Then the others were with us, Sunny, her brother, the Kentish polo-player (whose name was, I thought, Robbins), and a tall, silent woman I had seen but hadn’t realised was his wife. We walked across the courtyard to the gate, where we were joined by three merry salukis, and a pair of armed guards fell in behind us. The dogs raced ahead down the road that circled New Fort, their plumed tails adding a touch of gaiety, although the maharaja ignored their antics entirely. At the base of the hill we continued around, as I had done the first day, although instead of going on to the stables, the salukis flashed down a tree-lined set of steps leading to the left, in the direction of a growing chorus of jungle noises. In moments, a great uproar was heard from the tall monkey-house.

“The monkeys don’t seem to care for the dogs,” I noted.

“Oh, they don’t mind them so much. But the dogs signal my arrival, which always causes excitement.”

Then the steps gave way to a pathway of crisp, white gravel, and we were in the Khanpur zoological gardens.

It was, indeed, a zoo, with cages and paths, but considerable aesthetic attention had been paid, and the areas behind the bars resembled landscape rather than merely concrete and iron boxes to hold the specimens. The lions watched us from a little piece of Africa, a cunningly constructed rock wall with ledges and caves wrapped around by heavy bars; on the other side of their enclosure half a dozen varieties of African herbivore ran free, zebras and wildebeests and even, hiding in a far corner, a pair of wan-looking giraffes. The monkey-cage was the height of a three-storey building, and although the trees inside had long since been stripped to dead trunk, a natural-looking waterfall welled up from a pile of rocks in the centre of the cage, and the tall trees outside of the cage provided shelter to the inhabitants.

Sunny was nearly speechless with pleasure, exclaiming over the glimpse of a baby monkey and clapping her hands together at the lemurs, who looked disgruntled at being prodded from their rest by a servant.

The most startling thing, at first glance, was the collection of servants tending the animals. They bore the skin tones and facial characteristics of peoples from across the world—Asia, Africa, Scandinavia—but not one of them was taller than four feet: These were the inhabitants of the dwarf village Gay Kaur had referred to. And sure enough, between the cages and the sprawling plain filled with African wildlife lay a pseudo-African village whose proportions were at first disconcerting, the height of its grass huts and the size of its residents making it appear farther away than reason permitted.