Received from a visitor who greatly enjoyed days out with the SUH. I arrived in Dhaka one October, to take up my local duties as Technical Director based in Fenchuganj, near Sylhet and this was my tale.

"I've been living in Japan for the last nine months during the development phase of the project, and welcomed the move back to the Empire. At the moment, I spend most of my time in Dhaka, visiting Site from time to time, but later on, I shall spend a greater Proportion of my time in Fenchuganj. Back home in the UK, I am a keen rider, and passionate follower of hounds, and you can perhaps imagine my surprise and dismay, when, on arrival, I made the usual queries about the availability of horses, and the whereabouts of the nearest pack of hounds, and was told that: (1) there were no horses in Bangladesh (2) 'What's a pack of hounds?' Further research was little more fruitful, and so I made the obvious decision, namely, when I move to site, to start my own pack. At the moment I don't actually have any hounds, although there are one or two promising looking specimens at the homestead near the site and when I learn a little more of the local tongue, I shall have a word with the farmer. The country around Fenchuganj and Sylhet is fairly well foxed, and although I haven't seen one yet, their sound at night is most stirring. The country is superb. At the south end of the country, about twenty minutes hack from the kennels, are hundreds of square miles of tea garden fairly hilly, but plenty of bottom. Scent promises to be good, a little like rhododendron coverts, but a little easier to negotiate. The low-lying lands near the kennels (the Site) are covered with rice fields in the dry season (and about 5m of water in the rainy season). There are isolated little coverts every mile or so where local farmers have built up islands against the monsoon, and these look quite promising. The prospects of a good run, (with lots of ditches), seem quite good, even if the going may be a bit on the heavy side. At the moment I'm busy learning Bengali so that I can meet the local farmers, as well as trying to learn the country on foot, before I start hunting seriously, and what with that, and the pressure of work, we have so far only managed a couple of lawn meets (the 'lawn' portion lasting even longer than some I've experienced in Ireland), but without the chase at the end, it's not quite the same somehow. I have considered funding a local chapter of ALF (the Animal Liberation Front), so at least there'd be some sport on blank days (only joking - this is a democratic society, and everyone should have the chance to express their sincerely held views), but that could get out of hand, so perhaps not. I have witnessed the local gendarmerie in action, and I do feel that they could teach our own boys in blue one or two things about dealing with riotous behaviour, although the tear gas would play havoc with hounds' scenting ability. We also have our own armed security force on site, and any attempts to storm the kennels, as happened at Petworth last season, would be very swiftly put down. At the moment, I'm busy recruiting, and the copies Horse and Hound (which I have airmailed to Tokyo, and couriered to Dhaka in order to beat the local postal system), prove invaluable in educating my Japanese and Bangladeshi colleagues, although more than once I've felt that I wasn't quite doing the sport justice, and that I was not always successful in getting my point across. My cassette tape of "The Huntsman's Horn and Voice" (recorded from the 1951 is another source of succour and support, although again, one or two blank faces have resulted when I play it in the office, or at full volume as I drive along Gulshan Avenue! In the near future, I intend to apply to the BMFHA (Bangladesh Master of Foxhounds Association if there is one), for affiliation, and to continue to send regular hunting reports to Horse and Hound. For the present all of this is just a dream, but as I sit in front of my log fire on Site on the long, cold and dark winter evenings, with a flask of whisk(e)y in one hand, and my horn or whip in the other, I can at least indulge my fantasies. If anyone shares my passion for either riding or foxhunting, I would welcome the opportunity to sit and chat over a pint."

Out with the SUH