The Last Barbarians
The Discovery Of The Source Of The Mekong In Tibet
-
-
5.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
More than thirty years ago, Michael Peisel's classic, Mustang: A Lost Tibetan Kingdom, introduced the world to a region more isolated than the deepest Amazon. Against the odds--and in the tradition of the nineteenth-century explorers of whom he is a direct descendant--Peissel has combed Tibet for forty years and has come to know one of the last nomadic peoples on earth to live with what he calls a "Stone Age memory."
In 1994, seizing the rarest of opportunities to journey deep into occupied Tibet, he accomplished what scores of Western explorers had tried and failed to do for more than a hundred years: He found the source of the Mekong River in the ice-strewn fields on the "roof of the world."
This immensely readable account tells how a small group of modern adventurers made history not once, but twice, in the course of a single year: by accurately charting the origins of one of Asia's most majestic and storied waterways and by finding a living fossil, the Riwoche horse, a species unknown to contemporary zoology that may prove to be a missing link in equine evolution.
The book's stage is forbidden Tibet--with its tragic politics, its natural wonder, and its fiercely independent nomadic tubes, who are known to the chinese as "the last barbarians."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It is good to be reminded that "explorers" still exist, and that there are still places left to explore. In 1994, Tibetan scholar Peissel (The Lost World of Quintana-Roo) joined an expedition deep into Tibet in search of the source of the Mekong River. (The Royal Geographical Society later proclaimed the successful trip "one of the last great geographical mysteries of the world solved.") Here, Peissel delivers an absorbing tale enriched by his detailed understanding of a mysterious land and by his obvious admiration and love of its people. Included are the daily routines and hardships of the trip, an anthropological look at Tibetan culture and a healthy dose of natural science. Peissel also offers an abundance of personal ruminations. Comparing the modern lives of Westerners to those of Tibetans, he writes, "For years I had wondered what we were made for. Were we made for comfort or discomfort, for hardship or for pleasure?" Peissel, it seems, was made for adventure--and to bring those adventures back as a book to please armchair explorers everywhere. Map and eight pages of color photos not seen by PW. FYI: Peissel's expedition is the subject of a fall 1997 A&E special, Smithsonian Expeditions: The Source of the Mekong.
