A Dry Course

By the middle of the 20th century few places remained that had not been visited by a foreigner with a typewriter. But travel books were still written about difficult destinations. Very soon hardly any such destination remained; so publishers nowadays demand a gimmick to make a travel book sell. Mark Shand has apparently made some successful expeditions into this territory in the past. Though I haven’t read any of his previous books, I gather his gimmick has been to travel on, or with, a female elephant called Tara.

Shand originally conceived this book as an account of a boat trip down the Brahmaputra, from its source to the sea. An elephant, whatever its gender, would be rather an encumbrance in a boat; so his chosen companion is a dog, the second of two. He loses the first in Delhi, while staying with the Rajmata of Baroda; he borrows the second from a friend in Assam. It is fairly clear he doesn’t need canine companionship so much as a literary prop; but he heavily emphasises the friendly relations between him and his pet.

Indeed, the book contains a very embarrassing dream sequence in which the dog Bhaiti and the writer have a long conversation and declare their undying love for each other. (This, admittedly, takes place after Shand’s smoked a pipeful of opium.) At journey’s end the author returns Bhaiti to his rightful owner without too many tears. He doesn’t really need to have dialogues with a dog, for he is clearly a gregarious and popular man.

His influential friends arrange all the details of his trip. Charles Allen takes him, mostly on foot, to the Brahmaputra’s Himalayan source. Another friend finds dogs for him; yet another searches for a suitable boat. All this while Shand meets and talks to people interesting in varying degrees.

If you subtitle a book "A Journey Down the Brahmaputra," you’re expected to be out on the water, not sauntering down the shore. When Shand boards his first boat, and it floats out on the river, we’re already on page 230. Tribesmen often threatened 19th century travel writers, animals attacked them. By comparison Shand’s trip is a piece of cake.

Not only do his friends arrange his travels from the shore, but when afloat he has a crew to sail his boat and feed him. He suffers a few minor contretemps. He hurts his foot quite badly, but it heals. He has a few harmless tiffs with officials. He unknowingly eats a stew that contains rats. He also eats a poisonous beetle, after his guide has first squeezed its venom out. Hardly the stuff of high adventure.

This kind of travel book needs to amuse and entertain. But most of the people in it speak as though at an English public school, and the author is as facetious. Years ago Eric Newby wrote a very good book on sailing down the Ganges. Circumstances prevented Shand from sailing down the Brahmaputra, but even if he had, I doubt it would have helped "River Dog".