Those who came to Britain as students from the colonies and the Commonwealth during the 1950s and `60s by and large stayed between three to five years and then returned home to their countries of origin. Many of them ventured out to the Continent at some point during their time in the UK, either on short or longer trips, mostly hitchhiking or using other means of getting about on limited budgets.
Anecdotally, everyone that one knew spoke of their experiences or desire to `do` the Continent if they could. `This was so in my immediate circle also, and for me the opportunity came in 1963 (though I had spent a weekend in Amsterdam a couple of years earlier, flying both ways, escorting a relative on his first business visit to Europe.) So here I am, looking back on my tour, exactly 60 years ago! `My` tour should really be read as `our` tour, as we were a group of five.
First, then, the personae dramatis, as it were. The leader undoubtedly was B. Surinder Singh Kanda (what the `B` stood for was a mystery, because as was customary in our Oxbridge oriented institutional environment of the Inns of Court, we called each other mostly by our surnames.) He had been an inspector of police in Malaya. On 7 July 1958 he was dismissed by the Commissioner of Police on the ground that he had been guilty of a disciplinary offence. He challenged the dismissal in the (Malayan) High Court. On 24 March 1960 the High Court delivered its judgment, in his favour. The Government appealed and on 14 November 1960 the (Malayan) Court of Appeal, by a majority of two to one, allowed the appeal. Kanda then lodged a further appeal to the Privy Council in London against that decision and the Privy Council on 2 April 1962 allowed his final appeal, declaring that his purported dismissal was void and of no effect, and granted him full costs of the proceedings in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and before the Privy Council. This basic summary of his background and case is extracted from the judgment of the Privy Council, the report of which can be accessed at http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKPC/1962/1962_10.html.
Kanda had come to Britain and enrolled at Lincoln`s Inn as a mature student, while his appeal was still in progress. Its successful outcome enabled him to buy a brand new car, a Morris Oxford, which could comfortably seat five people with adequate space for their luggage. He was `running it in` so that he would not have to pay any customs duty on it as a used car when it landed in Malaya, upon his return there later in the year after he had been Called to the Bar. So it was an ideal vehicle for what he had in mind: go gallivanting across Europe in the company of friends for about a month, and that is what happened. He drove it all the way out there and back, with Hassan Damji navigating and three of us in the back seat as passengers.
Hassan, like me, was from Kenya. He too was going to be Called to the Bar
later that year. It was he and Kanda who
had conferred and agreed the finer details of the trip – the route, the
timeframe, the places to be visited, the finances etc.
The other three passengers were Hassan`s younger sister Roshan, who was in London doing a secretarial course, my friend Mansoor Arfin and myself. All of us four men were semi-collegiate members of Lincoln`s Inn. Kanda was the oldest, in his mid to late 40s. Hassan was around 24, having previously worked with a legal firm in Nairobi. Arfin, in his late 20s, had an interesting back story. He and his family had migrated to Pakistan from India following partition and settled in Karachi. His brother was a senior lawyer there and he had become his junior partner but then had come to London to qualify as an English barrister while pursuing an LLM course at the LSE. We had become good friends and had stayed in the same digs at Muswell Hill in 1961 and later at my 95 Queens Gate abode. He too was expecting to be Called to the Bar later that year and then return to Pakistan. And me, I was nearly 22, had already been Called to the Bar and was spending an extra year doing post-graduate training and a taxation course, before finally returning to Kenya in December.
We were all young enough and eager to get on with the preparations for the trip in a matter of fact way. I had arranged for my accommodation at 95 Queens Gate (a posh address in South Kensington where I lived for a little over my last two years) put on hold. The caretaker husband and wife team had always been very good to me right from when I first went there in October of 1961, keeping it in abeyance for the two or three times I was away for short periods; they had even given my long term Finnish girlfriend a bed-sitter next to mine!
So we set off on our epic journey on the morning of Wednesday 29 May 1963, with Kanda driving and Hassan beside him in the front, navigating. We three sat in the rear: me on the left, Roshan in the middle, and Arfin on the right. We maintained that arrangement throughout. I should add that Roshan was a lovely young woman, a really stunning good-looker, with impeccable social grace. We treated her with sisterly concern and affection.
I have pieced together our full itinerary from my diary entries and other documents appended to this post. I was searching my archival records for something else when these came to light a few days ago and spurred me on to write about the trip.
