In 1894, while commanding the newly built fort at Gupis, he entertained the visiting George Curzon, "through a long evening with French songs to the accompaniment of a banjo." At Fort Gupis, the Francophile Townshend decorated the interior walls of the fort with illustrations advertising the latest plays popular in Paris. In January 1895, he was sent to north of Chitral, a remote town in the extreme north of India almost on the borders with the Russian Empire in what is now Pakistan in an area known as "the Roof of the World" owing to its extreme height.