To a Mountain in Tibet

British author Colin Thubron’s travel book, To a Mountain in Tibet (2011), chronicles his pilgrimage to a sacred peak in the Himalayan Mountains of Tibet. Thubron received a Goodreads Choice Award nomination for best Travel & Outdoors book for it.

Thubron starts his journey in Humla, one of the most remote regions of Nepal. Accompanying him is a guide, a cook, and a horse man. They begin by following the Karnali River, which cuts through the Himalayas in Nepal. They depart the river route and head northwest to the Nala Kankar Himal, a Himalayan subrange that connects Nepal to Tibet. During this part of the journey, Thubron passes through villages populated by Thakuris, a small social caste in Nepal who are mostly silent. Sometimes the group tent-camps, while other times they find shelter on the mud floor of a villager's home. One night around a campfire, they encounter a group of smugglers driving buffalo carrying Chinese cigarettes through the region.

As Thubron travels through Tibet, he relates much of the history of the region. Tibet was first unified in the seventh century under Songtsen Gampo who founded the Tibetan Empire. Gampo is also credited with bringing Buddhism to Tibet. At its height, Tibet controlled a vast territory spanning modern-day Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. By the ninth century, however, Tibet had lost much of its territory in wars with China. Shortly thereafter, imperial Tibet collapsed, and over the next four hundred years, it was ruled in piecemeal by various warlords. Following a period where the Mongol Yuan Dynasty controlled Tibet, Tibet once again became unified and autonomous under the 5th Dalai Lama during the seventeenth century. He ruled both politically and spiritually, establishing Tibetan Buddhism as the region's dominant religion.



Next came a period of Chinese rule under the Qing dynasty. This lasted until 1912 when the Xinhai Revolution wiped out the Qing dynasty, establishing the Republic of China. China reinstated the 13th Dalai Lama's title and for the next few decades, Tibet operated largely independently. In 1950, however, China officially incorporated Tibet and declared sovereignty over the region. Nine years later, the Tibetan uprising against China left more than 70,000 Tibetans dead. The 14th Dalai Lama and his followers started a rival government-in-exile, while over the next two decades, the Chinese destroyed 6,000 monasteries. After a period of relative calm, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest prompted China to launch anti-separatist campaigns against pro-independence Tibetans, resulting in many cases of human rights abuses.

Much of this history is relayed to Thubron by monks he encounters. The monks also cause the author to reflect on Buddhism, life cycles, and the nature of suffering. Although Thubron had hoped the journey would inspire quiet reflection, he finds many of the hikes so strenuous and physically taxing that it is difficult to maintain a calm mind: "The journey does not nurture reflection, as I once hoped. The going is too hard, too steep." Near the Tibetan border, the group crosses the Torea Pass, which sits at an elevation of 11,000 feet. As Thubron struggles to breathe, he is haunted by memories of his mother's final dying moments in a hospital bed, clutching her oxygen mask.

After camping below the 15,000-foot summit of the Nara Pass, the group enters Tibet. Upon crossing the border, visitors are made to travel in Landcruiser cars to the city of Taklakot, which was once an ancient trading post and rumored to be the home of Sudhana, an early iteration of the Buddha. Thubron writes that China has defiled or hidden evidence of the town's ancient mystical origins with giant China Mobile billboards and other advertisements. He describes it as having "the gutted feel of other Chinese frontier places." The group heads on to Lake Manasarovar, Buddhism's holiest body of water. It is believed that Buddha's mother purified her body in Lake Manasarovar so that the unborn Buddha could enter her womb.



Finally, the group reaches its destination, the holy mountain of Kailas, a 21,778-foot peak that is considered sacred by at least four religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism. It was there that the pagan gods of old are said to have converted to Buddhism before sending flying saints to spread compassion. The base of the mountain, however, is decidedly less sacred, populated by sex workers and Chinese riot police. Thubron joins hundreds of other pilgrims to ascend to a "charged sanctity" zone about 17,000 feet up where climbers are supposedly empowered to make peace with their dead loved ones. For Thubron, however, he doesn't find the kind of meaning many of his fellow pilgrims find. He ends the book, "A journey is not a cure. It brings an illusion, only, of change, and becomes at least a Spartan comfort…To ask of a journey, Why? Is to hear only my own silence."