After his departure from the Tibetan plateau, Pallis lived in Kalimpong, India, for nearly four years before returning to England in 1951. Kalimpong was then a center of literary and cultural activity, as well as a refuge for many of those who were being forced to leave Tibet. Pallis formed many lasting relationships during this time, including an acquaintance with the then queen of Bhutan and her family, whom he later visited in England, and with the Dalai Lama's former tutor Heinrich Harrer, with whom Pallis later collaborated in exposing the fraudulent writer Cyril Hoskin, alias “Lobsang Rampa”. While in Kalimpong, Pallis also met with the Dalai Lama's Great Royal Mother, and he developed a close relationship with the abbot of the nearby Tharpa Choling monastery.