January 2012 Travel Book of the Month.

Spare like the landscape he depicts, Colin Thubron writes of the landscape of Tibet and the pilgrimage route to Mount Kailas, sacred to Hindus and Buddhists but rarely visited by Westerners. Religion runs through each step of the journey, searching, explaining and showing us a land imbued with religious thought and practice. Described as the most personal of his journeys yet, a journey of mind and body.

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Synopsis

Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world's mountains - holy to one fifth of humanity. Isolated beyond the central Himalayas, its summit has never been scaled, but for centuries the mountain has been ritually circled by Hindu and Buddhist pilgrims. Colin Thubron joins these pilgrims, after an arduous trek from Nepal, through the high passes of Tibet, to the magical lakes beneath the slopes of Kailas itself. He talks to secluded villagers and to monks in their decaying monasteries; he tells the stories of exiles and of eccentric explorers from the West. Yet, he is also walking on a pilgrimage of his own. Having recently witnessed the death of the last of his family, his trek around the great mountain awakes an inner landscape of love and grief, restoring precious fragments of his own past.

Reviews

'A master class in travel writing... Thubron showcases here all the skills that have earned him the champion's belt as Britain's best living travel writer.' - Sunday Times

'Exquisitely written, To a Mountain in Tibet is not just a travelogue; it amounts to a heart-felt hosanna to the travails of walking... a matchless work of literary travel, [it] confirms Thubron as a wise and discriminate prospector in the affairs of man.' - Irish Times

'This is a bold and brave journey, an elegiac book by a master of prose at the height of his powers.' - Evening Standard

'Given that Thubron has shown himself over a lifetime's work to be our finest, is seems fitting that what is as much memoir as travel book should have as its setting the greatest spiritual pilgrimage the East has to offer.'- Daily Telegraph

About the Author

Colin Thubron is an acknowledged master of travel writing, and the winner of many prizes and awards. His first writing was about the Middle East - Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled into the Soviet Union in an ancient Morris Marina, pursued by the KGB, a journey he recorded in Among the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia (Prix Bouvier) and Shadow of the Silk Road (all available in Vintage). In 2010 Colin Thubron became President the Royal Society of Literature. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation