To a Mountain in Tibet - Paperback

by Colin Thubron (Author)

"A superb account of a pilgrimage. . . . Characteristically beautiful, though uncharacteristically haunted." --Pico Iyer, New York Review of Books

"Thubron walks for the dead and writes for the living, and I can't remember when I have been so thoroughly and deeply moved by an author's outward journey inward." --Bob Shacochis, Boston Globe

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.

In the shadow of the world's most sacred mountain, a solitary traveler confronts the ghosts of his past.

• A Journey for the Dead: As the last of his family passes away, an author undertakes an arduous pilgrimage not for salvation, but for remembrance.
• Himalayan Travel: From the remote valleys of Nepal to the stark, wind-scorched plains of Tibet, this is an intimate portrait of a landscape and its people, captured in spare, luminous prose.
• A Spiritual Quest: Thubron explores the overlapping worlds of Hindu and Buddhist faith with a scholar's mind and a pilgrim's heart, questioning what it means to seek the sacred in an age of disbelief.
• Literary Memoir: A moving meditation on mortality, solitude, and the pull of the unknown from Colin Thubron, one of the most revered travel writers of our time.

Front Jacket

Colin Thubron's To a Mountain in Tibet is a memoir of discovery and loss, chronicling the author's journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in modern-day Tibet. To Buddhists and Hindus, it is the mystic heart of the world and an ancient site of pilgrimage. It has never been climbed.

Thubron undertakes this journey in the wake of his mother's death, using the pilgrimage as a lens to examine both his deeply felt loss and his lifelong need for solitude, which has shaped his career as a writer--one who travels to places far outside his own history and culture. A vivid and powerful travelogue through an evocative landscape, To a Mountain in Tibet provides a fascinating encounter with the mythic and spiritual traditions of a foreign culture--encapsulated in the wondrous insights of an intimate personal voyage.

--Bob Shacochis, Boston Globe

Back Jacket

Colin Thubron's To a Mountain in Tibet is a memoir of discovery and loss, chronicling the author's journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in modern-day Tibet. To Buddhists and Hindus, it is the mystic heart of the world and an ancient site of pilgrimage. It has never been climbed.

Thubron undertakes this journey in the wake of his mother's death, using the pilgrimage as a lens to examine both his deeply felt loss and his lifelong need for solitude, which has shaped his career as a writer--one who travels to places far outside his own history and culture. A vivid and powerful travelogue through an evocative landscape, To a Mountain in Tibet provides a fascinating encounter with the mythic and spiritual traditions of a foreign culture--encapsulated in the wondrous insights of an intimate personal voyage.