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Chapter one. The Beginning |
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We breakfasted at Kohima, whose tidy bungalows and red-roofed lines spread out along the spurs in the shadow of Japvo. I don't remember much of it. My ordinary winter visit to India was taking unexpected twists. Beyond the town there lay a progression of ranges which faded out into the haze of the east and the unmapped country. Bridle-roads led there, winding down bare spurs and curving round contours till they were lost in the intricate folds. On every ridge there was a shaggy village, its thatched roofs smoke-stained and weathered. One behind the other the hills stretched away as far as the eye could see, in an ocean of peaks, a wilderness of steep fields and untouched forest, of clefts and gulfs and razor-backs which merged at last into a grey infinity. That landscape drew me as I had never known anything do before, with a power transcending the body, a force not of this world at all. |
