Lot #195: 3 books about the Himalaya area

1) Return to Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, paperback, 183 pages, published 2000. Heinrich Harrer returns to northern India and Tibet in 1984, thirty-three years after he was forced to flee the Forbidden City of Lhasa. A comparative report between Tibet as it was years ago and how Heinrich Harrer found it changed in 1984. It went from an idyllic life on the “rooftop of the world” until the Chinese attempted to destroy this ancient civilization. The author met old Tibetan acquaintances. There are also photographs of Tibet before and after. The book also devotes several chapters on Delai Lama. 2) So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas by Barbara Crossette, paperback, 297 pages, ca 1995. A travelogue of Bhutan and its neighbors in the Himalayas that introduces readers to a world that has emerged from the middle ages only to find itself peering into the abyss of modernity. For more than a thousand years Tibet, Sikkim, Ladakh, and Bhutan were the sanctuaries of Tantric Buddhism. But in the last half of this century, geopolitics has scoured the landscape of the Himalayas, and only the reclusive kingdom of Bhutan remains true to Tantric Buddhism. 3) Bayonets to Lhasa: The Story of the British Invasion of Tibet at the turn of the 19th century by Peter Fleming, hardcover with dust jacket, 319 pages, 1st edition ca 1961. The First Full Account of the British Invasion of the Tibet in 1904--one of the strangest events in British imperial history. Conceived as a move in the Great Game which Russia and England had played for years in central Asia, the British incursion into Tibet was a shot in the dark. It was led by Colonel Francis Younghusband, soldier explorer and mystic. But Younghusband was caught in political cross-fire and in the end not only failed to accomplish his mission as he conceived it, but was publicly censured. Pickup category timeslot {A}