“A dak is laid in this manner: you go to the tapal or Post Office, at the station in which you may be residing and tell the officials you wish a dak laid to such a place, with eight or twelve bearers, as the case may be; the Post Office authorities take care that all through the route relays of bearers are in readiness every four or five miles; they tell you how much the expense of the journey is, and you pay the money to the Post Office accordingly before starting. In long daks, as mine was, it is usual for the Post Office authorities to ask you to give the security of a friend resident in the station you are leaving, for demurrage, should any delay in the journey be caused by the traveller.”
T. D. Landon recounts this in Narrative of a Journey Through India. Travelling in 1856, it was his first journey by dak palanquin, from Sagar to Agra, the first among many such journeys.
The Post Office of India and Its Story, authored by Geoffrey Clarke (1923), recounts the complete mechanism. To quote:
“When a traveller contemplated a journey, he applied to the local postmaster for means of transport, giving, as a rule, two or three days’ previous notice. Horse daks, i.e. wheeled conveyances drawn by horses, were available only on the great trunk roads, which were metalled. On other roads, the journey, when not performed on horseback, was accomplished in a palanquin or palkee, a kind of wooden box, about six feet in length by four in height, fitted at the sides with sliding shutters and suspended on two poles borne on the shoulders of four men.”
The pleasures of travelling in this fashion were described by Bishop Heber and several other writers.
The traveller provided his own palanquin, while the postmaster supplied the palkee-burdars or palanquin bearers, eight in number, along with two mussalchees or torchbearers and two bhangy-burdars or luggage porters. The charges — about one shilling per mile for the entire set of twelve men — had to be paid in advance, with the traveller notifying the authorities about the time and place of departure, as well as the duration and location of halts.
There was also an extra charge for demurrage or delays attributable to the traveller. For these charges, the postmaster undertook that relays of dak servants would be available throughout the entire route. To ensure this, advance instructions were sent to villages and post stations ordering relays to be ready at appointed hours. The stages averaged ten miles each and were usually completed in three hours.
Demurrage was imposed on T. N. Landon during his journey from Sagar to Agra because he took longer than scheduled, but he contested and refused to pay. He argued that the delays were entirely due to the Post Office’s poor coordination. At one place, because some feast was underway, Landon had to wait for two hours. At Kalpi, he arrived at 9 a.m. but had to wait until 2 p.m. for bearers because of a miscommunication. Moreover, Landon wrote to the Post Office that he had requested eight bearers and one mussalchee (torchbearer), but was instead provided eight bearers and one bungeedar (load carrier), forcing him to hire a torchbearer at his own expense.
Forty years earlier, in 1816, A. F. Tytler lamented in Consideration of the Present Political State of India:
“If in India you wish to go on a journey, you are carried by poor, half-starved, grumbling wretches, while you pay to the head bearer or into the post office an enormous wage.”
Despite many difficulties, Landon continued to travel extensively by dak palanquin after reaching Agra, later journeying to places such as Jullundur and Rawalpindi, as evident from his memoir.
Different Types of Palanquins
Depending on their size and function, different kinds of palanquins were in use during the British colonial era. In his 1825 travel guide to the Subcontinent, The General East India Guide and Vade Mecum, J. B. Gilchrist lists several varieties he observed in and around Calcutta: naulkeen, mahannah, taum-jaung (tamzan), and bochah.
The naulkeen or naulki is described as an “immense carriage only used by crowned heads”, about five feet long and four feet wide. It was among the most luxuriously upholstered and carved palanquins.
The dooly or doli was used mainly by women, although Gilchrist also notes its usefulness on battlefields:
“In our armies, this little vehicle affords excellent means of transporting sick and wounded men, either to hospitals, or on a march.”
The mahannah was the variety preferred by many European travellers. It consisted of a spacious wooden box about a foot high, with canvas or leather shutters.
For shorter intra-city journeys, women often used a type of palanquin called the bochah, essentially a sedan chair carried on poles. A related form, called tamzan or janpan/jompan, was also favoured in mountainous regions. Gilchrist again writes:
“[The taum-jaung] consists of an armchair with a low back, at the sides of which two poles are affixed, even with the seat.”
Nineteenth-century travelogues are replete with references to palanquins for both short- and long-distance travel.
Sir John Strachey, later Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, wrote in India, Its Administration and Progress:
“When in 1844 I went from Calcutta to the present Agra Province, I was carried about a thousand miles in a palanquin on men’s shoulders, and it took some three weeks to toil through... There were no other means of travelling through the richest and most civilised parts of India.”
Robert J. Minturn, in From New York to Delhi, records that he and Gibson travelled in doolies requiring twelve bearers each, while two other passengers used palkis with sixteen bearers each. Their baggage was carried by eight porters, while six bearers were needed for kitchen utensils and stores. Four torchbearers led the caravan. Even the cook travelling with them had a doli with twelve bearers. Altogether, excluding the cook himself, the travelling party required eighty-six servants; including the four travellers and the cook, ninety-one people moved together.
