Crossword-Solution: EKKAS 5 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 13

The train stops six miles from the town, so that we had to finish our journey in six two-wheeled, gilded chariots, called ekkas, and drawn by bullocks.

Here is a fountain, and the point is a centre of life and action; crowds of people surge back and forth, almost trodden underfoot by the ever-present, ponderous elephants, camels, and bullocks, drawing the little _ekkas_,--every one disputing the right of way.

Through its streets surge a people almost childish in their happiness, some in ekkas drawn by matched pairs of bullocks, others mounted high on the backs of trotting camels, while bands of chattering Rajputs on foot are omnipresent--every grouping reminds of something witnessed on the stage, and the _tout ensemble_ might be the great scene of a realistic opera intended to glorify the people and the institutions of India.

From here across the Phári plain through Tuna and Kalatso and as far as Menza it would lie in an ekka, for this was flat country, and it had seemed worth while and eventually proved a signal success to drag up from India several hundred of those plainly built but strong little two-wheeled carts called ekkas, which hold five maunds each, and can be used on almost any road, however rough, provided it is wide enough to hold both wheels.

These ekkas had been run up behind their ponies as far as possible, then taken to pieces, and carried in fragments on the backs of coolis over the passes and up on to the Phári plain, where, at a height of 15,000 feet, they were put together again and plied to and fro, at first greatly to the astonishment of the resident Tibetan, who had never seen any wheels other than prayer-wheels.