'A Grandfather's Tale: Memoirs being mainly concerned with service in the Indian Army and the Indian Political Service in India and the Persian Gulf from 1932-1947' [‎14r] (27/118)

Aft 01 * I had been in Baroda a week or so I moved into a 5th/7th
Rajput quarter. It was, in fact, an old disused billiard room and quite
separate from the Mess. To my horror I found that it was infested with
rats, and they would even eat my toothpaste and soap overnight. My
bearer got hold of an old parrot-cage type trap and one morning we found
three of the brutes in it, which we speedily drowned. After that we
gradually got things under control, but I was very glad some weeks
later to move into the Lows* bungalow as a paying guest. This had
been the original intention when I first arrived, but for domestic
reasons in the Low household had had to be postponed.
• j u 011 , t p 6 2/+th November 1 936 His Highness the Maharajah Gaekwar
Ssid!a f 11-05 * Was reoelved in state at the Railway Station.
Besides the State troops and officials there was an escort from the Sth Bn
La sta?f Offi0er ' the °- C - tro °PS and the Resident and '
his staff, including me duly booted and spurred as his A.D.C.
. 5 nCe the Mahara j ah was back, and the weather cooler, official
V1S1 s and entertaining increased, and amongst other things I was taken
on a cheetah hunt. Only one other State in India, Kalahpur, had them so
I was lucky to get the chance of going on one. The cheetah is a hunting
leopard and was imported into Baroda from East Africa. Four of us went
out with one of H. H's A.D.Cs by train to a place about 20 miles from
aroda. Roads outside the capital were very poor, and in many places
non-existent, the alleged reason being that the State Government did not
want to lose money on its railways, of which there was a widespread
network of narrow gauge lines through the State and the whole of the
Gujarat Agency An office of the East India Company and, later, of the British Raj, headed by an agent. .
When we arrived at our destination we found the Station and Road
all decorated in honlur of H.H. Unfortunately, only that morning he had
decided he was not feeling well enough to come, and so all the ''welcome"
was in vain. I felt so sorry for the children and local officials who
were Sadly disappointed®
We went by car about six miles to a large plain which was
actually flooded when there was a very high tide. The river Mahi flowed
into the sea only twelve miles further on. There were wild black buck
all over the plain, unlike those living in the deer forest near Baroda,
which were as tame as the deer in Richmond Park. After being offered
whisky (at 8 a.m.l) which we declined with thanks, we put down a glass
of beer and then got into the cars, we four in one, some other visitors
in another, and the head shikari (hunter) and one of the cheetahs and
its keeper in the third car (a pick-up) and the second cheetah in the
fourth. We put up a single black buck almost at once and increased speed
to about 35 ni.p.h. When we were within 50 yards of it the first cheetah
was unhooded. It leapt from the back of the pick-up as the vehicle was
still moving and hared after the buck and brought it down within two
hundred yards, by which time both animals must have been travelling at
well over 45 m 0 p.m. The cheetah first brings down a buck by leaping on