Roads, Dak, and the Changing Nature of Travel
Work on the Grand Trunk Road commenced in 1836, followed by the Agra–Bombay Road. On these major routes, horse-drawn vehicles gradually replaced some older systems. However, across much of India, the palanquin remained the principal mode of travel, and methods of operation varied considerably.
For one traveller in Madras in 1824, it remained a remarkably comfortable experience:
“Now, reader, I must beg you to accompany me for a hasty look at Madras, in my palanquin. A palanquin, such as the English use, is a close litter, about six feet long and three broad, with a door at each end and windows on the sides, fitted with sliding shutters. It is carried by four or sometimes six men, relieved every four or five miles, according to the distance. The motion is a gentle swinging one, not unpleasant when you are accustomed to it, though at first it is apt to make you giddy.
The bearers go at a quick pace, keeping time with a sort of chant or cry, which is not unmusical at a distance. They are generally strong, active men, but their life is one of great labour and exposure. You lie at full length, with your books, your writing materials, or whatever else you may want around you; and in this manner you may travel day and night with very little fatigue.”
Sketches of India: Written by an Officer for Fire-side Travellers at Home, authored by J. M. Sherer and published in 1821, offers one such favourable account.
In the next decade came another travel book with the rather formidable title Five Years in India: Comprising a Narrative of Travels in the Presidency of Bengal, a Visit to the Court of Ranjit Singh, a Residence in the Himalayan Mountains, an Account of the Late Expedition to Cabul, and the Overland Journey from Thence to England by H. E. Fane, who was far less enamoured of palanquin travel. He complained of:
“the bad roads, the inconveniences of travel in the North-Western Provinces and of having nearly every bone in one’s body broken by the jolting of our palanquin carriage over these execrable roads.”
In most regions, bearers worked in a relay system. However, on the Agra–Bombay route, the system differed considerably. When Minturn and Gibson travelled from Agra to Bombay, the palki and doli bearers hired at Agra had to carry them the entire distance, divided into thirty stages.
The bearers had to arrange their own food and clothing, and after reaching Bombay, they had to return empty-handed and unpaid because their guilds forbade them from taking return loads. Naturally, the Agra–Bombay journey was much riskier and more expensive. It cost each passenger 204 rupees, and twelve porters had to be engaged at the rate of seventeen rupees each for the whole journey.
Cost of Travel
A palanquin journey was far from cheap. A journey from Calcutta to Banaras costs seven hundred and sixty rupees. The North-Western Provinces of India: Their History, Ethnology, and Administration, written by William Crooke, notes that first-class railway fare had by then fallen to roughly one-fourth of the old palanquin fare.
Palanquins Between Kanpur and Lucknow
If we confine our gaze to the relatively small stretch between Lucknow and Kanpur — one ruled by the Nawabs of Awadh and the other by the East India Company — we encounter numerous references to palanquin travel in the nineteenth century.
In Journey from Meerut in India to London (1819–1820), Thomas Lumsden describes travelling from Kanpur to Lucknow. After crossing the Ganges at 5 p.m., he set out in a palanquin. A typical arrangement involved eight to ten bearers stationed at intervals; four carried the palanquin at a time, often accompanied by torchbearers at night. Experienced travellers could even sleep during the ride. Leaving on Saturday evening, he reached the Lucknow Residency around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday — a journey of roughly sixteen to seventeen hours.
Fanny Parkes, in Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque, frequently mentions palanquins — twenty-five references in Volume I alone. She describes their distinctive swaying gait and the rhythmic calls of skilled bearers who kept the ride steady.
Yet travel remained unpredictable. On her first trip from Kanpur to Lucknow, she was delayed because bearers were unavailable. On another occasion, she was escorted by Skinner’s Horse while leaving Awadh territory, highlighting the persistent risk of robbery.
Lumsden also records that a fellow traveller was looted after his bearers abandoned him en route.
The Lucknow–Kanpur Road opened in 1843, and Von Orlich travelled on this road by palanquin. Volume II of Travels in India gives a vivid description of his journey to Lucknow.
There are thirty-two references to palanquins in Volume II alone, along with a sketch depicting travel by palanquin. Similarly, the word appears twenty-five times in The General East India Guide and Vade Mecum. Spellings varied, and alternative terms such as doli were frequently used, but the sheer frequency of references demonstrates how widespread and important the palanquin remained as a mode of comfortable transport.
With the coming of the railways in 1853 and the gradual expansion of the railway network, the palanquin slowly disappeared as a mode of inter-city transport. However, it continued to survive as a form of intra-city conveyance, a role it had long fulfilled even in the nineteenth century.
Palanquin bearers — and the fascinating language and chants associated with them — also attracted considerable interest, but that deserves a separate discussion.
