Question 27. Indian rail travel is unavoidably dirty, and a balance must be struck between having the window shutters open to see the countryside and closing them against the heat and dust.
The air-conditioned carriages are generally comfortable, and the train catering manager takes orders, which he passes by phone to the next stop but two, where the food comes aboard in metal dishes. An excellent vegetarian meal of two curries, rice, pickle, nan bread, poppadorns and lassi was more than enough for my wife and I, and did not break the bank at 16 rupees (35p), although it was a fingers-in-the-dish exercise if you didn't have your own knife and fork. Rice plantations in the heat of the day gave way to cotton and maize fields in the evening, where farm workers stood on high stools cleaning the rice.
Our shower, breakfast and bed in the West End Hotel at Bangalore were never more welcome. The silks, silk shirts and ties in Mahatma Gandhi Road are irresistible when offered at half, or sometimes even a third of European prices, and comfortable, well-made leather sandals are of an equally good value.
The drive to Mysore took us via a silk farm, and families of monkeys began to appear at the roadside as the country became wilder. The Sultan Tipu’s summer house outside Mysore is a spacious monument to 19th century good taste, but it sinks to one-star status in comparison with the Maharajah's main palace in the town. Overwhelming in size and splendour, endless wealth has been spent on it over the years for the best that money could buy anywhere on earth. Its 100,000 lightbulb outline illumination is equally impressive after dark, and was extended for an extra half-hour at - presumably - the taxpayer’s expense, in honour of the Indian Finance Minister’s visit the night we were there.
Our driver broke the onward journey south at an ancient Hindu temple where we were warmly welcomed to join the service. After crossing the border from Karnataka into Kerala in the Mudumalai animal reserve, the road started its long climb into the hills. Through eucalyptus woods and tea plantations - the higher the crop, the better its quality - the air became cooler, the roadside greener and the lakes more frequent.
We reached the Fernhill Palace Hotel at Udagamandalam (Ootacamund, otherwise known as ‘Ooty’) in the early afternoon, left our driver and his car and, as if in a time machine, stepped back 60 years. Empty apart from ourselves and another couple, this former Maharajah's residence was a ghost house of faded colonial gentility. The ballroom with its padlocked grand piano, the drawing room, the dining room, the billiard room, the bar and the Maharajah's suite were all designed on the grand scale of half a century ago. Photographs along the corridors show the bursting self-confidence of Ooty’s expatriate society between the wars; today, they present a dusty canvas of distant memories.
1. When travelling on an Indian train,
2. According to the passage, what is true about the food on the Indian train?
4. What best paraphrases the sentence “it was a fingers-in-the-dish exercise if you didn't have your own knife and fork” in paragraph 2?
5. At the West End Hotel, the writer
6. The Sultan's summer house
10. The word “they” in paragraph 6 refers to
