Almost of the Himalaya had been mapped by the time the Great Game - in which the British and Russian Empires fought for control of Central and Southern Asia - reached its zenith in the latter half of the 19th Century. Only Tibet remained unknown and unexplored, zealously guarded and closed off to everyone. Britain sent a number of spies into this forbidden land, disguised as pilgrims and wanderers, outfitted with secret survey equipment and not much else. These intrepid explorers were tasked with collecting topographical knowledge, and information about the culture and customs of Tibet. Among the many who were sent was Kinthup, a tailor who went as a monk's companion to confirm that the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra were the same river. In an arduous mission that lasted four years, Kinthup had many adventures - he was even sold as a slave by the monk - before he returned, having succeeded, only to find that the officers who had sent him, and the family he left behind, were all dead.


Bells of Shangri-La: Soldiers, Spies, Invaders in Tibet, Parimal Bhattacharya, Speaking Tiger, 2019 , Paperback, 262 Pages, $15.00

Parimal Bhattacharya is a Kolkata-based bilingual writer who writes in Bangla and English, in a genre that mixes fiction and non-fiction, on subjects ranging from a remote Odisha tribe's fight for survival to Andrei Tarkovsky's cinematic art. He is an associate professor of English in West Bengal Education Service, currently posted at Maulana Azad College, Kolkata. Parimal went to teach in the Government College in Darjeeling in the 1990s and was smitten by the Himalaya. He has not recovered since; instead, he has written two books set in the mountains. He has also been a regular contributor to The Telegraph and Frontier. Parimal likes to divide his time between the city and Bhatpara, an ancient small town by the river Hooghly, where his ancestors had migrated four centuries ago from north India.