Mapping the Himalayas

Ever wondered how the Himalayas (abode of snow in Sanskrit) got mapped? Who were these people that undertook this Herculean task of mapping the mountain range that divides the Indian sub-continent from the Tibetan Plateau? Jules Stewart, a London-based writer and journalist has captured this fascinating of in his book: Spying For The Raj: The Pundits And The Mapping of the Himalayas . I caught up with Jules in London where we spoke about the book, and why and how this difficult task of mapping the Himalayas was undertaken by the British. What were the geopolitical reasons that propelled the British to undertake this trans-Himalayan survey? This fascinating book traces a 30-year (1864-1894) effort that was led by British Captain Thomas Montgomerie to map the Himalayas. The official name of the project was The Great Trignometrical Survey of India. The trans-Himalayan region was an unknown territory and the British had huge gaps in their knowledge about the contours of the mountain range, Tibet, and the rivers that originated in Mount Kailash. Captain Montgomerie recruited local people from various regions of the Himalayas, trained them and established standardized ways of measuring their steps. The recruits were not pundits by caste, but were a small group of eclectic group. There was Kinthup, the Tibetan tailor?s assistant from Darjeeling, and there was Nain Singh from the Kumaon region among others. A major geopolitical reason that propelled the British to undertake the survey was Russia?s ambitions in the Northwest frontier region. This was the Great Game of the 19th century, when the Russians were almost there at the gates of India says Jules. The Russian search for a warm water port led them to this part of the world, and the British wanted to contain the Russian threat. In order to do that they needed to have a better idea of the terrain of the trans-himalayan region for military planning and logistics purposes. Jules suspects that Rudyard Kipling?s novel Kim had quite a few characters drawn from the survey. He thinks that Colonel Creighton in Kim was modeled after Captain Montgomerie.