Kim

Left alone at Lucknow station, Kim considers his identity again: “‘Now am I alone—all alone,’ he thought. In all India is no one so alone as I! […] Who is Kim—Kim—Kim?’” (156). After riding the train to Benares, he seeks out his lama, and near the temple, he encounters a father with a deathly ill child. With the lama watching, Kim offers to heal the boy and give him some malaria medicine. When they are gone, Kim and the lama exchange accounts of what they have done during their time apart. While Kim was at school, the lama came and went from his temple in Benares and spent a great deal of time drawing and expounding upon pictures of the Wheel of Life (an allegorical Buddhist depiction of all reality), becoming one of the greatest experts in the craft. With their separation behind them, they agree to go out on the road together, resuming their quest for the river, which the lama is now confident they will find since they are back in one another’s company: “The Search, I say, is sure. If need be, the River will break from the ground before us” (162).