Angus had mugged up on Bombay. One day he would explore the city and visit the caves nearby

At the Suez entrance, the waterway cuts a straight line south for 25 miles.

On the east bank is the Arabian Desert, and on the west, the vast Lake Menzaleh, where fishing boats bobbed on the water among sandy islands.

For centuries, El Qantara, at the junction of the Palestine and Egyptian state railways, has been a crossing place for travellers between Egypt and Syria.

Loaded with biblical memories, it saw Abraham, his sons, and even the holy family pass through on their way to Egypt.

Halfway down the canal and east of Ismaila is Lake Timsah, where crocodiles once teemed. Farther south, and extending for 12 miles, lies the vast Great Bitter Lake, which resembles an inland sea.

Beyond this gigantic stretch of water, and almost as an afterthought, is the Little Bitter Lake.

The final station is Port Tewfik on the Gulf of Suez. Released from the canal, passengers and crew found the Red Sea hot and the atmosphere on board as airless as an oven.

The eastern smells were becoming tiresome and tawdry and orderly officer duties irksome.

Even the lectures, physical fitness programme and ship’s food began to pall.

Local life

From dawn to dusk, a bugle announced the daily duties, from sweeper and swabber tasks to the stowing and drawing of hammocks; there was even a sharp blast which indicated when the troops were permitted to smoke.

The best part of the Red Sea passage was a short break at Port Sudan, situated midway down the gulf on the African coast. Here, they found a hotel with an open air swimming pool.

Those wishing to sample the local life visited the marketplace to watch Arab, African, and Berber traders, and the nomadic Hadendoa tribesmen with their distinctive hairstyles.

Angus may well have taken a trip to explore the coral reefs nearby; as it was the habitat of 1,000 different invertebrate species and 200 soft and hard corals, it was an obvious attraction.

A glass-bottomed boat conveyed visitors to see strands of coral that grew in the form of bushes, mini ferns and gauze-like sheets, with myriad fish ‘mingling in the living garden of the sea,’ as the Reverend Day described this remarkable feat of nature and the world’s most northerly tropical reef.

The ship’s final stop in the Arabian Gulf was Aden, which occupied a strategic position en route to India. Separating Aden from Bombay was 1,645 miles of water: the Indian Ocean took almost five days to cross.

After the Lancashire weighed anchor at Aden, passengers quickly lost sight of the mainland, their chief interest being other ships, an occasional aircraft overhead and sea life – flying fish, dolphins, porpoises, sharks, and whales.

On the morning of day five, Bombay hove into sight, with its splendid harbour, immense white buildings, church spires, the university dome, Gothic towers, factories with tall chimneys, parks, hospitals, hotels, and public buildings.

The voyage from harbour to harbour had taken three weeks, thanks to the Suez Canal that forged a passage from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

In the days before the canal, the journey by steamship from London around the Horn of Africa to Bombay took at least 30 days.

Night life

Angus’s destination was Bombay but his friend, David Wilson, who travelled earlier in the year for Waziristan in the north-west, sailed 400 miles north to Karachi.

For their first night, officers and men remained on board but in the evening some took a stroll around the harbour.

They had heard about the night life, its smart clubs like the Bombay Gymkhana, Byculla, the Royal Yacht Club and the Willingdon.

They ambled along the tree-lined promenade, enjoying the cool ocean breeze, and watched a ceremony where, to invoke prosperity, an effigy of Ganesh, the elephant god, was cast into the sea.

Fishermen were landing their catch; monkeys lurked on hot tin roofs.

Angus had mugged up on Bombay. One day he would explore the city and visit the caves nearby.

The noise and smells were off-putting but, happily, he’d arrived at the end of the monsoons in time for the cool season, which was still very hot and humid; he wondered how he’d manage when it was really hot.

They had received plenty of lectures about the hazards of drinking bad water and eating raw fruit. So it was important to pay attention to personal hygiene and drink only water that had been boiled.

As for malaria, there was still no satisfactory preventive measure against it and the young man had no wish to come down with a frighteningly high temperature, hallucinate and even see vibrant colours as he suffered from the tropical fever.

For several centuries, the only effective agent was quinine although a new, highly efficient anti-malarial drug called mepacrine had just been invented.

Angus was overcome by the sheer weight of humanity in Bombay and the cheapness of life as he watched stick-like figures beg in the streets. He wanted to escape.

Even in his home country he felt uneasy tramping the streets of Glasgow, Edinburgh, or London, so one more night on board the Lancashire came as a relief for him.

The next day he departed from the Victoria Terminus with its extravagant Gujurati-Gothic architecture on a troop train bound for Hyderabad, the capital of the Deccan province.

First class

To accommodate the “jocks”, as the Scottish rank and file were called, the train had special carriages, which consisted of bunks with lavatories at either end of their section and no corridors.

Officers travelled first class. Angus’s compartment, with lights and fans, had two bunks up and two below as well as two cane chairs, a lavatory and a shower. The occupants also had a bearer to lay out their bedding on the bunks.

To prevent dust from entering the space, the window was covered by gauze over slats and glass.

A typical dinner in the restaurant car was curry, lentil soup, dhal, chicken or omelette, followed by bread and butter pudding.

The next morning, as the sun rose in a cloudless sky, the bearer served Angus and his companions chota hazri or little breakfast, and brought hot water for them to wash in and shave.

More tomorrow