A section from the journey

The Shape of the Land

Every story needs a stage. Ours is a great land shaped like a wide diamond. In the north stands the Himalaya, the tallest wall on earth. Below it spread broad river plains, then a high old plateau called the Deccan, with the sea on either side. This is the ground our whole tale will stand upon.

Before we meet a single person, let us meet the land. For a story is shaped by the ground it stands on, and this ground is like no other.

Picture a great land shaped almost like a diamond, hanging down from the rest of Asia into a warm sea. The old books call it . The world today often calls it India. It is so wide and so varied that people sometimes call it not a country but a small world of its own.

Now look to the north. There stands the , the highest range of mountains on the whole earth. Its name means, simply, the home of snow. It rises like a vast white wall, mile upon mile, sealing off the top of the land.

That wall does more than stand there. It catches the winds. It holds the snow. And from its melting snow and ice, great rivers are born. They run down from the heights and out across the flat country below.

Below the mountains lie the river plains. Here the land is flat and low, and the rivers have spread soft, rich soil across it for ages. This is some of the best farming ground in the world. In time, more people would live on these plains than almost anywhere on earth.

Travel further south and the land changes again. It lifts up into a broad, old plateau — a tableland of worn hills and hard rock called the . It is far older than the mountains in the north, rubbed smooth by an almost unimaginable span of time.

And on each side of that southern land lies the sea. Two long coasts run down toward a single point, where the waters meet. These shores would later open the land to traders and travellers from far away.

So hold the whole shape in your mind, like a map drawn in four broad strokes. Snow mountains in the north. Rich plains below them. An old plateau in the south. And the warm sea on either hand. This is the stage. Now we are almost ready for the players.

Think of the place you come from — its hills or fields, its weather, its water. How much of who you are was quietly shaped by that ground? The people of this story were shaped by theirs in just the same way.