CHAP. XVIII - THE MOHURRUM

Summary

Although Poonah is the ancient Maratta capital, and a thoroughly Hindoo city, it is famed throughout India for the splendour with which its people celebrate the Mohamedan Mohurrum, so I timed my visit in such a way as to reach the town upon the day of the “taboot procession.”

The ascent from the Konkan, or flat country of Bombay, by the Western Ghauts to the table-land of the Deccan, known as the Bhore Ghaut incline, in which the railway rises from the plain 2,000 feet into the Deccan, by a series of steps sixteen miles in length, is far more striking as an engineering work than the passage of the Alleghanies on the Baltimore and Ohio track, and as much inferior to the Sierra Nevada railway works. The views from the carriage windows are singularly like those in the Kaduganava Pass between Columbo and Kandy; in fact, the Western Ghauts are of the same character as the mountains of Ceylon, the hills being almost invariably either flat-topped or else rent by volcanic action into great pinnacles and needle peaks.

The rainy season had not commenced, and the vegetation that gives the Ghauts their charm was wanting, although the “mango showers” were beginning, and spiders and other insects, unseen during the hot weather, were creeping into the houses to seek shelter from the rains.