On the first day, then, after crossing the channel (I have no recollection of how it was), we drove across to Brussels, and stayed the night there. The pattern soon established was that we would arrive at our destination for the night, stopping along the way here and there for sightseeing, lunches, visiting places of interest or whatever came along, and then look for accommodation. Again, throughout we stayed at all manner of hotels, broadly speaking in the 2-3-4 star range, whatever was available and often sharing rooms. In Italy in particular, we also had the choice of bed and breakfast style pensiones, where we were able to interact with other guests informally.
Don`t forget: 60 years ago the use of English, as the standard form of communication that it has become now for tourists and travellers all over the world was not at all common on the Continent, and we had to navigate our way around, trying to make sense of signage in the language of the country we were in, and had become adept at using certain words and phrases in the local lingo – German, Italian, French. The Netherlands was the only country where English was widely spoken. We made ourselves understood by a combination of gestures and a few familiar words, and sometimes even by drawing diagrams on paper.
The diary entries give the precise dates and duration of our stops but in summary this is how it went:
Brussels > Rotterdam > Amsterdam > Frankfurt > Basle > Zurich (2 nights) > Alpine Hotel > Milan > Venice (2 nights) > Florence > Rome (2 nights) > Pisa > Genoa > Cannes > Arles > Barcelona (2 nights) > Andorra (2 nights) > Limoges > Paris (3 nights) > Calais/London – a total of 26 nights/27 days.
So what do I remember? In general, a lot of it is lost in the fog of time of course. To be frank, once the trip was over, we got back and immediately went about our routines; I don`t think we even sat down together to do a proper post-mortem either then or, as often happens with friends when they meet up years later, which we never did. One striking omission was that none of us had taken a camera and so I had/have no photographic evidence – of the car, the group, the sites visited, the hotels we stayed at (though have a look at the next post/s.)
But certain memories have stayed with me. I should say that the fact that we were travelling in a UK registered right-hand drive car, which was new and looked good, drew attention. In the Netherlands, along the Rotterdam-Amsterdam highway, we were shouted at by a motor-cycle cop, not in an aggressive way but rather to signal to the driver, Kanda, addressed as `You, Englander`, with a gesture to move to the right of the road when he had veered across to the left. But otherwise, there were no motoring mishaps; Kanda was an excellent driver. I remember he expertly drove through the narrow winding escarpment roads in the Swiss Alps while we gaped at the passing scenery.
The fact that we were all brown-skinned Asians, with a young
lady amongst us, actually worked in our favour: because we looked young, smart
and presentable. In those days
foreigners like us were seen as coming from privileged backgrounds, which
indeed we were. After the day`s travel and other activities, after we
had checked in for the night`s stay in a hotel, we would dress up for the
evening and go out for a meal at some restaurant. Once, either in Florence or
Milan, we were waiting to cross a crowded thoroughfare and guess what? A policeman blew his whistle and stopped
the traffic for us, and why?
Because Roshan was wearing a gorgeous saree and drawing admiring glances from everyone. We were seen as welcome guests, possibly even as visiting dignitaries (!), far from the sight of ordinary tourists of the present day variety. In fact our evening walks were always a pleasant end to the day`s outings.
Early on, somewhere near Frankfurt, we were treated to a meal by a mixed Iranian and Swiss-German couple (the lady`s name was Lotte, I think), friends of Kanda who had pre-arranged the visit. And oh, the German autobahns: they were simply fantastic. It was a novel experience for us to be freely driving at 80 mph+, in pace with other vehicles in parallel lanes. I did something in my youthful exuberance that I would not have dreamt of doing as an older person - flashing a bottle of whisky at a car in the next lane; they directed us to follow them into a rest area; we stopped there and had a friendly exchange and sampled each other`s drinks! Us being `Englanders` was certainly an advantage; we were a curiosity and did not encounter any racism or negativity anywhere.
Highlights of our tour? There were so many – each place had something special or worth seeing. In Amsterdam, we did the canal boat excursion and I remember there was a young woman who was so smitten by my English accent that she stayed on board until the end. It could have led to a follow-up but I showed no interest, much to my own bafflement!
We spent the longest time in Italy and visited six cities. There was of course much to see. Everywhere we could see posters announcing the death of the Papa (Pope John) who had apparently died some days before we reached Milan, but while the nation was in mourning life was going on as normal as far as we could see. The process of choosing a successor had probably begun but we did not know anything about it. I won`t dwell on all the tourist spots that we visited, whether in Italy or elsewhere, because these are world famous and familiar to all those who will have been there or seen images of them. Even so, yes, the Eiffel Tower and the Catacombs of Paris, the Vatican City in Rome, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, St Mark`s Square in Venice were certainly what we did`do` – and many of these we have `done` since, at one time or another in the last 40-50 years!
