Travel-writing on India has a respectably long lineage, and not all authors wrote eulogies. The country’s heat, squalor, filth, ‘half-naked fakirs’ and so on were the usual suspects described in fulsome detail — and often, the healing touch of colonialism was described in even greater detail. Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, an American travel-writer and photographer and the first woman board member of the National Geographic magazine, came to India in the winter of 1902 and wrote Winter India, a dyspeptic and racist account of the country, embellished however with some rather fine photographs. She starts off by stating, “It can hardly be said with literalness that one enjoys India. I had not expected to enjoy it, and it proved itself, despite its colour and picturesqueness, quite as melancholy and depressing a country as I thought it would be.” However, many of its problems were overcome “with miracles accomplished by alien rule.” Eliza was a great admirer of Curzon, who gave “Anglo-India daily shock and sensation”, and of her fellow countrywoman, the beautiful Mary Curzon, for whom there was no rival in “her unfailing tact and sweet gentleness.”

Christmas week in Calcutta meant extra tents for guests in the extensive grounds of Government House and soon the Empire revolved “around the white viceregal palace.” The great event of the racing week was the Viceroy’s Cup, “when all sporting India has its eye on the Maidan, remotest cantonments as heavily interested as the cheering crowds at the Oval.” A few days after Christmas, the viceroy and his wife “hold a drawing-room” — obviously an ‘in’ word for an evening party — where “the knee is bent to viceroyalty, and one train and bouquet give way to the long procession of trains and bouquets.”

Eliza found life in expatriate Calcutta similar to that in London — the difference marked by “the innumerable turbaned and bare-footed servants, the pankha, and the use of Hindustani words.” Of course, the sun shone gloriously and the London Times was eagerly awaited for “the real news of the world”. The Calcutta papers provided interesting diversions such as advertisements on cinder-picking and ash-sifting rights for sale and “20 Rhinoceroses Wanted Rupees 2000 each”, while Allahabad’s Pioneer came later in the day with snippets of local opinion voiced by colonials. December in Calcutta meant “summer heat in noon”, when European women wore “the white gowns of the tropics at that high social hour.”

It was time to move on to Darjeeling in “the most absurd little narrow-gage [sic] cars, with only canvas curtains as protection from the changes in mountain weather.” Eliza clearly had no idea — or chose not to let on that she had — about the expertise required in creating this marvel of the North Bengal State Railway, the world-famous Darjeeling ‘toy train’ that covered seven miles and ascended a 1,000 feet an hour. This two-feet gauge railway that continues to this day was specially designed in Manchester with funds raised entirely in India. Much of the credit lay with a Mr Prestage, agent of the East Bengal Railways, who completed the laying of the line in record time.

Once in Darjeeling, Eliza’s caustic pen gave way to eulogy as she sat waiting at Tiger Hill “in the lee of a boulder, wrapped in rugs and razais, our veins freezing in that thin icy, mountain-top air.” She could not help but comment that “even the tourist’s perpetual-motion tongue was silenced as the colour pageant proceeded.” When Kanchenjunga appeared “with half of its height snow-covered, it so transcended all one’s imaginings that it did not seem the vision could be reality.” Mount Everest, however, “sulked in a tent of clouds westward.” Writing some years later in The Heart of Nature or, The Quest for Natural Beauty, another arch imperialist —but one with far less acidic eye when describing India’s natural beauty—Sir Francis Younghusband was overawed with the mountainscapes around Darjeeling. The town, he felt, “ought to be set apart as a sacred place of pilgrimage for all the world” situated as it was amidst forests of oaks, laurels, rhododendrons at whose base grew violets, geraniums and lobelias; hillsides covered with ferns and orchids looked on to the snowy ranges, making it a place where one could contemplate “Nature’s Beauty in its most splendid aspects.”

Younghusband was less lucky than Eliza — or perhaps more discerning — as he alerted the traveller to the hours and days to be invested in the hopes of a satisfactory Kanchenjunga-viewing. However, “one minute’s sight of the mountain would satisfy him... for a moment the current of his being comes to a standstill.” As is true of many grand sights, nothing one has ever heard or read about them ever measures up to what one sees, and for the person who has sighted the great mountain “henceforth and forever, his whole life is lifted to a higher plane.” Though at times the mist of the region hid much, Younghusband felt that this veil revealed more than it concealed — the true spiritual nature of the mountains. Relying on some rudimentary knowledge of geography, Younghusband felt that the blue of the region was quite different from the blue of Greece, Italy and the Alps. It appeared to have more body, “a fuller colour, a bluer blue, a purpler purple than the atmosphere of these other countries.” Such depth of colour provided a more pleasing warmth from the sun. He marvelled at nature’s palate as the greens of the foreground gave way to washes of pink, violet and purple while the snowy ranges varied from “decided rose-pink in the early morning and evening to, perhaps, faintest blue or violet in the full day.” These were set against the backdrop of a sky dyed an intense blue.

Younghusband cited the experience of the noted Russian painter of battles, Vasily Vereshchagin, who had visited the region in the 1880s. He organized himself to paint the third highest mountain in the world and even as his wife kept handing him brushes and paints, he was unable to place colour on his canvas. He is reputed to have said, “not now, not now; it is all too splendid.” Vereshchagin could never paint the Kanchenjunga though he had no problem in painting The Apotheosis of War, a spine-chilling visual documentary of destruction — human skulls arranged in a pyramid against a stark landscape.

Younghusband must also have approved of Vereshchagin’s dedication of the painting “to all conquerors, past, present and to come.” In 1903-04, together with John Claude White, the political officer for Sikkim, Younghusband led an expedition into Tibet, ostensibly to solve a minor border dispute; what resulted was a horrendous massacre of Tibetans, including several monks. They were under orders from Viceroy Curzon. On the way back, Younghusband apparently had a mystical experience, which led him to believe that all humans were divine — and to regret his actions in Tibet. Hardly surprising then that for a man committed to adventure and conquest in the name of Empire, he saw in the Kanchenjunga a glow of “the pure flame of undaunted aspiration.” Even if his days of violent action were over when he visited Darjeeling, he could not help but note that “between ourselves and the mountain is the kinship of higher effort towards high ends.” Francis Younghusband’s last years were spent tending the World Congress of Faiths that he had founded in 1936.