request called me back. Apparently he knew of a small adventure travel company that had just taken possession of some new vehicles and wanted to test them in a Kalahari crossing. Needless to say, he arranged the contact and several days later, on 19 February, I joined two drivers on an adventure trip through the desert. Our route was to take us into Botswana and then across the Kalahari via the northern track towards Maun and the Okavango Delta.

After a gigantic scenic drive with a very remote feeling, some game viewing (mostly antelopes, gemsboks, springboks and even one lion) and a spectacular sunset we overnighted in Ghanzi. Ghanzi which sits on a lime stone ridge was once famous for cattle ranching. Now it is a popular rest stop when crossing the Kalahari. Indeed, lodging and dinner were excellent at the Kalahari Arms Hotel. 

The next day we headed to the Danish run Ghanzicraft Cooperative, an outlet for local crafts people, and I met with bushmen, their wives and their children at the local school. As we approached Maun, I felt sorry to leave this unspoilt African wilderness, especially since I noticed that the new Trans Kalahari Highway, built largely with German money, was almost completed. It seemed I had crossed this incredible desert just in time."

And now with the Trans Kalahari Highway, it must be really a longish drive in someone's SUV, perhaps no more fraught than the drive from Mumbai to Pune. 

Oh how are the mighty humbled!

A detour to the Zambezi

Shankar and Diego don't actually track the Zambezi for long. But the Zambezi is such a wonderful place that I have decided to share some information about the river anyway. So here goes. (Incidentally, you can go here and here for more details about the river. The first one is a beautiful site on tourism in Zambia, and has some great pictures of the Zambezi.)

The Zambezi (also spelled Zambesi) is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and the largest flowing into the Indian Ocean from Africa. The area of its basin is 1,390,000 square kilometres (540,000 sq mi),[1][2] slightly less than half that of the Nile. The 3,540-kilometre-long river (2,200 mi) has its source in Zambia and flows through Angola, along the borders of Namibia, Botswana, Zambia again, and Zimbabwe, to Mozambique, where it empties into the Indian Ocean.

The Zambezi's most spectacular feature is the beautiful Victoria Falls. Other notable falls include the Chavuma Falls at the border between Zambia and Angola, and Ngonye Falls, near Sioma in Western Zambia.

The size of the river basin is pretty huge:

Easily the most spectacular sight in the river, and indeed the world, is the Victoria Falls. Some day, some time, you must see it for yourself. These photos can at best be an appetizer.

Diamonds and Death

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.] 

The epic journey undertaken by Shankar and Diego Alvarez had just one goal - find the diamonds hidden in the Mountain of the Moon. This dream, or maybe it's just greed, has driven men for millenia. The search for riches has not only created huge people migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries, they have also created great works of art and entertainment - Chaplin's "The Gold Rush", the Indiana Jones films, the books by Rider Haggard, and of course "Chander Pahar." 

The search for riches often results in failure and death, and not very pleasant deaths either. In "Chander Pahar", both Jim and Diego are torn apart by the three-toed monster which Shankar never gets to see. In finding the diamonds in the Richtersveldt Mountains, Shankar loses his way in the tunnels and almost dies of thirst. 

This relationship between diamonds and death is still not dead (no pun intended!) Many of us will have seen the film "Blood Diamond", the 2006 political thriller film directed by Edward Zwick and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. The title refers to blood diamonds, which are diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance conflicts, and thereby profit warlords and diamond companies across the world. Wikipedia has this to say about 'blood diamonds', aka 'conflict diamonds' - "In relation to diamond trading, conflict diamond (also called a converted diamond, blood diamond, hot diamond, or war diamond) refers to a diamond mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, invading army's war efforts, or a warlord's activity, usually in Africa where around two-thirds of the world's diamonds are extracted. The phenomenon of conflict minerals has the same nature." 

The countries in Africa that are affected by these stones include Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Republic of Congo and Zimbabwe. The UN has a fascinating article on Conflict Diamonds here. 

Probably the most famous diamond mines in the world are the Kimberley mines, in Northern Cape in South Africa. The town has considerable historical significance due its diamond mining past and siege during the Second Boer War. Notable personalities such as Cecil Rhodes (the founder of Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe) made their fortune here and the roots of the De Beers corporation can also be traced to the early days of the mining town. There's a fascinating history of the mines here, here, and here. 

