Nepal, Oct. 25 -- Putting a context on Kalimpong, with its picturesque location and its rich, layered past, one is allowed to wax eloquent-more so when that context is pitched against the backdrop of that twentieth-century behemoth to the north, China. And the book under review here, Prem Poddar and Lisa Lindkvist Zhang's 'Through the India-China Border: Kalimpong in the Himalayas' (CUP, 2025) sets out to do just that.

While Kalimpong shared topographical and historical similarities with contiguous Darjeeling-until recently its administrative headquarters since the late 1800s-the resemblance ended there. Darjeeling, that darling of the Raj, was originally envisaged as a military sanatorium that metamorphosed, quite quickly, into a playgr...