To a Mountain in Tibet

by Colin Thubron

New York Times bestselling author Colin Thubron returns with a moving, intimate, and exquisitely crafted travel memoir recounting his pilgrimage to the Hindu and Buddhist holy mountain of Kailas—whose peak represents the most sacred place on Earth to roughly a quarter the global population. With echoes of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard, Peter Hessler’s Country Driving, and Paul Theoroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, Thubron’s follow up to his bestselling Shadow of the Silk Road will illuminate, interest, and inspire anyone interested in traveling the world or journeying into the soul.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Asia, Memoir, Buddhism, China, Religion

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

Colin Thubron, CBE FRSL is a Man Booker nominated British travel writer and novelist.

In 2008, The Times ranked him 45th on their list of the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, as of 2010, President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

To a Mountain in Tibet tells two stories. One is the great travel writer’s observations along his trek to a significant physical and religious site. The other is his inner journey of coming to terms with the death of his mother, whose passing prompted this adventure. The sights, smells and sounds of this arduous walk into a remote, mountainous retreat capture his senses. But it is the local culture and sundry religious views of death that capture his imagination as he treks to the holiest mountain in the world. Four great Indian rivers—the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej and the Brahmaputra—Have their sources on or near the mountain Kailas. To a fifth of the world’s population, this peak is the center of everything, to Buddhists and Hindus, and to believers of other religions before those. In Chinese-controlled Tibet, the mountain has never been scaled, but pilgrims walk around it as an act of devotion, and to seek favor from their gods.

To the pious, the mountain radiates gold or refracts like crystal. It is the source of the universe, created from cosmic waters and the mind of Brahma…The sun and the planets orbit it. The Pole Star hangs immutable above. The continents of the world radiate from its centre like lotus petals on a precious sea (Humans occupy the southern petal) and its slopes are heady with the gardens of paradise.

But the God of Death dwells on the mountain. Nothing is total, nothing permanent—not even he. All is flux.

He catalogs a series of religious beliefs as he encounters monasteries destroyed by the Chinese, and remnant shrines and relics, noting the historic interactions of ancient religions, merging, absorbing each other. It would be a good idea to keep a dictionary handy as there are sundry new words to learn. And while it is not necessary to be familiar with eastern religions, it wouldn’t hurt, as Thubron tosses around quite a few names that are unfamiliar to those of us largely innocent of those belief systems.


Colin Thubron - image from Wanderlust Magazine

When he writes about the death of his mother, it is not so much about her physical passing, but how her death affected him. Thubron is trying to cope with her death, and as we learn late in the book, the death at a young age of his sister. But he tells us almost nothing of his relationship with either person. It is their passing that is significant here.

With the death of a last parent, material things—old correspondence, a dilapidated house, a pair of slippers—emerge like orphans to enshrine the dead. My mother threw away nothing. Her drawers spilt out letters, diaries, documents, photos, fifty, seventy, eighty years old, with the stacked correspondence of my father, my dead sister, my nurse, even my nurse’s mother. For months the papers lie piled, waiting. They grow huge with delayed sadness. How to decide what is to survive, what is to perish? The value of things no longer belongs to cost or beauty, but only to memory. The chipped and faded teacup is more precious than the silver tray that nobody used. And the letters bring confusion. Sometimes what was written for a day echoes in your head as if forever. Every one discarded sounds a tiny knell of loss. The past drops away into the waste-paper basket and oblivion, and in this monstrous disburdening, grief returns you to a kind of childish dependence. You sift and preserve (for whom?) and cling to trivia. You have become the guardian of their past, even its recreator.

The themes of connectedness to both the sacred and the real permeate his musings.

As they [a group of passing monks] walk on, I wonder at them, their lightness, their lack of need. They have already passed through a painless, premature death. They have shed what others shed in dying. They will leave nothing material behind them to be divided, claimed or loved. Their dispossession strikes me at once as freedom, and a poignant depletion. Their buoyant laughter follows me up the valley, but I do not quite envy them. I only wonder with a muffled pang what it would be in the West to step outside the chain of bequeathal and inheritance, as they do, until human artifacts mean nothing at all.

It is a relatively short book, but it is not a fast read. This is a book you will want to read at the speed of speech. I found myself frequently re-reading passages, paragraphs, pages, only in part to assure that I had gotten what had just crossed my eyes. Mostly it was to savor the writing, the feeling, chewing a morsel very slowly in order to extract all possible deliciousness. Thubron has a great talent for describing not just what he sees, but the impact of what he sees. His dual career as a travel writer par excellence and a novelist has left us with incomparable writing.

In fact the Times of London publishes a list of the greatest British writers of the post war era, and Thubron continues to be included. It is no shock that he is considered one of the best travel writers ever. Perhaps with ancestors like Dryden and Samuel Morse he has a natural gift for words. Whether for the information imparted here about a very remote place and people or for the more spiritual contemplation of permanence To a Mountain in Tibet is a trek worth taking.




PS - about a week after posting this review, I came across the following on PBS. If you want to see the mountain for yourself, it figures prominently in this edition of Myths and Heroes

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

To a Mountain in Tibet was part memoir and part travelogue by award winning novelist and admired travel writer, Colin Thubron. This is a personal journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet. It is the mystic heart of the world to both Buddhists and Hindus. It is here that Thubron treks to celebrate the life and legacy of his family in the wake of his mother's death being left alone as he attempts to come to some kind of closure on this very personal journey and to leave a sign of the passage of his father, mother and young sister. It is a time that he also explores his need for solitude that has shaped his career as a writer traveling to distant lands.

By trekker's standards their party is small consisting only of Thubron, a guide, a cook and a horse man. They approach from the Karnali River, the highest source of the Ganges. And this passage:

"The Karnali itself--we are descending imperceptibly to it--is no longer an immured thread. It is pristine and violent. Its waters seethe and plunge among half-submerged boulders, alternately balked and release, flooding into furious eddies and slipstreams--a beautiful greg-green commotion in momentary drift, then battered to white foam again. In local lore the rocks that strew it are silver fish from the Ganges that could struggle no further upriver. Here the Karnali seems less sacred than primitive and untouched. Yet it finds its source near the lakes beside holy Kailas, and sanctity will descend on it downriver, of course, with silt and pollution, as it eases into the Ganges plain."

Tibet endured many losses of their land, their culture, their monastaries during China's Cultural Revolution. This beautiful and pristine land had been maimed since 1950 by Chinese occupation, by mass killings and displacement, the Cultural Revolution struck at Tibets heart.

