By the end of May 1914, Sadhu Sundar Singh was on the border of Nepal. It was not easy to enter that Hindu kingdom without a passport and for a Christian it was impossible to obtain one. Border guards twice turned Sundar away before he managed to get in. Once inside he was encouraged by the reception he received at the villages he passed through. He confined himself mainly to reading aloud from the Nepali New Testament, for although he understood the language he could not speak it fluently, and found conversation difficult. But the villages were in very mountainous territory, and as he wrote later,

“…. The roads are awful. Ascents, descents, and the crossing of streams tire one. The 7th June will always be in my memory – the fatigue of the journey, the extreme hunger and thirst, the heavy showers of rain, the long ascent. A terrible blast of wind threw me into a cave. O praised is the Lord! Though I fell from such a height, I did not get hurt at all…then the different stages of the crucifixion of Jesus came before me in a vision.

“First, he was awake in the garden of Gethsemane all night. Secondly, he was hungry and thirsty. Thirdly, due to the lashes and the crown of thorns he was bleeding. Fourthly, beside all these troubles, He had to lift up the cross Himself. For these reasons He fell down when He was climbing Golgotha. O dear Lord, my cross is nothing before Thine…”

But his own sufferings were not yet over in Nepal. The next day he reached Ilam, a garrison town, and found the bazaar full of people. He took up his stand in front of the post office and started to preach, the New Testament in his hand. Quite a large crowd gathered, and when he offered Gospel to any who could read there were those who came forward to receive them. At this point, there was an interruption. An official arrived and angrily demanded to know who had given him permission to enter Nepal and preach a foreign religion.

Sundar replied that he had come at the command of the Officer of all officers, the King of all kings – the Creator. “Why?” snapped the official. “Christ has called all nations to receive eternal life, and Nepal must hear this good news, too”. The official did not want to discuss the matter. He was all for putting Sundar in jail for six months, the prescribed penalty for illegal entry, immediately. However, another official pointed out that if this preacher were put in jail, he might persuade some of the other prisoners to become Christians. Therefore, it was decided that different form of punishment should be inflicted.

“They seized me and threw me into prison. They took off my clothes and fastened my hands and feet in a block of wood, and bringing many leeches, left them near me…. For two or three hours I felt my sufferings very much indeed, but afterwards my Lord by His holy presence turned my prison into a paradise….”

“When I was singing, full of joy, many people came to the door to listen, and I began to preach. Then they released me”

They probably thought he was mad.

“To such an extent had the leeches sucked my blood that on the following day I suffered dizziness as I walked.” Then, he added, “Glory be to God that He honored me by letting me suffer for His Name.”

He was a strong man. He walked the thirty miles back to Darjeeling within two days, and wrote to the Rev.Redman in Simla telling of the conversation with the Nepali officer, but not mentioning his brief imprisonment. He did not want to inform his friends about this. Nor did he want the incident to reach the ears of those in the Government who might start enquiries as to why a British subject had received such treatment.

Perhaps there was another reason of which he himself was only dimly aware – the instinctive shutting of the door of memory on a particularly traumatic experience until over-strung emotions had been silenced. At any rate, when he arrived at the home of his friend Tharachin, who saw the leech marks on his back and applied iodine to them, Sundar gave no explanation of how he got them, and a few days later, the two of them set out for the little country of Sikkim.