By the time the Great Game, a struggle between the British and Russian empires for dominance of Central and Southern Asia, reached its pinnacle in the second half of the nineteenth century, almost the whole Himalayan range had been charted. Only Tibet remained undiscovered and unexplored; it was also fiercely protected and off-limits to everyone. In order to gather topographical data and information about Tibetan culture and customs, Britain dispatched a number of spies into this prohibited land dressed as pilgrims and wanderers and prepared with covert survey equipment. Kinthup, a tailor who accompanied a monk to verify that the Tsangpo and the Brahmaputra were the same river, was one of them. A schoolteacher named Sarat Chandra Das was also dispatched on a covert assignment, and came back with extensive data and a trove of ancient manuscripts and documents. Bells of Shangri-La brings to vivid life the journeys and adventures of Kinthup, Sarat Chandra Das and others, including Eric Bailey, an officer who was part of the British invasion of Tibet in 1903. Weaving biography with history, and the memories of his own treks through the region, Parimal Bhattacharya writes in the great tradition of Peter Hopkirk and Peter Matthiessen to create a sparkling, unprecedented work of non-fiction.