"How much material wealth must Beijing pour into the country before it can dream of seducing this profound Buddhist identity? Where Tibetans sense spirit, the Chinese see supersition. When the Chinese demolished Shepeling monastary, they say, with its treasured scriptures and sixty foot silken banners, they swept away the remnants of feudal sorcery, together with the skull from which the chief lama drank, and the enshrines testicle of an idolised warrior."

"In the lonely hermitages, the gompas, around Kailas, they will offer the spirits incense to smell, a little rice to eat, a bowl of pure water. And somewhere in these wilds they may whisper to the fierce mountain gods to bring back the Dalai Lama to Lhasa, and drive the Chinese out."

This was a narrative of journeys in one of the most beautiful and mystical places on earth. A few years ago, we had the opportunity to spend some time in Tibet, enjoying the pristine air and the magic of the people. But sadly their culture has been hollowed out by China's Cultural Revolution. I was struck by the prayer to restore the Dalai Lama to Lhasa. One of our most memorable experiences was the Potala Palace, the winter palace of the Dalai Lamas from 1649 to 1959. It is now a museum and a World Heritage Site. But we must never forget that this is a culture that has been absorbed into China against their will.

[Daren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It has been a while since I have read any Colin Thubron non-fiction, which I generally find to be 4 star quality, and very enjoyable. Not so much his fiction, but that is another (2 star) story.

This book, I have been looking forward to reading, but it feels a little different to the Thubron I remember. It is possible that this journey is, for Thubron, a more personal journey that his previous work. His mother has passed away, following his father and his sister, who died in a skiing accident in her early twenties. For him, his journey, his kora (circumambulation of pilgrimage) is for his mother, and while he touches on it a few times, he certainly doesn't overshare, or make the book about his mother.

To touch briefy on the location of his journey - a trek from Nepal up to and across the border to Tibet, and on to a pilgrimage circuit around Mt Kailas, the most sacred of the worlds mountains (to the Buddhist, Bon and Hindu religions). A mountain that has never been climbed, and the access to which is strictly monitored and controlled, and for many years was closed to almost everyone. The kora takes one through the ever changing scenery of mountainous Tibet, sacred lakes and decaying monasteries.

In my view, it has effected the way he has written. He has written a lot about the Buddhist and Bon religions, and the crossover of Hinduism. He has written a lot about the gods, their stories, and other tales. He has described the ever changing scenery of first Nepal, and then Tibet - and described it incredibly well. But, and there is a but, because this didn't maintain his four star quality, it didn't have the passion, or invoke the colour or excitement that for me his other writing has.

Still an enjoyable read, and as I say the descriptive landscape and even his description of and (albeit brief) interactions with people he meets are great. I have to say I would love to make the trip he has, the kora around Mt Kailas.

3.5 stars, but rounded down as his other four star books are prevail over this one.

[Joshua Buhs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

It is a short book about three intertwined mysteries: the mysteries of culture, of death, and of human personality. It offers no easy answers--no answers at all, really. It is a pilgrimage finished, but unfulfilled.

Thubron is a famed travel writer, and he left to visit Mt. Kailas shortly after his mother died. He was, at the time, in his late 60s, and the only surviving member of his family, having seen his father, sister, and mother all pass. Kailas is one of the holiest mountains in the world, revered by Hindus, Buddhists, and Bon. It has never been climbed.

Thubron is no climber and he was not traveling to the mountain to climb it, but to walk around it in a clockwise direction, and bathe in the waters nearby, which is the goal of all the pilgrims who visit the mountain. Some, with the deep-lungs of mountain folk, can hike the 32 mile circuit in a day. (They are at about 17,000 feet above sea level.) Others are surprised by the hardship of the trip to the mountain and driven back, even quitting halfway through the circle and forced to return against the grain.

The area around the mountain, and through which Thurbon must travel with his guide, porter, translator, and cook--some of these multiple roles are played by a single person--is beautiful, often stark, and Thubron is amazingly gifted in being able to evoke the landscape. The area is also incredibly poor, and Thubron wonders again and again--as does the reader--how the people can survive here, how they can profess to be happy. Thubron notes their happiness without ever offering insights into it.

The book continually refuses to answer the questions, the mysteries at its heart. The people here face hardships unknown to most, admit that these wear them down, and yet say they are happy. Thubron asks himself how he came to be the kind of person who is most happy alone, and how it feels, now, to be alone in a different way--completely without a family.

The poverty of Nepal and Tibet contract with the West's imaginings of these places as repositories of ancient wisdom, home of compassion's icon, the Dalai Lama, now exiled. Thubron admits that he approached the area with the usual Westerners's sense of Tibet as a mystical place, and the holy mountain as site of redemption--where sins can be cleansed, and merit earned. And he wonders at the divergence between the culture and the life--for even as he talks to some of the people, the monks and pilgrims, they say things--have a perspective on life--that he just cannot understand. What seems mystical to him seems commonsensical to them. At the same time, he interleaves historical anecdotes, which further complicate the culture--earlier Dalai Lama's were much involved in politics, and war, for instance. And the current geopolitical situation, with China having taken Tibet in the middle of the last century, undercuts, he thinks, the last vestiges of Tibet's claim to be a mystical place.

As readers, we sense the change int he very structure of the narrative. Leading up to the Tibetan frontier, Thubron and those in his small party walk, scrtamble, struggle over scree and old avalanches. Once in Tibet, they are driven, on roads built by the Chinese, past police checkpoints staffed by the Chinese. There is a very real sense in which the material world is paving over the mystical.

This is finely observed, and finely told, but there are issues at the edge of the story which threaten to blow it up, and which Thubron never deals--keeping the book in the realm of old-fashioned travel literature. His father was part of the British army in India, and hunted big game through a nearby region. Thubron himself stands in this colonizing tradition, visiting the region for his own sake--his attempts to help the locals are poor, as he himself acknowledges, though mostly to accentuate the harsh poverty and his own insignificance rather than to question the system which has him, a well-off Brit, visiting this holy land. The politics, too, obscure some of the story, since the Chinese are positioned as the evil invaders--but he to is invading, and is privileged by a huge international system. It is necessary, anymore, if writing travel literature to engage these issues, but he does not. And so the story sticks to the personal, hinting at but avoiding the political.

Nonetheless, the narrative is finely structured, and beautifully written, the language rich, verging on the pretentious but never crossing the line, There are the recurring references to cuckoos, which seem tossed off until they explode with meaning when we learn the cosmology of the Bon. And there is his artful use of the second-person, here and there, sometimes directed at the reader, sometimes, his mother, his sister, which tends to confuse--in a good way--the reader's sense of self: better put, identity echoes and refracts, in a way that points the reader toward Buddhist understandings of life, and of death.