The original Kimberley mine closed in 1914, a few years before Shankar's visit to Africa.

Which is the REAL Mountain of the Moon?

While reading and translating "Chander Pahar", I was very curious about the real Mountains of the Moon - was there such a place at all?

It turns out that there is indeed such a place. The term Mountains of the Moon or Montes Lunae referred to a mountain range in central Africa that is the source of the White Nile - check this out. However, the real Mountains of the Moon is far away from the final setting of Shankar's adventure; the source of the White Nile is Lake Victoria in Tanzania.

The location of these fabled mountains had been disputed over the centuries. The Scottish explorer, James Bruce identified the Mountains of the Moon with Mount Amedamit in Ethiopia.

G.W.B. Huntingford suggested in 1940 that the Mountain of the Moon should be identified with Mount Kilimanjaro (left - one of the most beautiful mountains in the world), and "was subsequently ridiculed in J. Oliver Thompson's History of Ancient Geography published in 1948". Huntingford later noted that he was not alone in this theory, citing Sir Harry Johnston in 1911 and Dr. Gervase Mathew later in 1963 having made the same identification.

O. G. S. Crawford identified this range with the Mount Abuna Yosef area in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. The picture on the left is of the path leading to Mekina Medhane Alem church (Lalibela).

"Mountains of the Moon" is also the name of a movie - see here - which tells the story of Captain Richard Francis Burton's and Lt. John Hanning Speke's expedition to find the source of the Nile river in the name of Queen Victoria's British Empire, their meeting, their friendship emerging amidst hardship, and then dissolving after their journey. I haven't seen the movie; this review from Rotten Tomatoes is quite interesting. "Director Bob Rafelson fulfilled a lifelong dream when he finally received backing to complete Mountains of the Moon. The film recreates the exploratory adventures of 19th century visionaries Sir Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Henning Speke (Iain Glen). The heart of the film is the effort by Burton and Speke to discover the true source of the Nile river. This occurs well into the film, after several torturous scenes involving the injuries sustained by the protagonists during other expeditions and their growing friendship (which, the film intimates, goes far beyond friendship). Rafaelson's fascination with this story, and his insistence upon painstaking historical accuracy, unfortunately compromises his ability to make an interesting film. There are so many starts and stops during the first half that we sincerely hope Burton and Speke will chuck it all and set up a pub in Bristol or something. What saves Mountains of the Moon is the rapport between its stars and the brilliant, epic-like cinematography of Roger Deakins."

Mountains in Chander Pahar - 2

The two major mountain ranges I will write about here are the Ruwenzori and the Richtersveldt - the latter is, of course, the more important as the location where Shankar's denouement with destiny gets played out.

The picture on the left is pretty amazing - it could be from the Alps or the Himalayas!

"The Rwenzori Mountains, previously called the Ruwenzori Range (the spelling having been changed in about 1980 to conform more closely with the local name), and sometimes the Mountains of the Moon, is a mountain range of central Africa, often referred to as Mt. Rwenzori, located on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with heights of up to 5,109 m (16,761 ft). The highest Rwenzoris are permanently snow-capped, and they, along with Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya are the only such in Africa." For more, visit this, and this; the latter is particularly beautiful.

The Richtersveldt is also a national park in South Africa, and is far from the forbidding and forboding mountain range where explorers died a horrible death. This could look like the place where Shankar was rescued - except that he was found in Rhodesia, and the Richtersveldt is in South Africa!

As this article mentions, it is "A favourite amongst nature travellers to South Africa, the landscape is sometimes described as "martian". Though barren and desolate at first glance, closer examination reveals the area to be rich in desert lifeforms, with an array or unique species specially adapted for survival." Wikipedia has a great article here, and if you love traveling, you must visit this as well.

Mountains in Chander Pahar - 1

One of the most exciting episodes in the book is the eruption of the volcano and the miraculous escape from certain death of Diego Alvarez and Shankar.

The African continent is highly seismically active, and indeed "Africa is the only region other than the Mediterranean with an historically dated B.C. eruption (at Mount Cameroon, observed by a passing Carthaginian navigator in the 5th century B.C.)." For more details, you should check this and this.

In this post, we shall visit only the mountains that the author has mentioned.

First, the mountain called Ol Doinyo Lengai.

