The modern day traveller who attempts to retrace Kim's path will naturally find that much has changed, while quite a bit hasn't. Finally released at age 16, he re-joins the Lama to wander across northern India – the one to 'graduate' into his vocation, the other to fulfill his quest. This gets the lad involved in a historic geopolitical competition against the Russian Empire up north – the distance between its frontiers and British India's kept shrinking throughout the 19th century – referred to as the Great Game.įor the next three years, Kim receives a strict British education in term-time – while perfecting skills of another sort during his holidays. At the same time Mahbub Ali, an old Lahore acquaintance, brings Kim's background and talents to the attention of Colonel Creighton of the Ethnological Survey, who is also the head of British military intelligence in the subcontinent. 'Captured' by the regiment, Kim is saved from a military orphanage by the lama's decision to pay for the best education available to a Sahib's son in India. The worldly-wise Kim takes charge of the naive Lama, guarding and guiding him on the road while furthering his own quest for a 'Red Bull on a Green Field' – his father's old regimental badge. Kimball O'Hara is a 'poor white' 13-year-old Anglo-Irish orphan happily living on the streets of Lahore, where he is known far and wide as 'Little Friend of All the World.' He encounters Teshoo Lama, a Tibetan monk in search of a river of healing that will free him from the Buddhist cycle of rebirth. The story is about coming-of-age, adventure, espionage, travel, and the diversity of India's ethnic groups and characters, and is one of Kipling's best known works.

Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, is a novel set in British India under the Raj toward the end of the 19th century.

Kim by rudyard kipling