Understandings that Thubron would like to come to himself, but cannot. Unlike those pilgrims for whom the trip is meaningful but still must fall back, Thubron finishes, and at the end of the book is seen heading back down the mountain, but he never comes to grips with his family's deaths, or his own isolation. The search for meaning is frustrated. Buddhists interpretations of the soul, the sometimes sordid and almost always confusing reality of the temples cannot help Thubron understand his place in the world, or the meaning of death. There is no metaphysical peace, only the relief of having finished an arduous task.

[Marialyce · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was looking forward to this book as I love things relating to the Tibetan culture. I did very much enjoy the beginning of this novel. but the middle and end brought out my frustration as I continued to feel the very soul of this novel ebb away. I understood that Mr Thubron is basically a travel writing author, but it was so cold (not only climate wise) as he related the various trials, tribulations, and god/goddesses/monsters and beliefs of these people. It felt it more like a litany of ramblings when there was a chance for more understanding of culture and the people who inhabit this beautiful but severe land. I learned very little other than that there more more gods and demons one could ever imagine.

There was very little personal perspective as I was aware that Mr Thubron embarked on this journey in honor of his dead family, he being the only surviving member. So in essence, this book was not for me, although I did enjoy the description of scenery and the harshness of its life.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Sacred Mountain

Located in remote southwestern Tibet on the border with Nepal, the 22,000 foot high Mount Kailas is sacred to four religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and the ancient Tibetan Bon. The mountain is regarded as the center of the world, and as the concrete realization of the mythical Mount Meru. The steep, forbidding mountain has never been climbed, but it has for centuries been visited by pilgrims who walk around the 32-mile base of the mountain in a journey called a kora.

In 2009, Colin Thubron, a well-known English travel writer and novelist, undertook a journey to Mount Kailas, as recounted in this new book "To a Mountain in Tibet". The title, of course, may be taken both as a reference to the journey to Mount Kalias and as a hymn to the mountain itself. I was attracted to the book by my interest in Buddhism and from an excerpt published recently in "The New York Review of Books". Raised as an Anglican, Thubron, from this book, is a secular person with no specific religious faith. He undertook the journey to reflect upon the deaths of his family members -- the recent death of his mother, an earlier death of his father, and the still earlier death of his sister, age 21, in a mountain accident. Thubron also used the journey as a means for meditation and reflection. While written by a polished writer and a professional traveler, the book has a highly personal tone.

The book is short but makes for dense, close reading. Thubron describes the physical journey to Mount Kailas and the places and persons he meets on his way in great detail. Interspersed with the story of the trip are lengthy sections of the book which describe related matters: the reflections of the author on his journey and his family, the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, the nature of death and impermanence, the journeys earlier Westerners have made to Mount Kailas, the legends which have accumulated for centuries regarding the mountain and much more. These sections are as integral to the book as the narrative of the journey. Careful reading is required because Thubron frequently switches without warning from a story of the trip to a reflection on a closely-related personal, religious, or historical issue.

The journey begins in Nepal, as Thubron is a solitary Western traveller accompanied only by his Nepalese guide and Nepalese cook. The difficult uphill journey to the Nepalese -- Tibetan (Chinese) border occupies close to one-half the book. as Thubron passes by monasteries, simple homes and villages, and strangers on the path. Early in the book, he meets a small wandering group of passing monks about a site and asks them what it commemorates. The monks do not know. "Why would they care, who have been taught the transience of things?" Thubron asks. (p. 54) And as the monks continue on their way, Thubron wonders at them, "their lightness, their lack of need.... They have shed what others shed in dying."

Thubron's journey takes place in the Buddhist holy month of Saga Dawa, and occurs in the company of many pilgrims who have gathered to perform kora under the hostile eyes of the Chinese. At the outset of the pilgrimage, Thubron describes the beautiful, isolated Lake Mansorovar, itself a holy place, and the highest large freshwater lake in the world. The journey around Mount Kailas can be accomplished in a day and a half but sometimes takes pilgrims as long as three weeks if they prostrate extensively along the way. Thubrow describes the path, the pilgrims, the caves, byways and legends. But he describes primarily the harshness of the journey and the fortitude and commitment necessary to undertake it. The journey involves severe, endless climbs, lack of oxygen, and bitter cold. It is not a trip for the casual hiker.

Throughout the book, Thubron is moved by the religious spirit of the pilgrims to Mount Kailas who brave an arduous, sometimes fatal journey and by the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism on impermanence, change, and death. A lengthy section in the midst of Thubron's journey around the mountain describes in sharp detail the usual Tibetan burial method of sky-burial. It paints a grizzly picture. Then, towards the end of his kora, Thubron reflects upon and quotes extensively from "The Tibetan Book of the Dead", written to ease the transition period in Tibetan Buddhism between death and rebirth. The teachings of a monk named Tashi, whom Thubron had befriended in Kathamandu at the outset of his journey, come back to Thubron at the end of his kora, as they do frequently in the journey's course:

"from all that he loves, man must part." (p.203) Yet together with his focus on death and impermanence, Thubron celebrates the beauty and the danger of the mountains, lakes and rivers, strong relationships with people, and the force of erotic love. He retains throughout his trip much of his tone of western skepticism.

As I read this book, I longed to see Mount Kailas and to make the journey for myself. Such a trip would be an empty dream for many reasons, including physical stamina. But then I realized that the journey and its goals do not require extensive or esoteric physical travel. Thubron's book reminded me that, secular or religious, the journey is within.

Robin Friedman

[Joanka · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

Oh, what a private, intimate book it was!

I'm slightly embarrassed to confess it was the first book by Thubron that I’ve read, although I own a few. My relationship with the author is somewhat turned upside down. Firstly, I took part in a meeting with him a few years ago in Warsaw. He was charming and I enjoyed listening to him a great deal so it made me want to read his books even more. And now that I started my adventure with Thubron’s travelling, I started with his last book. But it doesn’t matter as it was a literary success for me.

I haven’t read such a book in a while. The non-fiction books about travelling that I read in recent years were written in a totally different manner. They read like adventures, even picaresque at times, emotional and “loud” in a way. Which is absolutely not a negative trait, just so different from how Thubron’s “To a Mountain in Tibet” is filled with silence. It’s the record of the author’s journey to Tibet after his mother’s death. He followed the route that is a popular pilgrimage path, to the Mount Kailas in Tibet, a mountain believed to be sacred in a few religions, the centre of the world and a house of gods. It’s not an easy journey and some people do not manage to complete it, some even die on the way. Yet, this is not an adventurous story of bold explorers or Buddhist enthusiasts. It’s a slow journey of an old man, quiet and reflective, with a speck of humour and quite a lot of information about Buddhism and Tibet.

