Tibet Handbook 2nd edition

What a massive irony it all is. Tibet, for centuries the most remote country on earth, virtually unapproachable behind secure mountain and desert barriers, whose mystery has lasted longer than anywhere else on earth ‐ with the possible exception of Eldorado ‐ the land reputed to be the location of a hidden Buddhist paradise, Shangri La, in James Hilton’s novel Lost Horizon (1933), is now captured, mapped, and spread out for our inspection. In the footsteps of seventeenth century Jesuit missionaries and, despite the closing of the borders in 1792, the arrival of French monks in Lhasa in 1846, followed...