Trans-Himalaya: Discoveries and Adventurers in Tibet. Vol. 1 (of 2)

In the early 1900s, a Swedish explorer undertakes one of the last great journeys of geographical discovery. Sven Hedin becomes the first European to reach Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar, the sacred midpoint of the earth according to Hindu and Buddhist cosmology. Traversing the vast Chang-tang plateau of Tibet, he braves brutal cold, political obstacles, and the deep suspicion of British authorities who control access to this forbidden kingdom. But Hedin is not merely an adventurer. With surveyor’s precision and explorer’s stubbornness, he maps rivers and mountain ranges unknown to Western geography, ultimately tracing the mysterious sources of the Indus and Brahmaputra. This volume opens with Hedin’s obsessive desire to return to the roof of the world, his meticulous planning of caravan routes, and his tense negotiations for permission to enter territory no foreigner has properly surveyed. Along the way, he visits the 9th Panchen Lama in the cloister city of Shigatse and encounters a landscape where every valley holds a monastery and every pass a prayer. For readers who yearn for the age when a single expedition could still redraw the map of the world.