Thubron notices nature around him as well as people but he seems to keep his distance, like a travelling gentleman probably should. He muses about his family, from which he is the only remaining member. His parents, his sister. There is a note of deep sadness beneath his words but true to the nature of the pilgrimage (although Thubron is not a believer and didn’t try to become one of the pilgrims really, he keeps his respectful distance), he tries to remain calm in the face of fading of everything in this world, whether we love it or not. Maybe that’s why when he opens up writing about his family it makes an enormous effect.

The informative quality of this book was important for me, as I was ignorant about many presented issues but it was Thubron himself that made this book special. It ends abruptly but in a way it suits the topic of the instability of everything in our life. I read reviews in which people complain that nothing much happens here and they are right to some extent. But that’s the strength of this book. It’s like a quiet walk in the mountains, maybe a bit like a meditation surrounded by nature. I needed such a read and it delivered. I will definitely read more of Thubron’s travelling books.

[Kim G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still trying to figure out what I got out of this book. The Tibetan facts/history were not effectively organized, I didn't get to know any interesting characters, and although this book is billed as a sort of elegy for the author's deceased family, other than a few pages on the father's travels and spare paragraphs here and there during the latter half in the book revealing what happened to his sister, they're ultimately non-entities.

I have a feeling a month from now I won't remember much about this book at all.

I was even turned off from the poetic aspects of the writing, some sections were not much more than batches of word soup, and he treads dangerously close to exotification. I'll give the guy a pass on that because it seems that his disconnect with the people around him is a product of his grief, but if he described any of the younger monks as girlish one more time I was going to sprain something from side-eyeing so hard.

There was one paragraph on page 142 that absolutely smashed my heart into pieces. It's just a touch of what this book could have been, but I don't think the author is ready to properly access those places emotionally. If he ever does though, I'll be first in line to read that book.

[Linh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hành trình tới núi thiêng Kailash, Tây Tạng của một nhà văn người Anh, người có lẽ là một trong những nhà văn viết du ký nổi tiếng nhất hiện nay (và được tạp chí Times xem là 1 trong 50 nhà văn Anh quốc lớn nhất từ sau năm 1945). Xen kẽ cáu chuyện về hành trình của ông và gặp gỡ những người dân Nepal và Tây Tạng là những hồi ���c của ông về những người thân đã mất: người cha từng là sỹ quan trong đế chế Anh, người mẹ mà việc bà qua đời dường như là lý do chính thúc đẩy chuyến đi này, và ký ức phảng phất nhưng buồn thương về người chị gái chết trẻ do lở núi khi đi trượt tuyết ở trên một ngọn núi ở châu Âu có hình dáng gần giống với Kailash. Sự xen kẽ những hồi ức về người thân trong gia đình này không khỏi khiến gợi nhớ tới The Invention of Solitude của Paul Áuter cùng với những hồi ức về người cha mới qua đời.

Văn Colin Thubron đẹp nhưng hơi cầu kỳ, khó đọc. Những kỷ niệm và trải nghiệm của ông phảng phất buồn nhưng như có gì đó mệt mỏi và luyến tiếc. Bản thân Colin Thubron khi thực hiện hành trình này đã ở tuổi 70, tuổi khó có thể ngạc nhiên và không còn nhiều câu hỏi. Nhưng riêng chuyện ông thực hiện cả chặng đi kora này hoàn toàn bằng đi bộ ở tuổi đó cũng là một việc rất hiếm người làm được.

Đoạn kết hơi đột ngột, dừng lại sau ngày thứ hai trong hành trình Kailash.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

"By trekkers' standards our party is small and swift: a guide, a cook, a horse-man, myself. We move scattered above the river, while loan traders pass us the other way, leading their stocky horse and mule-trains between lonely villages. They look fierce and open, and laughingly meet your eyes. The delicacy of the plains has gone..."

Renowned travel writer Colin Thubron is about to climb Mount Kailis in Tibet, one of the holiest places in the world and hardly visited by westerners. Its slopes are rugged, glacial, and peopled by the toughest types alive. Its slopes are also full of stories: Hindu and Buddhist tales of struggle, devotion and intrigue. But on from these lower reaches, Kailis' s peak rises sacrosanct. Forbiddingly distant. And it is here that Thubron casts his gaze, then walks towards, as listeners can discover in his new account.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/...

[Joy D · Rating 4 out of 5]

To a Mountain in Tibet is a Colin Thubron’s memoir about his walking journey to Mount Kailas, a sacred peak in western Tibet that is revered by multiple faiths including Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and the indigenous Bon religion. The narrative provides insights into the cultures and beliefs of the people Thubron encounters. He weaves in historical information about Nepal, Tibet, and Tibet’s past and present relationship with China. He cites examples of various pilgrims who have made the journey to Kailas over centuries.

Thubron’s prose is evocative. He vividly describes the rugged terrain, and the challenges he faced in navigating treacherous paths, high altitudes, and the harsh environment. One of the highlights of this book is Thubron’s reflections on mortality. He began the trek after the deaths of his family members, and his journey becomes a combination of emotional, spiritual, and physical. He offers insights into Buddhism’s concept of samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth) and how it shapes the Tibetan worldview. He contrasts this with his own cultural background and secular mindset. It is a beautifully written memoir that will appeal to those who enjoy reflections on life, death, loss, and grief, along with insights into history and world cultures.

[Faye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read: May-June 2018
Rating: 3.5/5 stars (rounded up to 4/5)

To a Mountain in Tibet is a beautifully written travelogue filled with historical notes and lyrical descriptions of the people and places Thubron encountered on his journey. The reason it is not rated more highly is that I was as interested in his personal journey as I was in the descriptions of his surroundings. There was never any sense that he ever really struggled; there was no mention of why he had chosen to take this trip in the book (though in the synopsis it mentions the deaths of his father, mother and sister being a factor) or how he prepared for it, hardly any mention of the physical toll of the trip, the food they ate, how he recruited the people he travelled with - the sort of details that make you feel like you’re along for the journey were mostly missing.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

(FROM MY BLOG) To the north, beyond the main range of the Himalayas, emerging from the Tibetan plateau, stands an isolated peak called Kailas. Although only 22,028 feet high, quite low by Himalayan standards, no climber has ever stood on its summit (except, apocryphally, a mystic in ancient times). It may never be climbed.

Kailas is a holy mountain to a number of religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism.

