We drifted as far as Rawal Pindi, away up on the Afghan frontier—I think it was the Afghan frontier, but it may have been Hertzegovina—it was around there somewhere—and down again to Delhi, to see the ancient architectural wonders there and in Old Delhi and not describe them, and also to see the scene of the illustrious assault, in the Mutiny days, when the British carried Delhi by storm, one of the marvels of history for impudent daring and immortal valor. Following the Equator

From The Indian Equator:
TRAINS TO RAWALPINDI, combining with its neighbor and Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, run every other hour and three hours later I am on the 4.30 p.m. Subak Kharmam Express up towards the North West Frontier. Gillian has joined Livy and Clara on strike; all three need a rest and stay behind in Lahore while Mark Twain and Carlyle Smythe and I make the trip up to Rawalpindi.
Once out of Lahore one sees yet another Pakistan, Pakistan the picturesque. Twain made this same journey but made no comments about it but here I’m reminded of his impressions of Bengal more than I had been in Bengal; or maybe—apart from the nakedness—it was the insidious Pakistan-now-equals-India-then mindset:

And everywhere through the soft vistas we glimpse the villages, the countless villages, the myriad villages, thatched, built of clean new matting, snuggling among grouped palms and sheaves of bamboo; villages, villages, no end of villages, not three hundred yards apart, and dozens and dozens of them in sight all the time; a mighty City, hundreds of miles long, hundreds of miles broad, made all of villages, the biggest city in the earth, and as populous as a European kingdom. I have seen no such city as this before.
And there is a continuously repeated and replenished multitude of naked men in view on both sides and ahead. We fly through it mile after mile, but still it is always there, on both sides and ahead—brown-bodied, naked men and boys, ploughing in the fields. But not a woman. In these two hours I have not seen a woman or a girl working in the fields.

He wouldn’t see one outside a house now either, but that’s a different matter. (Page 214)

Three hours and a glorious sunset over the plains later, I reflect on how good the trains are—and such excellent value; presumably a service not yet farmed out to one of Zardari’s crook-cronies. In fact this Rawalpindi railway line was a source of great pride to the British and Indian—and of course future Pakistani—engineers and managers who built and ran it. The terrain up to Rawalpindi and beyond was difficult and the rush for a quick completion, caused by the need to have a reinforceable garrison in place near the Afghan border, made the building of it even more challenging. It was only finished eight years before Mark Twain and Carlyle Smythe arrived, by which time the garrison had become the largest in the British Empire with 40,000 soldiers encamped, including “one regiment of British and one of Native cavalry; two regiments of British and two of Native infantry”. (Page 214)