To the right of my computer table, just above the mosquito-curtain rods of my bed, someone has placed a colored-photograph of the Kanchanjangha range and the Darjeeling village. This picture is mounted in a cream-colored frame. There is no name transcribed below the picture, but there is no mistaking if you have lived at Darjeeling.

As seen in this picture, there opens out before you two ranges of hills: the one in front naturally covers three-quarters of the picture because of its proximity. It is cut away form the lofty kanchanjangha chain behind by an enormous valley running the whole length of the view. The range immediately before you forms the western part of the gigantic Jalaphar shoulder, which slopes down rather abruptly but broadens out in the shape of an expansive plateau. This is the Darjeeling village and its environs. Almost in the middle of this broad plateau a deep gorge, covered with evergreen forests, divides the Jalaphar shoulder in the shape of enormous V. The apex of the V is obviously the point of bifurcation at the plateau’s edge; its sides are studded with beech, fir and deodhar trees in riotous promiscuity of rich green shades. On both flanks of this V-shaped hill the Darjeeling houses, of all shapes and sizes, from clammy, shabby “horse-boxes” to stately mansions hit the eye. The facades of most of the buildings are chalk-white, while their roofs are bedaubed with a thick coating red paint.

Of constructional planning there is none in the village. The houses are huddled together, as if to ward off the extreme cold. Some of these are tall and must be hotels and schools, while the more homely cottages must be the lodgings of the tea-planters or of residents of long standing. The rest of the area, like a field of lilies and roses, is the homeland of the local inhabitants, the paharias of Darjeeling. A refreshing detail for the sports-lover is the sight of some smooth, level pitches in between the tenements. These are, most probably, the cricket and football pitches and tennis-courts which belong either to hotel clubs or to the schools in the vicinity. Far out on top of the right flank of our V mountain shoulder, a huge dome, like a frozen ball of indigo against the distant Kanchanjangha wall, rears its bald pate to the sky, resembling more an observatory watch-tower than the summer residence. Of the former Governors of Bengal. To the left of it the elongated right shoulder of Jalaphar tapers to the valley below where it cools feet in the green rushing water of the Balasan.

Between the Jalaphar plateau and the Kanchanjangha range you see nothing but what must supposedly be an abysmal valley. For all along the kanchanjangha wall you see nothing but what must supposedly be an abysmal valley. For all along the Kanchanjangha wall you see standing up stark and verdure less, a black ribbon of wilderness stretching from east to west. In fact, this is the Himalayan jungle that clothes the long northern flank of the Kanchanjangha range. Above this wall of silence lies the snow-line. Like icebergs floating in mid-air stand stand the jagged peaks of the Kanchanjangha group, with the head of Kanchanjangha himself proudly overtopping them all. The sky above is grayish and slightly overcast, and from the mouth of Kanchanjangha protrudes an enormous sprouting beam of a cloud resembling a giant smoking “a whacking white cheroot”.