This is an active volcano located in the north of Tanzania and is part of the volcanic system of the Great Rift Valley in Eastern Africa. It is located in the eastern Rift Valley, south of both Lake Natron and Kenya. It is unique among active volcanoes in that it produces natrocarbonatite lava, a unique occurrence of volcanic carbonatite. Further, the temperature of its lava as it emerges is only around 510 °C (950 °F). A few older extinct carbonatite volcanoes are located nearby, including Homa Mountain (ref. Wikipedia).

Another volcano the author mentions is Chimanimani. The Mountains, with their jagged peaks and deep ravines, form a natural border with Mozambique for 40km. Whilst most of the range is in Mozambique, much of the Zimbabwean side is now protected within the Chimanimani National Park.

"The Chimanimani Mountain range is a geological feature pertaining to that rent that runs from the Cape to the Levantine, and is known along most of its distance as the Great Rift Valley. It marks the collision of two tectonic plates, and is poised at the apex of several local ecological zones. The featured of the range are clearly old. There is a gnarled, Tolkienesque venerability in the many, many cracks and fissures, gorges and gullies, lakes and rivers." To read more about this picturesque place, please go here.
The author mentions Kruger Mountains.

The closest I could get to that is the Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa. To find out more, go here. 


The Virunga Mountains, also mentioned in the book, are a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, along the northern border of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda.


Volcano tourism is big there, and here's an article on this: "Virunga invites tourists to see Mount Nyamulagira volcano erupt!" Requires more gumption and colones than I, for one, possess!! 
There are a few other mountains that the author mentions - Ruwenzori and Richtersveldt being the most important - I will write about them in another post.

The intrepid adventurers in Mountain of the Moon

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.com.]

The author introduces us to four fictional adventurers besides his hero - Albuquerque, Jim Carter, Diego Alvarez and Attilio Gatti.

Curiously enough, two of these names have some historical significance, although far removed from the roles they played in Bibhutibhushan's story.

Diego Alvarez is one of the names of a tiny inhabited island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

"The first recorded discovery of Gough Island was in 1505 or 1506 by the Portuguese explorer Gonçalo Álvares. Maps during the next three centuries named the island for him. On some later maps, this was given as Diego Alvarez." For more, read on here.

Attilio Gatti, on the other hand, was a real explorer! According to Wikipedia, "Gatti was among the last great safari expedition men. He led ten expeditions to Africa over 23 years before 1945. He became one of the Europeans to see the fabled Okapi, and the Bongo, a brown Lyre horned antelope with white stripes. He was an enthusiastic amateur radio operator, OQ5ZZ, and tried to operate from the Congo deep inland regions. He knew the Pygmy peoples of the Congo Regions very well. He wrote many books on his expeditions, including Killers All!, The New Africa, Here is Africa, Saranga the Pygmy, Africa is Adventure, Kamanda the African Boy, Great Mother Forest, Mediterranean Spotlights, Here is the Veld, Tom Toms in the Night, and South of the Sahara, (Robert McBride & Company 1945). Gatti's books contain invaluable anthropological material from his descriptions of the native peoples he met. Gatti also took good photos of Pygmys and Watussi. He met an important female python shaman. He became experienced with African magic and an entire world that no longer exists."

You'll find a list of his books here. This picture is of Attilio and Ellen Gatti.

Doubtless Bibhutibhushan must have read about Gatti's exploits in contemporary newspapers and journals.

One more review

Entitled "BLOOD DIAMOND", this review appeared in The Statesman, Kolkata, on Oct 2, 2011. 

"I first ran into Chander Pahar, the Bibhuti Bhushan Bandyopadhyay original when I was helping my nephew with his Bengali. What struck me immediately was the resemblance to Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, a swashbuckling novel that Bandyopadhyay must have been familiar with. However, while Alan Quartermain is a great white hunter ready with his gun, Shankar, the main protagonist of the Mountain of the Moon is no such hero. Shankar is in his twenties, comes from the lower middle classes, and is determined to find at alternate exciting way of life to the one that he knows in rural Bengal. A neighbour finds him a job in Africa so he has the chance to indulge his dreams.

