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.

Rumer Godden was an English author with more than sixty books, fiction and non-fiction, to her credit. Best known for her bestselling novels, Black Narcissus and The River—which were both made into memorable movies, Godden went on to write popular works such as Two Under the Indian Sun (a memoir of her time in India, co-written with sister Jon Godden), A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep, A House with Four Rooms, Gulbadan and Indian Dust