To Hindus, Kailas is identified as the earthly manifestation of the mystical mountain Meru. Living on the summit are Lord Shiva, and his consort Parvati.

To Tibetan Buddhists, atop Kailas is the ice palace of Demchog, a demonic deity wearing a crown of skulls -- perhaps a manifestation of Shiva -- who is usually represented with a blue-skinned body, four faces, and twelve arms, and shown embracing his consort Vajravarahi. Demchog and his consort are locked in an erotic embrace, representing the union of "nothingness" and "compassion."

To the remaining adherents of Bön, the pre-Buddhist belief system of Tibet, Kailas represented the seat of all spiritual power.

Colin Thubron is a travel writer in his early 70's. Over his lifetime, he has written a number of well-received books describing his travels in Asia and the Middle East, beginning with publication in 1967 of his book, Mirror to Damascus. In recent years, he's watched his family die off, one by one. The death of his mother, the last survivor of his family, prompted him to undertake a trek to Kailas, leading to publication this year of his book, To a Mountain in Tibet.

If Eric Newby's book, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (discussed a couple of posts ago) was a young man's light-hearted treatment of a taxing and dangerous climbing and trekking expedition, Thubron writes as a much older man, stricken by the deaths of relatives and facing his own mortality. The trek is not easy, but it follows well known trails; Western trekking companies routinely lead treks to the holy mountain. Thubron's trek is far less a perilous adventure into the unknown than was Newby's.

But Thubron's pilgrimage results is a far darker book.

Thubron begins trekking in the far western region of Nepal. He walks over passes through the Himalayas, crosses into Tibet, and arrives ultimately at the foot of Kailas. He then undertakes the kora, the traditional Buddhist and Hindu circumambulation of the mountain, an exercise that will wipe one's soul free of sin. For those with the tenacity to complete 108 circuits during their lifetime, the cycle of reincarnation comes immediately to an end, and the soul enters nirvana.

Few beliefs are older than the notion that heaven and earth were once conjoined, and that gods and men moved up and down a celestial ladder -- or a rope or vine -- and mingled at ease.

Kailas is such a ladder. The mountain was flown to this remote area, according to Buddhist belief, staked in place before devils could pull it underground, and nailed in place by the Buddha himself, preventing the gods from returning it to its origin.

Thubron speaks with many Nepalis and Tibetans on his trek. They are usually friendly. Their lives are very difficult, and often short. Many have suffered at the hands of the Chinese Maoists. Whatever dreams they may one day have dreamt as children rarely survived their teens. Only their religious beliefs give apparent meaning to the limited number of years and opportunities allotted them.

Thubron describes in detail, throughout his trek, the cosmic views held by Buddhists (and to a lesser degree, Hindus). He looks for that same meaning. He longs also to believe.

But he views the beliefs he lovingly describes as an outsider; he sees them as myths that -- however beautiful and suggestive -- were evolved by a primitive civilization. He marvels at the quiet self-confidence of monks with whom he meets; but he asks himself, are they incredibly wise, or simply credulous? Scholarly, or lazy? Are the desperately poor Nepali and Tibetans whom he meets making their way through just one more incarnation on the road to ultimate enlightenment? Or are they leading short, desperate, meaningless lives, ending in wretched deaths.

Thubron completes the 32-mile circuit of Kailas, crossing over its high point, Dröma pass, at 18,200 feet. He feels a sense of accomplishment, but he attains no spiritual revelation, no peace.

The writhing image of Demchog -- the union of "nothingness" and "compassion" -- leaves him neither at peace with his mother's death, nor at ease contemplating his own. A Buddhist monk, in the Tibetan tradition, explains to him that, in reality, there are no gods. Or rather, that the gods are merely guides, helping to lead him to that enlightenment that is man's highest destiny.

I tried to imagine this, but the wrong words swam into my mind: rejected life, self-hypnosis, the obliteration of loved difference. Premature death.

He tells a monk that his understanding of Buddhism is that, at death, everything is shed.

He smiled, as he tended to do at contradiction. "That is so. Only karma lasts. Merit and demerit."
"So nothing of the individual survives. Nothing that contains memory?"
"No." He sensed the strain in me, and with faint regret: "You know our Buddhist saying?"
Yes, I remember.
From all that he loves, man must part.

Thubron has undertaken a fascinating adventure. He has written yet another excellent book. I doubt, however, that he came down from his mountain having achieved the wisdom, the peace, or the hope that he may have sought on its heights. Demchog, in his amalgam of compassion and nothingness, may appear to Western eyes a cruel god.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

"In the beginning Kailas was just rock—rock and stones. Without spirit. Then the gods came down with their entourages and settled there. They may not exactly live there now, but they have left their energy, and the place is full of spirits…"the myth behind Mt. Kailas

Now in his seventies, famed travel writer Colin Thubron left his wife and home in England and trekked to a holy mountain in Tibet from Nepal. It was a personal journey. From Nepal, where his father hunted bear and big cats eighty years before, Thubron headed to Kailas, or Gangs Rinpoche, the holy mountain, the “precious jewel of snow.”

”Early wanderers to the source of the four great Indian rivers—the Indus, the Ganges, the Sutlej, and the Brahmaputra—found to their wonder that each one rose near a cardinal point of Kailas.”

Kailas is a holy mountain for Buddhists and Hindu alike, and thousands of worshippers every year pilgrimage to Kailas to circumnavigate the base.

At 15,000 feet, the base of Kailas is 52 km long, and it sits next to the highest freshwater lake in the world, Manasarovar. Kailas is reflected in its waters: “To the Hindus…the lake is mystically wedded to the mountain, whose phallic dome is answered in the vagina of its dark waters.” Kailas has never been climbed. Perhaps it is true that “only a man entirely free from sin could climb Kailas.” Thubron’s journey to Kailas is spiritual as well. He meditates on his life, his recently deceased mother and long-dead sister as he walks, but he shares with us what he sees along the route, in case we don’t get the chance.

The journey begins as if “through a ruined English garden,” strewn with viburnum, jasmine and syringa, honeysuckle, dogwood and buddleia. Soon the track becomes “savage and precipitous,” and as he gets closer to Kailas, the road becomes positively alive with pilgrims dressed “in a motley of novelty and tradition,” often scattered in groups of two or three, who look "unquenchably happy". And closer yet:

The monks, who have been praying in a seated line for hours, advance in a consecrating procession. Led by the abbot of Gyangdrak monastery from a valley under Kailas, they move in shambling pomp, pumping horns and conch shells, clashing cymbals. Small and benign in his thin-rimmed spectacles, the abbot hold up sticks of smouldering incense, while behind him the saffron banners fall in tiers of folded silks, like softly collapsed pagodas. Behind these again the ten-foot horns, too heavy to be carried by one monk, move stentorously forward, their bell-flares attached by cords to the man in front. Other monks, shouldering big drums painted furiously with dragons, follow in a jostle of wizardish red hats, while a venerable elder brings up the rear, cradling a silver tray of utensils and a bottle of Pepsi-Cola.”

