The romantic East: Burma, Assam, & Kashmir - Khamkoo

146 THE ROMANTIC EAST
The road gets nearer to the river level at the
60th milestone, where there are grand
cliffs on
the opposite side of the river which here runs,
nearly straight, through a magnificent gorge
extremely wild and impressive. After crossing a
bridge and changing horses, we began what proved
to be the worst dak. At milestone 61 the road
was very bad, and the next mile, all under the
crumbling cliffs after passing Dardkob and another
bridge, was the most dangerous mile of the day.
At milestone 62 a boulder, half a ton in weight,
lay in
the middle of the road, and we bumped on
for another two miles over smaller fallen rocks,
which somewhat distracted our attention from the
grand views down the straight reach of river flowing
at the bottom of the gorge far below.
The biggest fallen rock, bigger than the tonga
itself, lay
and 65.
in the road between the milestones 64
At the end of another mile we seemed to
have got over the difficult part,
and our driver had
just whipped his horses up, for a dash to the last
dak before Uri, when off flew the tire of the near
wheel, and before the driver could pull up the
wheel had been broken to pieces, and we came to