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Aleister Crowley Diary Entry Sunday, 31 August 1902
On August 31st we went on to Pashwari. The valley was charming, and the glorious colouring continued to delight.
Gurais was our next stopping place. On the road I was passed by an Englishman, who indignantly brushed me out of the way, under the impression that I was a native of some sort. Six months of beard and hair, and constant exposure to weather, together with my pagri, had indeed made an object of me which deceived the Kashmiri themselves. In the whole ride to Bandipur the natives never saluted me till the khabar reached them and told them what to expect. The surprise of the Englishman a few hours later, when he was introduced to me, I will leave to the imagination of my readers. At Gurais I found the Forest Officer of the District, Radcliffe, by name, whom we had known at Srinagar. He himself hardly recognised me at first; but my shikari, Abdulla Bat, told him that I had arrived. He had come up in great style; for, living constantly in the jungle, he had learnt to take care of himself; with fine hospitality he placed all the resources of his establishment at our disposal, so that I enjoyed the luxury of a hot bath and decently-cooked food. Since the dismissal of Abdullah Khan our only cooks had been Kashmiri, two of our naukar having volunteered for this job; but in the division of our party I had got the worse of the two. The Doctor [Jules Jacot Guillarmod]did his best by showing him various methods of cooking potatoes; but the native is so constituted that if you order, for example, fried potatoes one night, he never dares to cook them in any other way until the order is definitely reversed. So the Doctor was pretty constantly in our kitchen, and made our cuisine fairly tolerable; but as the materials at the cook’s disposal consisted only of mutton, chicken, eggs, salt, and flour, with very occasional butter, apart from the drinkables (which were confined to tea) the menu was not varied; and we were heartily glad to eat the excellent lunch and dinner which Radcliffe so hospitably provided. The memory of it is still with me.
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