W. Somerset Maugham Reader: Novels, Stories, Travel Writing Book

I was thrilled with this book. With a trip into Rajasthan coming up, I remembered that Kipling had made a journey of investigation there back in 1888. At that time Rajasthan was not part of British India, with its careful administration but was much wilder, ruled by Indian princes. There, young twenty-two-year old Rudyard couldn't rely on any special treatment. One night he got left on the side of the road in bitter cold , when the mail tonga he was travelling in damaged a wheel. The mail carriers would have left him there till the next mail passed but he sat on the mailbags and refused to be parted from them. These reports, sent back to his newspaper in Allahabad took me into a lost world, rife with alarms and amazements. Sad to haave finished it.