Kim (1901) is one of Kipling's masterpieces. Through the story of the young orphan Kimball O'Hara, and his vocation in the Secret Service, Kipling presents a vivid picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the bazaars and the road. Two men — Kim, a boy growing into early manhood and the lama, an old ascetic priest — are fired by a quest. While Kim plays the Great Game, the Intelligence-led rivalry with Russia's expansionist ambitions in the north, he is also spiritually bound to the lama and he tries to reconcile these opposing strands, while the lama searches for redemption from the Wheel of Life.