I am told that even the most ignorant novice can’t help catching fish in Kashmir

Many of these fine vessels, fashioned in cedar with walnut facings, still bobbed on the water in the reeds by the bank and had names like Omar Khayam (de luxe), Miss England, Sun Flower and Rosemary.

The lake was always busy: a shikara laden with vegetables floated past, one man at the bow and another on the raised stern. Another, more ornate, was fitted with a brightly-painted hood and had silk streamers. Looking up to the top of the hill was a fort and an expanse of trees, which lent greenness to the scenic view.

I went for a walk past a garden, in which grew a pomegranate tree. Goats grazed on the grass verge; sheep and cows blocked the road. Groups of women, dressed in black, their heads and faces covered, passed as I tramped towards old Srinagar with its narrow streets. Here, there were houses with carved verandas, balconies and mughal-shaped windows. Hens and ducks scavenged in streams choked with litter.

Disappointing

I could not visit Srinagar without seeing the mughal gardens. The first was “disappointing as the grass is scorched”, I wrote.

Because of its superb position between the mountains and the lake, the Nishat Bagh with its ponds and waterfalls, was the best. However, the garden’s layout resembled a municipal park with rows of chrysanthemums, dahlias, phlox and marigold.

The gardens were perfect for family outings when fathers took photographs of their children and bought from vendors soft drinks, masala dosa, samosas, Indian sweets (all tasting similar), tea and knick-knacks.

When we finished with the gardens, we drove round the lake through a number of villages. The tall houses, with intricately carved woodwork, had brick, thatched, or corrugated roofs. But the drains were open and livestock roamed wherever it wished. I saw men beating metal and embroidering cloth. In a beautiful setting on the north-west shores of the lake, I stopped to admire a white marble mosque. “What with the women covered up and the mosques,” I scribbled, “Srinagar feels like a real Muslim, nonIndian city.”

Angus returned to Srinagar, not by bus but by foot and headed for Gulmarg at 8,000ft above sea level to play golf. “It is the place where anyone in Srinagar goes when it begins to get a little hot,” he explained.

Meaning a meadow of flowers, Gulmarg boasts one of the world’s highest altitude golf courses and has plenty of scenic walks but it was unlikely that Angus had time to indulge in many. His last activity was a week’s fishing but he does not say where.

“Then, I have taken a rod on a trout stream. As you know I am told that even the most ignorant novice can’t help catching fish in Kashmir.” Kashmir, the Happy Valley, yielded willingly its bounty and from its teeming rivers, reminiscent of the Highlands, came an abundance of trout.

Captivated

With its snow-capped mountains, fast-flowing rivers and steep slopes covered with pines and other evergreens, the country captivated Angus and reminded him of home; perhaps not Kintyre but the central Highlands and part of Inverness-shire where Sir John Stirling Maxwell’s deer forest lay.

With its carefully planted pine forest, river, hills and loch, Corrour, at the head of Loch Ossian, had much resemblance to Kashmir.

Unlike David Wilson, Angus had no father to boost his bank balance after his two-month holiday. “The snag of this trip is that it will be expensive and uncomfortable travelling there,” he wrote.

To defray the cost he sold his polo pony, “as I don’t want to have to feed it while I am away in Kashmir. Also I shall need a good deal of ready cash for this trip. So for this reason I have also sold my car”.

After his fishing interlude, he had “to scuttle back” to Trimulgherry. By this time the hot weather had abated and “the gardens looked green again,” claimed the editorial in the last edition of The Thin Red Line before its publication ceased for the duration of the war.

On return, Angus took over as adjutant again, replacing Captain Morgan, who had stood in for him. Within weeks the battalion was put on short notice to move but they did not know where.

As part of the 12th Indian Infantry Brigade (of the 4th Indian Division), it was debated whether they would be sent to the Middle East with the rest of the division but they soon learned that they were to go to Singapore.

At the beginning of August they received orders to move to Madras and embark on the SS Egra. Early on the 2nd, the battalion assembled with weapons, kilt and full pack and said goodbye to their Indian servants and staff and marched to Secunderabad railway station, past the 2nd West Yorkshires, who came out in their pyjamas and lined the road to cheer them past. It took a day to reach Madras and a fourday voyage on the SS Egra, before they reached their destination.

Angus arrived at Singapore’s Keppel Harbour on August 8 1939. Looking down from the deck he saw, bobbing on the water, wooden sampans, navigated by Chinese men in faded blue, wearing peaked straw hats.

Potential

Dominating the island’s approach was a mass of concrete: pillboxes, searchlight emplacements and coastal gun batteries on Blakang Mati, where sometimes, new arrivals spent a few days in quarantine. Today, this islet, now called Sentosa, is a pleasure island with golf course, malls, beaches and a museum showing Singapore’s past and the 1942 British surrender to the Japanese.

Similar in shape and size to the Isle of Wight, Singapore lies off the southern tip of the Malayan peninsula. The Malacca Strait separates the island’s southern shores from the east coast of Sumatra. Here the Indian Ocean meets the South China Sea.

On January 29 1819, an East India Company servant, Sir Stamford Raffles, set foot on the island and saw immediately its potential as a trading post. In realising his ambition, the enterprising Raffles enabled the British in South East Asia to compete with the Dutch.

However, trade only boomed in the following century. To supply the most important ingredient for the manufacture of car tyres, planters in Malaya began to cultivate rubber, sending the raw material to Singapore for storage before being exported. More tomorrow © 2017 Mary C Gladstone, all rights reserved, courtesy of the author and Firefallmedia; available in hardcover and paperback online and from all booksellers.