Slowly Down the Ganges

Eric Newby in typical Newby style. Never rushed and never over-excited.
Probably one of the worst researched river expeditions written about - Who turns up near the headwaters of a river, planning to navigate its length, to find it in not a foot deep? Who continues to rent a boat, load it up and depart, only to be required to move rocks for the first 3 days in order to form a channel to allow the boat to be encouraged downstream a little.
For a river expedition, Newby does a reasonable amount of travel on buses and trains, but does manage some boat time in this book.
Readable, (although the version I have contains painfully small font), and hilarious in parts, although in Newby's understated way. Updated from 3 star to 4 star on reflection.

“Bhogpur is two kos from Bhagmalpur,” he said. If Bhogpur is two kos from Bhagmalpur, then it may be possible to make a reasonable guess at our position. It depended on what he meant by a kos.
“There are seventy rassis in one kos,” Karam Chand said.
“There are twelve hundred laggis in one kos,” said Bhosla in a sudden garrulous outburst.
“There are three thousand six hundred gaj in one kos, said Jagganath, the youngest boatman.
“Now I am telling you,” said G. “If one kos is three thousand six hundred gaj, there are three miles and eighty yards in one kos.” If this was so, we had not travelled more than five miles since the previous morning. There is also a gaukos, a rather vague measure - the distance a cow's bellow can be heard.
P70.

Another quote - when they were quite lost:
“On the foreshore, a small girl who was looking after a flock of sheep and goats said that Raoli was two kos.
half a mile further on we passed four fishermen asleep on a sandbank in the shadow of their nets which were drying on poles. With a lot of hollering we managed to wake them. “Raoli,” they said, looking down at us grumpily, “is three kos. With such a boat such you may make it in two hours,” and lay down again. A quarter of an hour later some men loading a country boat with sugar can told us Raoli was four kos.”