We leave Shimla by taxi, go down to Kalka, and then on to the Grand Trunk Road, which is not only the main setting but also a character in Kipling’s Kim. At Ambala—where Kim gives his coded message to the Colonel in his bungalow about an uprising in the North—we turn westwards. We pass Jalandhar and the great rivers of Punjab. On both sides, the fertile fields of the Green Revolution, growing wheat, rice, corn. The GT Road, built by the emperor Sher Shah Suri in the 16th century, begins at Peshawar in the northwest of Pakistan, passes through India, and ends beyond Calcutta in Bangladesh, spanning a distance of 2,500 kilometres. We don’t see the throbbing pedestrian road life that Kipling describes, but there are trucks and buses, and roadside dhabas with bare string cots spread out for travellers to rest and have their samosas, teas, paranthas, and the oiliest vegetable curries that go burning down your throat like acid.