Hello List Eileen said: we have the Army Record of William Wilks which states that on "16th December 1874 he was discharged to Pension at Ranikhet, India". He died in Darjeeling on 18th December 1894 and was buried in the Military Cemetery at Jalapahar, Darjeeling. We have no dates as to the"Special Services" in which William Wilks was involved. My father did mention he might have been commissioned by the British Government to go with a Mr Paul, who was the Commissioner for Darjeeling,into Lhasa Tibet in disguise to trace the whereabouts of Sir Ashley Eden, who was being held prisoner there.They were betrayed and imprisoned but managed to escape and return to India. Sir Ashley Eden is mentioned in these two links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Eden (Wikipedia) http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofindi00buckuoft#page/130/mode/2up/ (Dictionary of Indian Biography) (Archive.org) His connection with the Himalayan area is Bhutan in the early 1860’s. There is no mention of any trip to Lhasa, Tibet. Mr Paul is very likely Alfred Wallis Paul and his details are in this 1905 India List, which says he was appointed a deputy commissioner in August 1887. http://books.google.com/books?id=3VQTAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA584 Elsewhere a reference says “3lst January 1888....Mr. A. W. Paul, Officiating Deputy Commissioner, Darjeeling, is confirmed in that appointment.” He subsequently was Political Officer/British Commissioner in Sikkim Sir Ashley Eden and Alfred Wallis Paul were accordingly in different time periods, and the William Wilks story appears to lack consistency. In the Dictionary of Indian Biography there is also an entry for Lama Chibu http://www.archive.org/stream/dictionaryofindi00buckuoft#page/80/mode/2up/ . He befriended captives in Sikkim, and subsequently was rewarded with an estate in Darjeeling, so Lama Chibu’s story contains some elements of those mentioned by Eileen. Lama Chibu was also connected with Sir Ashley Eden. This link, Chapter 7 from a book called The Pundits: British Exploration of Tibet and Central Asia by Derek J Waller http://books.google.com/books?id=PYqWhpyoQsoC&pg=PA193 is about a man who did venture into Lhasa from Darjeeling in 1879, Babu Sarat Chandra Das. He is thought to be the basis for Kipling’s secret agent character in Kim, Hurree Chunder Mookerjee For those who would like to read, or reread Kim, an online link is available in the FIBIS Fibiwiki page Rudyard Kipling http://wiki.fibis.org/index.php?title=Rudyard_Kipling It appears that virtually no Europeans had been to Lhasa at that time. In conclusion, the story involving William Wilks has inconsistencies and it appears he perhaps may have been telling a story that had historical elements involving other people, but was not about himself. Cheers Maureen (Sydney)