Jungle Trails in Northern India

Book excerpt: Sir John Hewett was an administrator in India, with a passion for big game hunting. He wrote this chatty memoir in 1938 when he returned to England. The book offers a detailed account of his adventures in the jungles of Tarai, Gooch Behar, the Central Provinces, and up north in Kumaon and Garhwal. In reading of his descriptions of his travels, we learn a lot about John, as he was known among friends. He travelled a great deal with his younger daughter Lorna, who was an intrepid hunter in her own right and even returned with him to India in 1926-27. The last chapter in this book is about Lorna's unchaperoned trek, to Leh in 1921. The book provides interesting vignettes of the social structures and cultural traditions of the days of the Raj. The photographs of the people the author knew, the maharajas and his colleagues and the author's staff lend colour to the readers' visual vocabulary of a bygone era.