But finally the destination is reached, and a Buddhist monk shares his philosophy: “Only karma lasts. Merit and demerit. Nothing of the individual survives. From all that he loves, man must part.”

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Felt at points I was supposed to buy into the family tragedy in much the same way that Dickens gave us poor Nell to boost his readership. Nevertheless, I enjoy travel books and books about journeying, and whilst this is not as good as his Siberian jaunt, I closed my eyes and pictured those timeless still lakes.

Good enough for me 3.5*

blurb - "By trekkers' standards our party is small and swift: a guide, a cook, a horse-man, myself. We move scattered above the river, while loan traders pass us the other way, leading their stocky horse and mule-trains between lonely villages. They look fierce and open, and laughingly meet your eyes. The delicacy of the plains has gone..."

Renowned travel writer Colin Thubron is about to climb Mount Kailis in Tibet, one of the holiest places in the world and hardly visited by westerners. Its slopes are rugged, glacial, and peopled by the toughest types alive. Its slopes are also full of stories: Hindu and Buddhist tales of struggle, devotion and intrigue. But on from these lower reaches, Kailis' s peak rises sacrosanct. Forbiddingly distant. And it is here that Thubron casts his gaze, then walks towards, as listeners can discover in his new account.



Reader Stephen Boxer. Producer Duncan Minshull.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this relatively short (218 page) book, travel writer and novelist Colin Thubron recounts a trek from Nepal to Tibet, where he ultimately circles Mount Kailas, a holy mountain sought by Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and Bon pilgrims. His journey is fairly short, and far from epic, but he observes and describes the landscape and people he meets with such care, that the story expands and commands attention. The trip is also as much an internal as an external pilgrimage; Thubron took this trip some months after losing his mother, his last immediate relative. So the story is also the work of a mature author meditating on grief and on the impermanence of all we love, including ourselves. The author's struggle both grounds the information he shares about the historical and cultural meanings of Mt. Kailas -- over and over, stations on the pilgrimage around the mountain are meant to reinforce the pilgrim's awareness of his or her impermanence -- and also creates a tension that drives the book, since Thubron, as a skeptical Westerner, cannot hope for the cosmic salvation experienced by the real pilgrims traveling alongside him. And yet, the journey, at least as he recounts it here, does offer a kind of resolution. Overall, it is a beautiful, respectful, and sober book.

[Eveline Chao · Rating 1 out of 5]

this writer is known for his beautiful writing, and there was no question that he has a formidable command of language, but i actually found all the poetic words distracting. like it was hard to keep focused on what was happening through the ten million ways of beautifully describing a rock or stream or cloud. there were also a lot of things "gently" verbing, and nothing could ever just straightforwardly sit, walk, look, run, but instead everything had to do all these things using some sort of unusual obfuscating word like, i dunno, trammel or glissade. and there's nothing wrong with trammeling or glissading, but when a sentence is 80% composed of words like that stacked against each other, with very little of the breathing room that more everyday words provide, it becomes somewhat unreadable. all of that said, this was my first colin thubron, and i'd definitely be interested to read more just to see if all of his writing is like this.

[Heidi Burkhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written. Some very touching scenes and memories in the book.

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book with great prose and a lot of informed insight, but I had a tough time getting my bearings.

First, the title is confusing. This IS a trip TO a mountain... and then 3/4 up it. It doesn't help that the first 100+ pages describe a descent. The book's map shows the towns visited, but the map is cluttered and the trek and drive portions are not labeled. It was hard to make out for sure where the author was actually going, but it appeared to be more than "to" the mountain. Halfway through the book I learned that the 22,000 foot Mount Kailas(h) has never been scaled, so a full ascent was eliminated as a possibility. It took me till near the end of the book to actually get my bearings. In a travel book, the basic destination (or purpose) of the trip should be known up front.

This wasn't the only thing unclear. There was mention of British trekkers on p. 6 and that they would help in entering China but what this was about wasn't clear until sometime after p. 100. Digressions sometimes made it hard to grasp the nature of what was happening. The best example is the description of Saga Dawa (p. 147 - 163). The sentences are beautifully written but they are disorganized. I had to go to Wikipedia to understand the fundamental nature of the rite. Looking back to the text, it was there, but lost in the descriptions and digressions.

I read an "uncorrected proof" from the Amazon Vine program, so perhaps things were changed with final publication.

At the sentence level, this is great writing: i.e. p. 89 on yaks "Their heads stoop, as if overwhelmed by the weight of their massive horns. Their manes jangle with tasseled bells. They are all but immune to the snow...". There are very good descriptions of villages and lives of local people. There are snips of conversation that give a profile of the every day life and hopes and aspirations of his cook, guide and people met along the road. I like that he gives attention to the women, prodding them to answer questions after their husbands think that they have spoken for them.

There is a refreshingly realistic look at the Tibetan Buddhism. The author parallels its military and (corrupted) political history to that of the Catholic Church. Sky burial, which is too often romanticized (for an example read: Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet), is described in cringing detail. He shows that like the worlds great monotheisms in Europe and the Middle East, Buddhism and Hinduism are synchretic in the Himalayas.

This sort of travelogue is not my favorite genre. I prefer "travel" books written by people who spend longer times in one place, living and working among the people. Resident authors can present deeper portraits of the people and places. Colin Thubron is not a stranger to this region or culture and has a very well informed interpretation of what he encounters. Perhaps the poor organization of this material is due to his personal loss before this trip.

For the author's scope and the beautiful prose this is 4 to 5 star book. The problems noted above make it 3 stars or less, so I'm going to weight my stars on the side of the author's perspective, his humane understanding of the people and culture, and his descriptive prose.

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘I am doing this on account of the dead.’

In this book, Colin Thubron sets of towards Mount Kailas, the sacred and mystical mountain in Tibet which is sacred to the Bon, to Buddhists, Hindus and Jains. Mount Kailas is close to the Tibetan borders with Nepal and India, and lies very close to the sources of all of the four major rivers of the Indian subcontinent: the Brahmaputra, the Ganges, the Indus and the Sutlej. The mountain rises abruptly from the flat western Tibetan plateau, approximately 2000 kilometres from Lhasa.

