Word has gone around about how the memsahib dealt with the village lad. The state emblem on the car and the liveried flunkies do the rest. The village headman and his cronies welcome us with a mixture of namaskars, Jai Hinds and salaams to the memsahibji. Hoity-Toity nods at them. A charpoy is laid out. A woman with her face veiled brings a trayful of chai in glass tumblers. Hoity-Toity peers into the woman’s veil and makes everyone laugh. She refuses to drink the chai but grabs the pipe of a hookah from the hand of a peasant and takes a couple of puffs. They clap their hands and laugh like children. Through me they inform her that the excavated sites have been covered over. ‘Have any of you found any strange objects while ploughing or digging foundations for new houses?’ They waggle their heads. ‘No.,’

We take leave of Tilpat. At Badarpur we turn left, go over a railway level crossing and turn left again along a narrow road. We descend through a defile. A peacock scuttles across and takes wing raucously crying paon, paon.

‘A real live peacock!’ exclaims Hoity-Toity.

‘The place is infested with them.’

‘And humans! India seems to be infested with human beings.’ She waves towards the buses, scooters, cars and bicycles in the parking lot at Suraj Kund. Picnickers are scattered everywhere. Transistors, tape recorders and gramophones compete with the snake charmers’ pipes.

Our arrival causes a stir. By the time we pull up alongside the verandah of the rest-house, transistors have been toned down; three snake charmers blow lustily through their gourd pipes; an old man with a king cobra twined round his neck approaches us. ‘Christmas!’ exclaims Lady Hoity-Toity. ‘I don’t like snakes and I don’t like picnickers.’ She surveys the scene for a moment, shudders a long ooh of disgust. ‘How long do we have to stay here?’ she asks.

‘There’s this amphitheatre. Then there is an old dam about two miles from here, village Anangpur another mile beyond the dam. There are the remains of the wall which protected Anangpur. It’ll take us most of the afternoon and evening.’

She’s a lady of quick decisions. She orders the flunky to unload the hamper. She goes in, examines the room and the bathroom, sniffs at the towels, turns up her nose at the bundle of clipped newspapers in a box beside the toilet. She dictates the order of the day to the chauffeur, ‘Take the car back. Come back around 9 p.m.’ She does not ask me if I am free till 9 p.m.