I wrote home that I'd reached Riverside by elephant – but it was only my rucksack, my oil lamps and the tin of paraffin that rode down to the village. Elephants are slow and uncomfortable transport; walking is pleasanter. Unfortunately, between Headquarters up at the border and the lower village, where the tributary debouches into the great river, we had to wade the stream thirtyseven times. I was accompanied by Timothy, the Army medical officer, who wore Wellington boots – but the water reached our waists.

Halfway down the valley there was a hamlet where we stopped at the store, and a rotund little gentleman with a jaw abscess called on his wife to serve us tea, giggling as he recounted his days in the Burma Rifles: ‘Ordinary soldier, sixteen shillings a month, no pension! Hee hee!’

There were no villages here ten years back. Headquarters had been at Barterville, on the banks of the main river at the next tributary to the south. In many respects it made more sense there; that was where not only the trade but also much of the population was, in Barterville itself or the villages nearby.