 These endless ranges and the mystique of India have attracted travellers, scholars and artists from different parts of the world for ages. The Indian travels of three eminent Russian artists in the 19th century was yet another link in this long chain. Alexei Saltikov, Veseli Vareshigan and Nikolai Rehrik spent several years travelling, experiencing and painting the multitude that is India. Saltikov visited India in 1840 when the British had not seized all parts of the country and the throne at Delhi was still occupied by the Mughals. Saltikov was fascinated by everything he saw, Indian costumes, ornaments, temples and religious practices. Saltikov was in India for a few years before the first struggle for independence in 1857 and must have been witnessed to the growing anti-British sentiments among the Indian people. And it is likely that the motion in his work draws inspiration from this tension. Another master who came to India was the celebrated Russian painter Veseli Vareshigan, independent and unorthodox. Vareshigan shared the democratic views characteristic of the Russian intellectuals of his day. Vareshigan's Indian series are a very important landmark in the evolution of the great master, not only because of their artistic merit but also as an authentic document of life in the late 19th century India. The last of the trio of Russian masters to visit India was Nikhalaya Rerik, a great son of Russia, a citizen of the world and a resident of India. Rerik tried to capture the eternity of the Himalayas, painting them at dawn when the valleys were still in shadows and at sunset when the peaks glowed like embers. The joy of watching his works at the Rerik Museum and Nagar is an experience that has to be lived. The works seem to acquire an immediacy, a new vibrancy surrounded as they are by the very peaks and valleys that inspire these classics. The significance of the depiction of India and its people in the works of Sultikov, Vareshigan and Rerik is not merely because these were some of the earliest positive depictions of India by European artists but in the fact that all three reflected the Indian people's desire for freedom. The lasting bonds of friendship between India and Russia were initiated not through war or diplomacy but through the sensitive strokes of artists and that is why these bonds are so deep and so dear.