Hari Ram was a pundit (a native Indian surveyor used by the British to covertly explore regions north of British India) who explored the region around Mount Everest in 1871–1872. At first he was not allowed to enter Tibet, but his luck changed when he met a district official whose wife was ill. He examined her, checked his medical book for a disease with similar symptoms, and gave her some pills. To his own surprise, the woman recovered, and from then he found relatively little difficulty in travelling on. He gave a frightening account of his trip along the Bhote Koshi river:
During his voyage, Hari Ram had opened up of virtually unknown territory. He had travelled all the way around Mount Everest, but because other mountains stood in between, he never actually saw it. On a second journey, Hari Ram traversed northern Nepal from west to east.
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