Rungli-Rungliot (Thus Far and No Further): A Memoir

In the 1940s, as the Second World War raged elsewhere, author Rumer Godden lived for a year in Rungli-Rungliot—an isolated tea estate three thousand feet down the mountain from Darjeeling—with her two daughters, their nanny Giovanna, and four Pekinese. Rungli-Rungliot, which means ‘Thus Far and No Further’, is a memory of the time Godden spent there. In this journal, Godden records her days in spare, unadorned words: the endless, driving rain of monsoon and the impossibility of staying dry; seeing her daughters anew, and finding that she has perhaps never seen them at all; sowing an autumn garden that refuses to heed direction; the extreme solitude, which strips the material world away and lets the spirit soar; an almost aborted Christmas; and the eternal snows of the Kanchenjunga and Pandim peaks, which look on at everything in serenity. Lyrical, and suffused with gentle melancholy, Rungli-Rungliot evokes a precise sense of place. This book is perfect for lovers of the mountains and the quiet, meditative life.