Kashmir: As It Was

Bernier, the first European to enter Kashmir, writing in 1665, said: ‘In truth, the Kingdom surpasses in beauty all that my warmest imagination had anticipated.’ The book is not about the entire Kashmir state, which includes many outlying provinces, but about Kashmir proper. The paintings are a vivid impression of this beauteous state of lakes, gardens and snow-clad mountains. It is a fascinating account of the old capital, the Dal Lake, the ‘meadow of flowers’, the Residency Garden, and an inspiring and passionate history of Kashmir and its people, told by the ‘last great imperial adventurer. A man of incongruous interests, Sir Francis Younghusband was an imperialist and Indian nationalist, journalist, spy, and philosopher, geographer, travel writer and explorer—all in one. Discoverer of a new overland route from India to China, he had single-handedly masterminded the Tibetan invasion of 1904. His presumed death as a spy in the Pamirs had almost sparked off a war between British India and Tsarist Russia. While alive, Younghusband had authored over thirty published books—all full of life, vigour and variety.