by Ian Baker
Praise for Ian Baker’s The Heart of the World
“One of the book’s many delights—and The Heart of the World is among the most complex, compelling and satisfying adventure books I have ever read—is to follow Baker’s inner journey as he tries to balance his Buddhist aspirations with an admittedly materialistic desire to find the key into Yangsang. . . . The Heart of the World, though not easy to absorb, is one of the most extraordinary tales of adventure and discovery ever told. On the prosaic level, it’s the search for a hidden waterfall that eluded explorers for more than a century. But it is also—perhaps primarily—an exploration into the heart of Tibetan Buddhism, which views the animistic spirits of sacred geography as metaphors for the nature of mind. Both journeys are fascinating, and each is dependent on the other. From harrowing en counters with tribal poisoning cults to a descent into the roaring ‘throat’ of a Buddhist goddess, Baker’s quest is an unforgettable saga. Like his fellow explorers, we find our own inner doors opening along the journey. A century from now, The Heart of the World will still ignite the imagination of anyone who loves to explore and seeks the deeper meaning of his explorations. A fearless adventurer in both body and spirit, Baker has written one for the ages.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“The Heart of the World is Baker’s blood-pumping account of claiming . . . the world’s last secret place: the heart of the Tsangpo gorge . . . the final prize of earthly exploration. . . . Yet The Heart of the World is more than just a gung-ho adventure tale; Ian Baker went hunting the sacred, not the gaudy trappings of geographical fame. Deep in the Tsangpo gorge, he says, the boundaries between inner experience and outer experience break down. And perhaps, he writes, ‘that’s paradise after all.’ ”
—Men’s Journal
“The Heart of the World is a compelling journey of body and mind. . . . Baker has long been a Buddhist scholar and his heavyweight volume tracks his inner journey as much as his outer journey, elevating beyond the usual thrill-seeker tale so familiar these days. A much-rumored waterfall deep within the Tsangpo gorge may have been Baker’s motivation for his exhaustive search through such forbidding territory. But the inner quest may well be what resonates stronger with many readers searching for meaning in a world of confounding confusions and doubts.”
—Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Ian Baker has given us a remarkable record of exploration—both physical and spiritual, as well as a perceptive account of a part of Tibet that still remains rooted in the traditions of that unique culture. . . . The Heart of the World is highly recommended and will undoubtedly become a classic of Tibetan exploration.”
—Asian Affairs
“Magnificent . . . Baker’s elegant photography and thoughtful storytelling elevate Heart far above most travel books published today. The insightful philosophical questions he raises make it a classic of travel literature.”
—Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“The Heart of the World is Baker’s memoir of his obsessive, decade-spanning quest to explore the [Tsangpo] gorge’s spiritual and geographic enigmas. . . . It’s hard to imagine a more thorough document—the book explores Pemako’s culture, geography and spirituality, often rendering the landscape in terms of local deities—and Baker is probably the only man alive who could have written it with this much authority. The Heart of the World embraces the tension between spirit and flesh . . . it’s extraordinary.”
—OregonLive.com
“A heady mélange of history, wilderness exploration and Tibetan Buddhism study, this true story of the search for the ‘hidden-lands’ of Pemako, Tibet, is scholarly, entertaining and transcendent.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Ian Baker has written a brilliant account of exploring both the outer domain and inner significance of Tibet’s fabled hidden realm, Beyul Pemako—The Hidden Lotus-shaped Land—located in a remote Himalayan valley. His riveting portrait of physical privation during an epic five-year spiritual quest reinvents the art of pilgrimage. The Heart of the World gives all of us ways to see even mundane environments as radiantly divine.”
—John Avedon, author of In Exile from the Land of Snows
“Western explorers have for over a century sought a legendary waterfall hidden in the depths of the Tsangpo gorge, the world’s deepest and most inaccessible canyon. The Heart of the World is an enthralling and eloquent account of how Ian Baker and his companions, after repeated attempts, reached this symbol of the unattainable. More importantly, however, the book is an exploration of the hidden regions of mind and spirit, of the quest for bliss and inspiration, not only by these travelers, but also by the Tibetan lamas and pilgrims who have for centuries considered this a sacred land, as revealed by ancient Buddhist texts. This remarkable and perceptive book makes a genuine literary contribution to a fabled corner of our planet and to our perception of nature and ourselves.”
