Survey of India (1767 - Present) is India's central engineering agency in charge of mapping and surveying the country. It was founded in 1767 by Major James Rennell, who took the post of first Surveyor General, with the mission to map and consolidate the territories of the British East India Company. The Survey undertook the Great Trigonometrical Survey between 1802 and 1852 in an attempt to accurately measure the Indian Subcontinent - considered one of the greatest feats of mapping of all time. It also sponsored clandestine surveys, at times disguised as Buddhist pilgrims, to infiltrate and map Tibet, then a closed country. With India's independence in 1947, the Survey was folded into the new Indian government, which it remains part of to this day. More by this mapmaker...

James Thomas Walker CB FRS (December 1, 1826 – February 16, 1896) was an Anglo-Indian Surveyor General of India. He was born at Cannanore, the son of John Walker of the Madras civil service and educated in Wales and at the military college of the East India Company. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Bombay Engineers and served in a number of campaigns in the Second Anglo-Sikh War. From 1849 to 1853 he took part in a reconnaissance of the frontier of Peshawar, and served as field-engineer during the Indian mutiny in 1857, during which his exploits (destroying the gates of a fortress, setting off gunpowder charges with his musket, for example) earned him his promotion to captain. Following the mutiny he resumed work on the Indus survey, before being appointed to the Great Trigonometrical Survey in 1860. In March 1861 he would become superintendent of the Survey, completing his surveys with astounding accuracy, and undertaking revisions of earlier surveys to increase precision. In 1878 he became Surveyor General of India, retiring at the rank of lieutenant-general in 1883. Among his achievements as Surveyor General was his remarkable openness to the trade of geographical data with the Russians, at the height of Britain's 'Great Game' rivalry with that empire. As a token of this cooperation, Walker - already a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society since 1859 - would be made a member of the Russian Geographical Society in 1868. Learn More...

George Jonas Whitaker Hayward (c. 1839 - July 18, 1870) was an English explorer during the Great Game period. He is known to have been born to a land agent near Leeds, was educated at the Forest School in north London, and in 1859 was made an ensign in the British Army. He was stationed in Multan, India (now Pakistan) with the 89th Foot. Though he was commissioned in 1863, he would leave the army two years later. He surfaced in England in 1868, petitioning the Royal Geographical Society to be hired as an explorer in Central Asia. Perhaps to his surprise, the Society supplied him with money and kit, with instructions to survey the Pamir Mountains. He was the only explorer during the Great Game to be funded by the Society. At precisely the same time that Britain was consolidating its hold on India, and Russia was exploding into Central Asia, Hayward was sent to map out the unexplored and formidable terrain between the two empires, then governed by lawless tribes and murderous despots. His travels took him to Kashgaria in an attempt to explore the mountains from the northeast; deterred from that route, he instead explored the course of the Yarkand River, the Kun Lan and the Karakoram mountains. Following on the heels of this journey, Hayward in 1869 made an attempt northwards through the Himalayas, via the Yasin valley; there he passed through a war zone between Hindu Kashmiris and Muslim Dardistan, witnessing Kashmiri atrocities about which he published on his return to India. The political fallout from his criticism of a British ally and vassal would lead Hayward to sever his association with the Royal Geographical Society.

In 1870 Hayward again attempted to cross the mountains via the Yasin Valley, proceeding to the Darkot Pass. Just short of reaching the Oxus river and the Pamir Mountains, he was attacked and murdered on July 18, 1870. It is not known who was behind the killing. The two main suspects were Aman ul-Mulk, in whose Kafiristan domain Hayward was then traveling, or the Maharaja of Kashmir (for revenge for Hayward's revelations of Kashmiri atrocities in Dardistan.) Learn More...