Dehradun, Feb. 15 -- The Afghan Delegation.

'There's a cabal of Mussoorie writers!' boomed author William Dalrymple at the Mountain Writers' Festival. 'Their self-imposed objective is to perpetuate the myth that this hill station was built for recuperating soldiers! What utter nonsense?!'

'Mussoorie,' or so he believed, 'came up as a part of the Great Game.' And that morning, he was there, promoting his new book, The Golden Road.

While in school, I first met Rahmat, the old Kabuliwala as a character in Rabindranath Tagore's immortal story. As chance would have it, again I bumped into him. His voice rumbled like distant thunder, as he sat cross-legged on the floor of the bard's study, dreaming of his rugged mountain home, far away acros...