What he discovers is a world ‘red in tooth and claw’ filled with man-eating lions, live volcanoes and haunted by the mysterious, deadly three toed Bunyip and the Dingonek. The translator of Mountain of the Moon, Jayanta Sengupta, points out that apart from King Solomon’s Mines, Bandyopadhyay was probably familiar with J Patterson’s Maneaters of Tsavo. Though I placed the Bunyip in Australia, the Dingonek apparently did exist in African legend and was some kind of fearsome almost dinosaur with horns the head of a crocodile and the body of a hippo. 

Shankar’s adventures in Africa are of the thrill a minute kind guaranteed to keep readers young and old compulsively turning the pages. Each chapter leads on to another encounter and people die, but the narrative continues without any false sentiment.

Like the great 19^th century writers, Bandyopadhyay creates a ‘Dark Continent’ a blend of fact and fiction where Portuguese adventurers and lost treasure abounds and danger threatens at every step. Despite this inhospitable environment, Shankar sets out in search of a cave filled with diamonds located in the Mountain of the Moon.

The wonder of it is that Bandyopadhyay had never been to Africa and the story came out of his researches with his own descriptions of the stillness of the night and the hanging stars brought in. That in no way detracts from the fascination of his tale and the confidence with which he tells his story. It’s a very different one from the one he tells in his Apu stories that gave Satyajit Ray the script for Pather Panchali and Aparajito.

Jayanta Sengupta attempts to keep to the flavour of the original time by using phrases like ‘land of the Faerie’. However, early on in the book, he does retain words like ‘bedi’ and ‘pratima’ while describing a small ruined temple near Shankar’s home. These words could, one feels, have been given English equivalents to make the book accessible to non-Indian readers.

The other issue, which comes into the quibbling zone, is the matter of the title, Mountain of the Moon. The Mountains of the Moon with an ‘s’ are supposed to be the source of the White Nile and have been mentioned in ancient treatises. It’s a range familiar through legend to Africa hands and would certainly have been familiar to Bandyopadhyay. The Bengali word for mountain, ‘pahar’ allows for number flexibility. Therefore perhaps, Mountains of the Moon would have been a more satisfying sounding title."

This was written by the well-known novelist, Anjana Basu, author of books like "Curses in Ivory", "Black Tongue", "Rhythms of Darkness" and others. You may want to catch up with her work here. 

Incidentally, if any reader can send me a link or a scan of the review as it appeared in the Statesman, I would be most grateful. 

[The book is available at various online stores such as Rupa, Flipkart, Infibeam, Bookadda, Crossword, Linuxbazar (!!), and at Rediff.]

Shankar in central Africa

After Shankar meets Diego Alvarez and sets out to find the diamond mine, the author takes him through some parts of central Africa on their way to the Richtersveldt Mountains.

I have drawn a very rough map covering his journey south towards Rhodesia, South Africa, and finally South-West Africa (I am using the older names of these areas). Quite a walk those two intrepid gentlemen managed to accomplish!

The book's available online

Finally figured that the book is available in stores! My friends told me, not my publisher.

Anyway, it is available, that's the main thing. If you wish to buy online, here you go:

FLIPKART: http://www.flipkart.com/books/8129118246?_l=CJHVEqJO3veuHytbACc9dw--&_r=ZHHXFteGk_Vk4EhW5XocZg--&ref=7b04bf8d-4206-4245-bbbb-a07619d18f7c&pid=ru23fqyppf

INFIBEAM: http://www.infibeam.com/Books/mountain-moon-rupa/9788129118240.html?utm_term=the+mountain+of+the+moon_1_1

BOOKADDA: http://www.bookadda.com/product/mountain-moon-jayanta-sengupta/p-9788129118240-8129118246

CROSSWORD: http://www.crossword.in/books/mountain-moon/p-books-9788129118240.html

Am also in LINUXBAZAR (!): http://www.linuxbazar.com/the-mountain-of-the-moon-p-41442.html

Not on Landmark yet though! 

The black mamba

One the scariest moments in Shankar's days in the grasslands of East Africa was his night-time encounter with the black mamba.

According to Wikipedia, its name is derived from the black colouration inside the mouth rather than the actual colour of the skin which varies from dull yellowish-green to a gun-metal grey. It is the fastest snake in the world, capable of moving at 4.32 to 5.4 metres per second (16–20 km/h, 10–12 mph).

This is a really really dangerous creature. How danger can be appreciated when you read this post by Wade Nolan. "On a recent safari to Africa, I hand-caught a wild nine-foot Black Mamba. It was a calculated risk...involving bad calculation.

