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Featured Categories : Travel & Holiday : Countries & Regions : Asia : Tibet

• Sky Burial

  Xinran

  
  In the world of fiction reviewing, extraordinary is an over-used word. Yet there really is no other way to describe Chinese author Xinran's second book, Sky Burial. It is extraordinary in so many ways--the subject matter, the setting, the central character, but mostly its authenticity and the author's continuing search for the woman whose life is told here.

  Sky Burial is the true story of a Chinese woman's 30-year search through Tibet for news of her lost, presumed dead, husband. Xinran is working as a radio journalist on a women's programme when a listener calls in to tell her about Shuwen. Xinran travels hundreds of miles across China to interview her and, over two days, Shuwen opens her heart and reveals her tragic, scarcely imaginable life story. Xinran returns to her life and spends the subsequent 10 years trying to find Shuwen again, researching her story and writing this book--a homage to an ordinary woman's extraordinary life-long search for the truth.

  The story is a simple one: Shuwen meets her intelligent, idealistic husband-to-be while they are both training to be doctors. After less than 100 days of marriage, Kejun travels to Tibet as a Chinese army doctor and before long, Shuwen is notified that he has died in an "incident". Shuwen decides to join the army herself, travel to Tibet and find out if he really is dead, and if so, how and why he died.

  And then, as if travelling to a closed country like Tibet as a young woman in the 1950s is not difficult enough, Shuwen quickly becomes separated from her unit and, close to death herself, is taken in by a family of Tibetan nomads. Her transformation from Chinese doctor to nomadic Buddhist is a long, painful and at many turns, deeply distressing one.

  Sky Burial is a slight book--little more than an extended short story--and yet the ground it covers is immense, not just because of the fascinating glimpse it offers into a land and a people still largely unknown in the West. Despite its tragic themes of loss and survival in one of the world's harshest landscapes, it is an uplifting tale of unwavering loyalty and immeasurable inner strength. --Carey Green

  
   

• Seven Years in Tibet (Paladin Books)

  Heinrich Harrer

  
  
   

• The Hotel on the Roof of the World: Five Years in Tibet (Summersdale Travel)

  Alec Le Sueur

  
  
   

• Last Seen in Lhasa: The Story of an Extraordinary Friendship in Modern Tibet

  Claire Scobie

  
  
   

• Tibet (Lonely Planet Country Guide)

  Bradley Mayhew, et al

  
  
   

• Beyond Seven Years in Tibet: My Life Before, During and After

  Heinrich Harrer

  
  
   

• The Dance of 17 Lives: The Incredible True Story of Tibet's 17th Karmapa

  Mick Brown

  
  
   

• A Year in Tibet

  Sun Shuyun

  
  
   

• Tibetan Foothold

  Dervla Murphy

  
  
   

• A Hermit in the Himalayas: A Unique Travelogue by One of the Greatest Spiritual Explorers of the Twentieth Century

  Paul Brunton

  
  
   

• Magic and Mystery in Tibet

  Alexandra David-Neel

  
  
   

• River Dog: A Journey Down the Brahmaputra

  Mark Shand

  
  The Brahmaputra is one of Asia's longest rivers, and tracing its course from Tibet to Bangladesh is perhaps "the last great Asian adventure". Undeterred, Mark Shand set out to do just that, and River Dog tells of his journey accompanied by Indian friends and a dog called Bhaiti.

  Shand's previous book, Travels on My Elephant, told of travelling in India by elephant; after this experience, he writes, he could not imagine travelling without an animal. Enter Bhaiti--the true hero of River Dog--whose experiences sniffing after bitches and saving his master from death by snakebite provide Shand's wit with plenty of opportunities to make its mark. As they progress, a touching bond develops between Shand and Bhaiti, with the author laughing along with his dog at his own stumbling progress--a 48-year-old not averse to sharing in the odd joint or opium bong, the false stereotype of the intrepid explorer is cleverly undone by Shand through his candour and the self-deprecating title of his book.

  Shand certainly comes across as an old travelling hand. As he ventures through India his alcohol consumption increases daily, but fortunately by now Shand and company are travelling by boat and not on foot. Moving into Bangladesh, Shand becomes more observant; this is a new country to him, which gives his writing a freshness that is absent earlier in the book, and the narrative soon culminates with the team's arrival at the Bay of Bengal. Shand's excitement at reaching the sea is real enough, but he is subsequently prevented from completing the journey in Tibet by the Chinese authorities; although this undermines the "epic" nature of the journey, River Dog remains an entertaining account of a river voyage made by an unlikely team of one man and his dog.--Toby Green

  
   

• The Way of the White Clouds: The Classic Spiritual Travelogue by One of Tibet's Best-known Explorers

  Anagarika Govinda

  
  
   

• Frank Kingdon Ward's Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges

  Kenneth Cox, Ken Storm Jr., Ian Baker

  
  
   

• The Way of the White Clouds

  Lama Anagarika Govinda

  
  
   

• Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet's Tsangpo River

  Peter Heller

  
  
   

• Darkness Over Tibet (Mystic Travellers Series)

  Theodore Illion

  
  
   

• For Tibet, with Love: A Beginner's Guide to Changing the World

  Isabel Losada

  
  
   

• Bhutan: Hidden Lands of Happiness

  John Wehrheim

  
  
   

• From Heaven Lake : Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet

  Vikram Seth