No one has ever successfully climbed Mount Kailas: the thousands who make a pilgrimage to it each year circumambulate it. Buddhists and Hindus walk clockwise around the mountain, Jains and the Bon walk counterclockwise. Many believe that circumambulating Mount Kailas is a holy ritual that will bring good fortune. It is a very tough pilgrimage: the path is 52 kilometres long, one of the passes to be crossed is at 5,500 metres and many endure severe altitude sickness. Some pilgrims, sold cheap trekking tickets by unscrupulous tour operators, are often badly affected by altitude sickness because they are not allowed sufficient time to acclimatize.

‘Where are you?’

Colin Thubron undertook this journey after the death of his mother left him as the only surviving member of his family. His pilgrimage may be secular, but it is still spiritual. And his economical prose seems perfectly suited to describing the barren landscape around Mount Kailas: a landscape dotted with prayer flags.

‘The value of things no longer belongs to cost or beauty, but only to memory.’

It’s ultimately a journey without an end: there are no answers available for the questions that Colin Thubron has. And yet, to read this book is to gain a sense of the sacredness of the space traversed, and the changes wrought by time and political change. A few monasteries still survive, and the Chinese now allow a limited number of pilgrims access to the mountain.

This book is both a deeply personal journey and a captivating travelogue of a remote, harsh and inaccessible place that most of us will never see. What makes this book special is the sense of being a pilgrim on this journey. Colin Thubron writes of who he meets and of what he sees, of the history, religion and practices of the region.

It’s a fascinating, short but incredibly dense, book.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a mountain in Western Tibet -- far off the usual tourist routes around Lhasa -- that is considered sacred by Buddhists, Hindus (especially worshipers of Shiva), Bons, and other Asian religions. In Chinese myth, the mountain is called Mount Meru. Colin Thubron calls it Mount Kailas.

Accompanied by a couple Nepalese guides, Thubron walked from Simikot in Western Nepal several hundred miles, frequently of altitudes of 12,000 to 18,000 feet, to perform the pilgrim’s circuit around the mountain. Performing the same clockwise circuit were hundreds of pilgrims from Tibet, China, Nepal, and India.

Thubron is by no means a believer himself. In fact, he has been leery of mountains ever since his sister died in her twenties from a Swiss avalanche off the Eiger. But he is a tolerant observer of the details of worship which coalesce around the mountain. To a Mountain in Tibet is an excellent read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in Oriental religions and ways of worship.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never having read Thubron before, I chose this book as my reading companion on a recent trip to Tibet. In some ways this was a success, but not so much in others.

I am in awe of Thubron’s writing. His descriptions of colour, texture and every little detail of the physical environment were so clear, it was almost like watching a documentary rather than reading a book. However, when his focus turned to the spiritual environment, he lost me. I acknowledge this is most likely exacerbated by my low level of familiarity with Tibetan Buddhism, but it was like Thubron just didn’t give me anything I could clutch onto, to build the connections from one element to the next (luckily I was getting contemporaneous coaching from my Tibetan guide, otherwise I may not have been able to continue reading).

It is a short book, and over half of it is actually set in neighbouring Nepal, with which I am much more familiar, so I enjoyed that section very much. But the second half didn’t really give me what I was looking for. I won’t let it put me off reading more from this author though, as I love to read high quality travel writing.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is relatively short but the way To a Mountain in Tibet feels quite long. It's a slow journey, not an easy read, for me at least. There are points of interest, and in particular, persons encountered along the way which make it worthwhile but the trek feels arduous even so. Thubron is making the journey after his mother's death, and later we learn that his sister had died years earlier in a mountain ski accident, but Thubron's story figures in only lightly in the memoir. Thubron is a private, deeply observant writer. But the book might have had more resonance had he woven in more of his own story, memories and reflections. My first book by Colin Thubron, not sure if I'll read another. I suppose I might, but I'm not rushing to do so.

[micusiowo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bardzo piękna książka.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir is about the author's pilgramage to Mt Kailas(22,000 feet) to reflect on his mother's death. He talked more of his outer journey than his inner journey, supplying interesting facts about where he goes and what he sees, supplying some details I hadn't put together.

Mt. Ksilas is believed to be where Buddists and Hindus believe where earth and heaven are joined, where sanctity replenishes the earth, where gods reside (Including Shiva), and inside of which is a heaven-connecting rope down which the first Tibetan kings descended. It is so light, it could fly. So It was staked in place by prayer banners and Buddha nailed it down with 4 footprints so devils could not pull it underground. It is also holy to the Jain and to the Bons, an ancient Tibetan religion. Amazingly, it hasn't been climbed, although there was an attempt in 1926 and Reinhold Messner planned an assault in the 1980's, but did not receive permission.

Pilgrims circle the mountain (a kora), some through prostrating, most by walking. A single circuit, if walked in piety, will dispel the defilement of a lifetime, even requiting the murder of a lama or parent, while 108 kiras lift the pilgrim into Buddhahood. A rich man could pay another to make the circuit, but the virtue would be divided between them. Even a beast -- yak or pony -- gets half the merit if ridden. Animals and humans suffer from "drib" -- earthly contamination that accumulates, in addition to the sins one commits.

Chortens are miniature Mt. Merus, which has converged with Mt. Kailas. These chortens, found throughout Tibet, may contain funerary remains, but more often scriptures and relics that are too damaged to be used, but too holy to throw away. They have a square plinth under a concave drum that ascends to 13 successively smaller rings or wheels, topped by a crescent moon cradling the sun. Their 5 chief components signify Buddhist elements, as prayer flags do, also representing a path to enlightenment. The crowning disc on the sun transmits solar wisdom and lunar compassion into pure truth. The chortens enclose a verticle beam that is both a symbol of Meru-Kailas and a male archetype infusing a female body.

Death is a theme whenever Tibetan Buddhism is concerned. Thubron visited a charnal ground, explaining that holy law only permits burial to criminals and plague victims -- sealing them to prevent their reincarnation and eliminating their kind for ever. The destitute are often put in rivers. The highest lamas are embalmed, while less grand lamas are cremated and their ashes put in chortens. Sky burial is for the rests. Vultures are sacred and thought to be emanations of white dakinis --peaceful sky dancers. Surrendering a corpse to them is the last charity of its owner and lightens their karma. The birds do not pollute the earth (defacting in the sky) So in death, Tibetans keep flying upwards until the sun and wind take them apart.

The book gives one the flavor of the difficulty of such a trek, the range of personalities and nationalities one can meet, and the cloud of Chinese intimidation and control, even during the most religious of ceremonies.

