In India, paranoia is as much as curiosity drove the need to get into neighboring Tibet. It was the era of the great game, a cold war between Russia and Britain for the domination of central Asia. The British feared that if the Russians were to gain a foothold in Tibet. They might use it as a base for invading India. The forbidden land became the centre square on the chessboard of the great game. One map needed to be explored and mapped at all costs.
The Russians were coming and this created a great deal of anxiety. The probem was that Tibet was basically closed, so that left the Brits with the problem, how do you map Tibet if you can't get in and have a look.
It was a young officer in the royal engineers who hit upon Britains best hope in the race for Tibet. Thomas George Montgomery had spent years overseeing natives in the great trigonometrical survey of India. A massive British effort to create an accurate map of the entire Indian subcontinent. He also noted that Indians often passed freely into Tibet where no white man would be allowed. Perhaps an Indian spy trained in the arts of espionage and surveying might penetrate Tibet disguised as a trader or holy man.
Captain Montgomery in typical colonial fashion had some doubts whether a native of sufficient intelligence and [] nerve might be found, but obtained permission to give it as planned or tried. Thus began, the unlikely career of one of the most 6 successful spies in the history of espionage. NanXing, an 33-year-old teacher had grown up in the shadows of himalayas. His family had traded in Tibet and he could read and write Tibetan. He quickly accepted the assignment despite his dangerous.
NanXing was just one of those people, you know, their individuals were a great achieve * He was the man living in a very little more village. I mean what kind of opportunities did he have to, you know, really accomplish something really great.
In 1863, the young school teacher reported for duty at the survey of India's headquarters in D. There he would undergo 2 years of intensive training in the arts of surveying. He learned the use of sextant in the compass into locating his position using the stars. Through endless repetition, the navar spy learned to walk in an exactly measure pace. 31 and half inches a stride or 2000 paces to the mile. He would keep track of those paces on a rosary. The Buddhist's rosary contains 108 beads, a holy number. NanXing's rosary would have only 100 to more easily keep track of his start.
Montgomery had dubbed him the Pounded, Hindi for Wise One, and sent him on his way. His daunting task to find his way to Lhasa, the forbidden city. To chart his course, counting every stride along the way. And a spy and the political religious and economic life of Lhasa for as long as possible.
NanXing knew what fate awaited him if he were caught, and almost certain --death. It would take NanXing 8 frustrating months to cross into Tibet. At first, the Pounded had tried to enter through Nepal desguised as a horse trader, but suspicous border guards turned him away. He managed to slip by those same border guards a few weeks later, desguised as a holy man. He'd already acquired an escort, the first of several caravans that would offered him protection on the dangerious journey. In the outline areas of Tibet banned its far out number monks. |
