Kim, you may remember, leaves school to work for the Survey of India. I have no idea how many of the Survey's employees were spies, but one of them did do the kind of secret work Kipling describes. He was a schoolmaster, Nain Singh. In 1865 he entered Tibet - forbidden to foreigners on pain of death - disguised as a lama, and mapped Lhasa. Like Kim, he had learned to measure miles by walking without ever altering his stride; like Kim, he used a rosary to keep count of their number. And he made maps - although not, I think, with a Survey issue paintbox like Kim's. But while adventures like his in the northern hills and mountains - the last tranche of the Survey of India - are in one way the most romantic part of the enterprise, equally romantic in another way was the great task of triangulation, the calculation of the framework within which all the geographical detail of India and its relation to the rest of the world could be established.

LRB 6 November 2003 | PDF Download