[Benny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Colin Thubron is een oude reiziger. Samen met Paul Theroux bracht hij me, toen ik nog jonger was, niet alleen reis- maar ook letterkriebels. Shadow of the Silk Road, In Siberia, Behind the Wall, Among the Russians…het zijn allemaal klassiekers van de reisliteratuur wat mij betreft.

Hoewel Naar een Berg in Tibet als zijn meest persoonlijke boek wordt geprezen, ben ik er pas nu toe gekomen het te lezen. Na de dood van zijn moeder is Thubron de oudste van zijn familie. Misschien was het de confrontatie met zijn eigen sterfelijkheid die hem op expeditie zette naar de heiligste berg: de Kailash. Die mythische rotsjoekel in het westen van de Tibetaanse hoogvlakte doet wereldrivieren ontstaan en wordt vereerd door hindoes, boeddhisten, jains, bon…als je ’t even narekent, kom je al snel uit op een flink deel van de wereldbevolking!

Het is geen evidente bestemming en de reis is moeilijk, maar Thubron is aangenaam gezelschap. De inmiddels zeventigjarige telg uit een excentrieke Britse familie is voldoende cynisch en erudiet om de mythen en fabeltjes te doorprikken, maar tegelijkertijd ook beleefd en nieuwsgierig genoeg om al de mooie verhalen te noteren.

Vliegende bergen, standbeelden die kunnen spreken en zichzelf geschapen hebben…het Tibetaanse geloof lijkt een kralenkrans van visioenen veroorzaakt door ijle hoogtes en al te grote eenzaamheid. Sterk dat Thubron de mythe van Shangrilaland weet te doorprikken, maar ik had niet anders verwacht van hem.

Naarmate Thubron de berg nadert worden de betekenissen en verwijzingen steeds talrijker. Hij wordt geconfronteerd met boerse bedevaartgangers, verdwaasde monniken, de onvermijdelijke westerse toeristen en Chinese agenten, maar ook met zijn eigen geschiedenis. Maar hij blijft discreet en schuwt de grote reflectie. Ook deze reis biedt geen epifanie, geen troost, geen inzicht. De reis is de reis, verdomd zwaar soms, maar ook verblindend mooi.

Ik weet niet of Colin Thubron hierna nog een iets zal publiceren, maar ik vind dit alvast een waardig afscheid. Of zal hij toch nog dat verhaal van zijn familie schrijven?

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I grabbed To a Mountain in Tibet because I'd love to go to Tibet someday, and duh! It's a book about a guy who goes to Tibet.

But holy cow is it so much more than that. I still conjure up the images I read in it. Beautiful and haunting and enigmatic. The author excels at describing place and people while keeping intact the mystery that surrounds it all. He doesn't hesitate in facing the cultural differences that put him off, and he avoids the unreality that is the legend of Tibet. He doesn't make it out to be some magical, otherworldly place. There's so much more to it than that. He takes part in a pilgrimage that is physically life-threatening, and that he hopes will help him deal with the death of his mother. That's part of what drew me in so much, I think. Journeys undertaken as a way to deal with grief are always so poignant, and much deeper than typical travels. It's very fitting for Tibet.

I have often romanticized Tibet in my head, joining the ranks of millions of Westerners who always have done that. Thubron does a magnificent job exposing that, lifting the veil from a place that can be at times harsh, lovely, confusing, brutal, and that has a violent history.

From prayer flags to sky burial to statues of deities with confusing identities hidden in little nooks, Thubron takes Tibet and expresses his experience there eloquently and without too much personal bias. If anyone is interested in knowing more about that mysterious part of the world, I would suggest this book as a place to start.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

"To a Mountain in Tibet" was one of the most fascinating and transformative travelogues I have ever read; a worthy competitor to Patrick Leigh Fermor's "A Time of Gifts." Thubron opens a doorway into the mystical land of Tibet as well as Buddhism and Hinduism while on a pilgrimage that begins in Nepal and ends in one of the holiest places on earth to one-fifth of the world's population--Mount Kailas, Tibet.

In brilliant detail, he recounts his rigorous yet spiritual expedition through this remote region describing the physical landscape from its majestic beauty and inherent dangers while he wrestles with own personal suffering on the heels of losing the last member of his family, his mother.

Along the "kora" as it is known to the thousands of pilgrims who seek redemption along this circumnavigation around the holy mountain, we meet the many gods, deities, fairies and the like who inhabit almost every crag and peak along the way. We're offered insights into the mystical land of Nepal and Tibet as well as the infinite and venerated customs and beliefs of those who seek nirvana. We also learn of the devastating effects of the Cultural Revolution and the havoc it wreaked upon the Tibet.

An incredibly inspiring read that's every bit of cultural immersion as it is travelogue. If you want to encounter mystical places, customs and gods of the mountain, if you want to expand your horizons beyond your wildest imagination, I urge you to pick up this book and read. You'll forever be a changed person.

[Riddhika Khanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

To a Mountain in Tibet is a story about a man undertaking a journey towards the holy peak Kailas after the death of his mother.

I loved the way Thubron has described the landscape of Tibet. He has gone into details and has written after close observations of nature. I loved that part of his writting.

Also, he has given a glimpse of Tibet after Chinese invasions. Yet another set of cruel and un justified stories of the annexation of Tibet by China. It makes me sad when I read about it.
Thubron has written more about the religious and spiritual practices in Tibet, combining Hinduism and Buddhism. I liked some parts of it as I understand the Hinduism terminology and rituals but it is a little difficult for a complete lay man to understand and comprehend to it.

He has tried to write about every possible detail of Tibet jumping from one topic to another. This makes the book a little messy.
Sometimes it was information overload as the flow of the information was not natural as per the flow of the story.

Nonetheless, it was a pleasant read and I enjoyed most of it.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply a stunning book. Colin Thubron travels to Tibet to circumambulate Mt. Kailas after the death of his mother, his last living relative. He enters through Nepal with a guide and a cook. His observations and his writing are haunting. At the base of the mountain, a Tibetan ceremony is recorded. Thousands of pilgrims circle an 80 ft pole strung with prayer flags. The irony is that this is really the middle of NOWHERE, yet Chinese police are EVERYWHERE. It feels very intimidating and reminiscent of the Ghost Dances of the American Indians--in fact the whole invasion of Tibet by China is reminiscent of the westward movement in American history (altho the author never alludes to this fact). The book is filled with information on Tibetan Buddhism, legends, the Tibetan mystique, and the adventures of previous pilgrims and explorers. An added perk for this reader was the attention the author paid to bird life along the way.