A residence in India often lent itself to creative expression of various kinds, even though the number who combined a job with a hobby in writing, photography or art may not have been very large. A number of colonials who are best known for their works in imaginative fiction, spirituality and home-making, such as Rudyard Kipling, Edwin Arnold and Flora Anne Steele, also wrote the odd essay or even a book on their travels or impressions of this land that fascinated and intrigued them. Then there were those who had gained fame, if not notoriety, in other fields and yet wrote volumes on a range of completely unrelated subjects, Colonel Sir Francis Edward Younghusband being among the best known.

One of the most celebrated and controversial heroes of British expansion in the north, Younghusband had single-handedly masterminded the invasion of Tibet in 1904 and is generally regarded as one of the protagonists of the Great Game between Britain and Russia; as a part of his assignments, he was involved in information-gathering well beyond British boundaries. He had strong attachments to Kashmir and the north of India as he was born in Murree, where his father was an army officer. Younghusband’s early explorations of Manchuria in 1886, when he was a young man in his early twenties, opened up routes unknown to the British and he returned to India across Tibet, charting inhospitable terrains. For his pioneering and hazardous trek, he was elected the youngest member of the Royal Geographical Society and received the society’s coveted gold medal. After the Tibet expedition, Younghusband became the British Resident in Kashmir.

He wrote over 30 books on various subjects: significant treatises on realpolitik, the mystery of Mount Everest — as president of the Royal Geographical Society, Younghusband was one of George Mallory’s strongest supporters, a book on South Africa and then those on religion and faith. Though he is hardly remembered as a travel writer or informed guide, in Kashmir as it was, the somewhat uncompromising imperialist-cum-spy provides an interesting, but not terribly well-organized, account of a region much favoured by the British; it also allows us to think of Younghusband — albeit grudgingly — as someone who responded with great empathy to nature and his environs — and not only as an ambitious man interested in massacring and overcoming recalcitrant natives, be they Tibetans or others.

The slim book is part potted history combined with personal reminiscences and ‘artsy-craftsy’ tourist information on what to look for and perhaps buy. There is also an entire chapter devoted to the new invention of hydro-electric power being harnessed by a Major Alain de Lotbiniere, a Canadian engineer who had been employed by the maharaja. Younghusband’s writing accompanied formulaic though attractive water-colours by Major E. Molyneux. The original, published in 1910, with 70 plates of Molyneux’s water-colours must have been a treasured possession as, by then, Younghusband was an iconic raj figure. The reprint of 2000 (Rupa) has all of Younghusband’s text but only eight indifferent reproductions. As British Resident in Kashmir, Younghusband had all the resources required for long equestrian treks into the hinterland, often on shikars in pursuit of the barasingha, the Kashmir stag. This involved riding through snowy mountainsides, and though often the trip was infructuous, Younghusband wrote that “a day like this on the mountainside is felt as one of the days in which one lives”. A bit of an amateur birder, he supplies the interested reader with lists of birds to be seen in various seasons, and for the collector of wildflowers, there is plenty to look for amidst the boulders, nooks and crannies.

On Srinagar, Younghusband has much to say, as for him it was clearly the most beautiful city of the east; it was the “combination of picturesque but rickety houses, of mosques and Hindu temples, of balconied shops, of merchants’ houses and the royal palaces with the broad sweeping river and the white mountain background” that made it so charming. The ceremonial arrival of the Maharaja of Kashmir from Jammu, when he entered the summer capital by boat, is described in much detail — the two flotillas — his own as Resident and that of the maharaja — as well as the excited shouts of “eep eep ra” (hip hip hooray, one presumes) from many hundreds of schoolboys carrying flags, and the final arrival at the palace.

Colonial town planning could not but take into consideration the requirements of racial segregation, Munshi Bagh being the European settlement. The Residency, with its well-laid out gardens, was an important marker (Younghusband writes at length about his garden), as were the “tidy little club”, the parsonage, Parsi shops, the post-office as well as the bungalows of the British working for the state of Kashmir. And then strolls along the Bund had to be mentioned, a high point in the busy social season of Srinagar. Younghusband concludes his chapter on Srinagar with brief notes on places of importance and perhaps interest: Shah Hamadan Masjid, close to the river and built of wood with beautifully carved eaves, Dr Neve’s mission hospital, the Dal Lake, resplendent with lotuses in July and August, overlooked by the Takht-i-Suleiman with its ancient Hindu temple and, of course, the famous baghs. Younghusband has much to say about Mr Nichols of the Archaeological Survey, and his attempts at restoring the garden and pavilion of the Shalimar Bagh: while restoration emphasized the original formal structure of the gardens, Younghusband felt that “to fall in with the ways of Nature may be the best method of adding to the existing beauty of the garden”.

Younghusband takes us to Gulmarg, where the structure of Srinagar is replicated — a smaller Residency, European homes and the famed golf course and polo grounds. Most important, the visitor could remain anonymous, avoid the whirl of social activity, and “need not speak to a single soul unless he wants to”. He could pitch his tent in the wilderness and “take his solitary walks in the wood” — and yet, a social life was close at hand when he tired of his own company. That possibility was perhaps rare, as the natural beauty of Gulmarg would keep the traveller fully engaged: meadows full of wild flowers, forests of spruce, blue pine, maple and the odd horse-chestnut against the backdrop of snowy peaks.

The contemporary reader may despair at the lack of structure in Kashmir as it was, or even tire of some rather prolix extolments of natural beauty; yet, the book is valuable not only for an account of what today’s violence-ravaged Kashmir was really like less than a century ago, but also because it is among the few volumes available on towns and cities in colonial India. And the book does not skimp on detail or information — hardly surprising, as Francis Younghusband was, as his biographer, Patrick French, feels, proficient in many things, with a facile pen as well as a spiritual side to his personality. He is purported to have had a mystical experience in Tibet, and became, in later life, extremely religious, founding the World Congress of Faiths in 1936. At the same time, he was apparently a believer in free love — clearly not the run-of-the-mill travel writer. But then, Younghusband was much else, and this book is, more than anything else, his tribute to an area and town that he loved and in which he evidently had a certain influence at a time critical for British strategy in northern India.