Our route took us to the mainland of western Europe through
Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland, and then down into Italy to
Venice at the farthest point in the East, from where we went southwest along
the Italian Riviera and upwards into Spain and France and then back to London
from Paris. That we managed to stop over in Cannes and Barcelona, passing
through Marseille en route, was quite something; but more than that we even
spent two days in Andorra, at that time a sleepy little enclave sandwiched
between Spain and France, but which when we visited it again some 45 years
later had blossomed into a real tourist paradise! I have an amusing story about what happened in
Andorra on our 2010 visit but that is for another day.
But I have to mention money. In those days there were no credit or debit cards. We carried cash in sterling which we would exchange for the local currency of whichever country we were in, on an ad hoc basis, and would settle up with each other daily or as and when required. I thought I might fall short and of course one had to provide for contingencies, and so I had instructed my brother back at home to send a draft for £35 to me care of the British Consul in Rome. Consular offices tended to be used for correspondence for British travellers, as poste restante, in those days and I was confident that it would reach me. Well, the first thing we did on arrival in Rome was to go to the British Consul and enquire about any letter for me. The counter clerk looked through the pending mail box and said there was none. Goodness, what was I to do? Then Hassan had a brilliant idea (he was older and wiser); he asked the clerk to look up under `R` and not just `S`, and there it was (in fact there were two): in my full name beginning with R … (which is how my brother always used to address his letters to me). So that near disaster was averted and I had enough funds to last me until the end of the trip – see my postcards to him below.
Well, we got back late on the night of Monday, 24 June, from Paris to Calais and by ferry to Dover, and then on to London. That was the only time Kanda lost his cool, after a long and exhausting day of travel, when during the drive to London some officious motor-cyclist accused him of driving badly and Kanda reacted with the full force of his authority as an ex-police inspector, telling the guy to get lost. Otherwise, during our trip, while there were moments of tension and disagreement (and one particular incident when he and I had fallen out) we all had fun and enjoyed much banter laced with wit and good humour.
As I have said, once the trip was over, everyone got busy with their own lives and by the end of the year we had all left England to go back to our respective home countries, to build up our careers and family lives as fully fledged adults. I did not have any further news about Kanda, and assume he must have passed away by now. With Hassan, it was different. We were both lawyers practising in Nairobi and we had one or two professional dealings and did occasionally meet casually but I don`t think we ever talked about the trip as such. I last briefly met him on one of my visits back there, some 16 years ago. When I began writing this blog, about a week ago now, I inquired about him through common links and found out that he too has passed away. And I am still waiting to hear about Roshan, whom I last bumped into in Nairobi`s city centre, coming out of a travel agency, almost 50 years ago.
As for Arfin, it is a slightly different story. I used to get occasional news of him through a common friend and had made contact with him, so that when Kanchan (my wife) and I were embarking on our first visit to the sub-continent in December 1968, I had arranged for our flight schedule to include a stopover in Karachi. Well, we touched base there, but due to a visa problem we were not formally admitted into the country, and so had to spend the night in an airport hotel in the transit area at the airline`s expense before being put on the next flight out to Bombay early next morning. Mansoor unfortunately was away from Karachi on legal business, but he had sent his wife and brother-in-law to receive us. The Pakistani immigration authorities, who were courteous throughout, allowed them to spend the evening with us at the hotel, and so we got to know his charming wife. I remember we were even able to dance to music at the hotel`s starred ballroom cum restaurant. It was really disappointing not to have met up with Arfin, then or subsequently. But just as I was about to finish this narrative, a thought occurred to me and I made a google search, and voilà! I easily found an entry relating to Mansoor-ul-arfin & Co, Advocates, with an address and phone numbers in Karachi. I have repeatedly tried calling them but the landlines are dead. It looks like a permanent problem there, and the absence of any other information such as a website or an email address does not help. If I do manage to make contact with Mansoor (or Roshan) then I will post an update here when that happens.
But for now, here then is my account of our memorable continental odyssey that took place exactly 60 years ago. It remained a talking point for a while and then got forgotten except for an occasional passing reference in the context of travellers` tales. What stands out is that we did our trip in style.
RAMNIK SHAH
© 2023
Surrey, England
APPENDIX
Diary Entries
Postcards home
Miscellaneous cards
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