Kipling’s narrative draws closely upon the real operations of the so-called ‘pundits’ – Indian explorers employed by the British to survey regions inaccessible to European agents. Among the most notable of these was Nain Singh Rawat (1830–1882), whose journeys through Tibet provided some of the first reliable geographical data for the region. His linguistic fluency and cultural knowledge enabled him to travel in disguise, avoiding the suspicions that would have attended European surveyors.

Remarkably, Singh undertook these expeditions on foot, using ingenious methods to measure distance and record data covertly: ‘fake monks, in particular, carried 100 beads rosaries – while true lamas would have 108 beads on theirs – so that they could pretend to be meditating while keeping count of their own footsteps.’ These genuine strategies were incorporated by Kipling into Kim, contributing to the novel’s distinctive air of authenticity. As Peter Hopkirk observes, ‘in the lawless lands beyond the frontier [the pundits’] safety would depend on just how convincingly they could play the part of holy-man, pilgrim or Himalayan trader.’

In recognition of his achievements, Singh was awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s Patron’s Medal in 1877 for his ‘great journeys and surveys in Tibet and along the Upper Brahmaputra’, including his determination of the position of Lhasa. This knowledge – previously inaccessible to European cartography – is consolidated in this map, which traces Singh’s routes across the Tibetan plateau. Not only a record of exploration, it illustrates the dovetailing of cartography and the sort of international covert intelligence work that would become foundational to the modern espionage narrative.

Ex Carta

This 1877 map traces the clandestine surveying journey of the Indian explorer Nain Singh Rawat across Tibet, undertaken for the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India. The exploits of such ‘pundit’ surveyors helped inspire the espionage-tinged geography of Rudyard Kipling’s 

The 1901 novel Kim by Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) is widely regarded as his masterpiece. Set in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, it recounts the Indian childhood of an Irish orphan and his gradual recruitment into the British secret service. Raised as a street urchin in Lahore, Kim is immersed in local languages and cultures to such an extent that he is often taken for Indian. Under the mentorship of a Tibetan lama, he travels the Grand Trunk Road and becomes drawn into the ‘Great Game’ – the prolonged diplomatic and military rivalry between British and Russian interests in Central Asia. Nepal, Afghanistan, and Tibet functioned as a shifting buffer zone between these competing imperial powers.

The novel has been described as ‘the first great spy novel’, and its influence has extended well beyond its immediate context. As well as direct adaptations for film and television, Kim has inspired works of science fiction such as Robert A. Heinlein’s 

 (1985), both of which recast Kipling’s imperial narrative into an interstellar context.

Kipling’s narrative draws closely upon the real operations of the so-called ‘pundits’ – Indian explorers employed by the British to survey regions inaccessible to European agents. Among the most notable of these was Nain Singh Rawat (1830–1882), whose journeys through Tibet provided some of the first reliable geographical data for the region. His linguistic fluency and cultural knowledge enabled him to travel in disguise, avoiding the suspicions that would have attended European surveyors.

A Pundit Map