The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 29 August 2000
by Sorrel Wilby
Alone, she walked across 3000 kilometers of the barren beautiful countryside of western Tibet. Sorrel Wilby, completing a surprisingly successful bike ride around Asia, ended up in Lhasa, the exotic capital of Tibet. The officials, though, treated her well, and when asked what they could do for her, she blurted out that she wanted to walk across the roof of the world. When she returned to her native Australia, she received surprising backing from the editors of the then-new Australian Geographic. In a remarkable memoir (excerpts and photos from which appeared in the December 1987 issue of National Geographic), she relates her three-month journey from a small border town near India, encircling the holy Mount Kailas, and trekking across the country back to the capital. Wilby knew little at all about Tibet when she set out in August of 1985. That naivité resulted in a refreshingly straightforward and unromantic view of Tibetan culture. Wilby goes into her journey without a westerner's typically romantic and somewhat patronizing view of the simple Buddhist culture found beyond the Himalaya. She is even-handed in her portrayals of everything from the beautiful dark monasteries to the dirty and sometimes cruel streets of modern towns inhabited by nomads, lamas, traders and Chinese soldiers. And she is also revealing about what this journey meant for her. She admits to seeking direction in her wandering life, she is searching for meaning. Thus she becomes a true pilgrim in a land where pilgrimage to the holy city is a long tradition. She also admits to her weaknesses, trudging across the difficult changing countryside of that, indeed, mysterious land. By the end, she has found something, something driving her into her life to follow, something compelling and beautiful.
(This book was republished by Seal Press as Journey Across Tibet: A Young Woman's Trek Across the Rooftop of the World.)
[Other Buddhism and Tibet Books]
