He uses that time to catch up with his old mate the lama, and they trek to the Himalayas. The military decides that three years of schooling will suffice, and Kim is appointed to a government position, with a bit of a holiday to get himself ready. Not only does Kim stay in touch with the lama, he also keeps his finger in with all his Secret Service connections, and trains himself in espionage on the sly. The lama is pretty bummed to be separated from his only disciple, but agrees to pay for the boy’s education and figures they’ll hook back up again later. A regimental chaplain recognises him as the son of one of their soldiers, and ships him off to boarding school in Lucknow. Kim carries all of his father’s papers with him, which turns out to be a bad move. He also takes on a secret mission from the local bigwig, to carry a message to the head of the British intelligence in Umballa, but that seems pretty incidental to the road-trip… for now. Kim thinks that doesn’t sound too bad, and he doesn’t have much else going on, so he ships out with the old guy, becoming his disciple and helping him along the road. He befriends an old Tibetan lama, who is on a quest to free himself from the “Wheel of Things” (yeah, alright mate) and find the “River of the Arrow” (bloody hippies). He etches out a living for himself running around the streets of Lahore, begging and doing small errands for the local horse traders and other sketchy types. Kim is a young orphaned boy, his Irish father and mother having died in abject poverty. Kipling loved India, his homeland, and right off the bat he gives you gorgeous portraits of the people, and the landscape, with particular focus on the bazaars and life on the road. That’s what we now call the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia, around the time of the Second and Third Afghan Wars (late 1800s, basically). So, Kim‘s story takes place against the backdrop of “The Great Game” (which I thought meant chess, but apparently not). That makes it sound like some kind of mash-up of The Alchemist and The Thirty-Nine Steps, right? Actually, that’s probably not far off… His first assignment is to capture the papers of a Russian spy in the Himalayas…” Kim, Pan Classics edition (1978) While he is accompanying a Tibetan lama on his search for the River of Immortality, Kim is picked up by the British and groomed for the Secret Service. “Kim, a young Irish orphan, is brought up in the native quarter of Lahore.
The blurb on the back of this edition is hectic, and I had no idea what to make of it:
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