The Mamba's head is coffin-shaped and the inside of his mouth is an ominous black...he would raise up to near eye level, look aggressively at us then loose his balance... and tip over...only to raise up again..hissing. I thought that maybe he had gotten hold of a bad mouse and was woozy.

I made a hasty and misguided decision to lay hands on the most poisonous snake in the world. Most mamba bites are fatal.  This aggressive cobra has a nasty habit of biting it's victims 4 and 5 times in the face and neck.

The third time he raised up and tipped, I pinned his head, and without a lot of thinking...(I bet that surprises you), I had a very angry Black Mamba in my hand.

From the roof of his gaping open mouth I could see the curved extended fangs. Dripping from those fangs was the deadliest venom in the reptile kingdom... mamba venom is yellow. The slippery venom ran out of the corner of his mouth and into my hand..." 

There's a pretty hairy video of this episode here.

And here's a vid of a black mamba hunting a mouse. A friend said that this is the first time she felt sympathy for a mouse.

Explorers of East Africa

While reading 'Chander Pahar', I was as fascinated by East Africa as Bibhutibhushan and Shankar. I started reading about explorers of Africa, thanks to the excellent collection at the British Council Library in Kolkata during my school and college days. Their names - James Bruce (here's a picture of him), René-Auguste Caillié, Samuel Baker, Sir Richard Burton (no, not the actor), Speke, David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, Paul du Chaillu, and many others - were magical to me as a child, and still more magical to me as an adult, now that I have some kind of appreciation of their efforts, trials, and achievements.

As a tiny tribute, I have put together a gallery of these gallant men:

There are two short but fine articles here and here. You might enjoy them. 

I have always imagined Diego Alvarez to be one such intrepid traveler, always drawn to the unknown and the dangerous, as were these men. 

Some more listings and reviews

This one from Afternoon, and this one from Deccan Herald – you’ll have to scroll down a bit

The man-eating lions

In "Mountain of the Moon", the workers building the railway are bedevilled by a pair of man-eating lions. There is an uncanny resemblance of this part of the story with the true story of the man-eaters of Tsavo. The two lions who caused so much depredation have been immortalised by Lt-Col. J H Patterson in his classic book published in 1917 - check this out.

Wikipedia has this to say about Patterson and the Tsavo lions: "In 1898, then Lt.-Col. Patterson was commissioned by the British East Africa Company to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in present-day Kenya. He arrived at the site in March of that year...Almost immediately after his arrival, lion attacks began to take place on the worker population, with the lions dragging men out of their tents at night and feeding on their victims. Despite the building of thorn barriers (bomas) around the camps, bonfires at night and strict after-dark curfews, the attacks escalated dramatically, to the point where the bridge construction eventually ceased due to a fearful, mass departure of the work force. Along with the obvious financial consequences of the work stoppage, Patterson also faced the challenge of maintaining his authority and even his personal safety at this remote site against the increasingly hostile and superstitious workers, many of whom were convinced that the lions were in fact evil spirits, come to punish those who worked at Tsavo, and that he was the cause of the misfortune because the attacks had coincided with his arrival....

"With his reputation, livelihood and safety at stake, Patterson, an experienced tiger hunter from his military service in India, undertook an extensive effort to deal with the crisis and after months of attempts and near misses, he finally killed the first lion on the night of 9 December 1898, and killed the second one on the morning of December 29 (narrowly escaping death in the process). The lions were maneless like many others in the Tsavo area and both were exceptionally large. Each lion was over nine feet long from nose to tip of tail and required eight men to carry it back to the camp."

The lions are now on permanent display at Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

A movie, "The Ghost and the Darkness", has been made based on this story.

The Uganda Railways

Found some great pictures of the Uganda Railways from the early part of the 20th century.

The source - http://www.sikh-heritage.co.uk/heritage/sikhhert%20EAfrica/sikhsEAfrica.htm

Source - Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, Carpenter Collection









There's this GREAT poster for the Railways from Wikimedia Commons.

Shankar, the adventurous Bengali

Bibhutibhushan, the master that he was, did a fantastic job of creating a world that he had never seen! He lived for a long time in the small town of Ghatshila, in Jharkhand, and to my knowledge (incomplete though that is), he had never gone to Africa. But so vivid was his writing that I knew what a baobab tree would look like, decades before I actually saw one.