—George B. Schaller, Wildlife Conservation Society
“Ian Baker’s amazing journey through Pemako in Tibet to the ‘hidden’ Falls of the Tsangpo is really a pilgrimage into our own true selves. In the words Baker quotes from Marcel Proust, ‘the real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.’ ”
—Richard Gere
“In this remarkable book, Ian Baker narrates an extraordinary journey of spiritual and geographical discovery, and he does so in a manner that is so deeply compelling that no reader will ever forget the experiences he describes.”
—David Napier, University College, London
“Ian Baker’s gripping account of his expeditions into Tibet’s fabled Tsangpo region is richly informed by the stories of other seekers—Tibetan monks and visionaries and British explorers alike. This is a marvelous quest that reminds us anew that the real journey has always been the one within.”
—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and The Frog Run
“Both a remarkable adventure story and a work of real scholarship, Ian Baker’s account of his expeditions in search of the truth behind the myths of a magical waterfall resounds with the echoes of the early Western explorers and Tibetan pilgrims who have preceded him.”—Michael Harner, Ph.D., author of
The Way of the Shaman and The Jívaro People of Sacred Waterfalls
“This is an extraordinarily brave and beautiful book, taking us into the last wild refuge on earth. Though many have dreamed of the holy Tsangpo’s misty gorge, few have entered this breathtaking geography and lived to tell the tale. Ian Baker has done the nearly impossible: befriended the wildest place on earth and rendered a luminous text that makes us a friend to this world as well. Wonderfully written, this work is a pilgrim’s classic.”
—Joan Halifax Roshi, Abbot, Upaya Zen Center
“Ian Baker has written a classic adventure story, telling the tale of a journey to a legendary waterfall only imagined to exist before he got there. But he has also written something more: a spiritual quest into the human need for mystery, reminding us that some places must remain secret so we still have reason to dream.”
—David Rothenberg, author of Always the Mountains and Why Birds Sing
“Ian Baker has written a truly unusual and unique book of travel and exploration that takes us not only into one of the most inaccessible places on earth but, even more importantly, into the minds and worldview of the Tibetan people who revere the remote bend of the Tsangpo River as the mythic realm of a sacred hidden valley. What sets The Heart of the World apart is the way Baker weaves his journeys and those of earlier explorers together with accounts and guidebooks by Tibetan lamas who blend the
mystical with the matter-of-fact in a haunting manner that calls into question the purely scientific descriptions and aims of Western geography.”
—Edwin Bernbaum, author of The Way to Shambhala and Sacred Mountains of the World
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ian Baker has lived in Kathmandu, Nepal, and been a student of Tibetan Buddhism for more than twenty years. He studied fine arts, literature, and comparative religion at Middlebury College, Oxford University, and Columbia University. He has written several books on Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism, including The Tibetan Art of Healing, Celestial Gallery, and The Dalai Lama’s Secret Temple: Tantric Wall Paintings from Tibet. He is also the coauthor of Tibet: Reflections from the Wheel of Life and has contributed articles to Explorers Journal and National Geographic magazine. He currently divides his time among New York, Thailand, and the Himalayas.
As far as the western world was concerned, [we] were
exploring country of which nothing was known, but
much was speculated; one of the last remaining secret
places of the earth, which might conceal a fall rivaling the
Niagra or Victoria Falls in grandeur.
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL F. M. BAILEY, 19131
Mountains lie all about, with many difficult turns leading here and there. The trails run up and down; we are martyred with obstructing rocks. No matter how well we keep the path, if we miss one single step, we shall never know safe return. But whoever has the good fortune to penetrate that wilderness, for his labors will gain a beatific reward, for he shall find there his heart’s delight. The wilderness abounds in whatsoever the ears desire to hear, whatsoever would please the eye: so that no one could possibly wish to be anywhere else. And this I well know; for I have been there.
GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, Tristan and Isolde
The hagiographic myth of a spiritual journey through material difficulties to the attainment of divine grace would become a paradigm of travel to haunt posterity . . . by promising the ideal as the ultimate goal . . . it served as that purely mythic and always unachievable paradigm located in our historical memory, by contrast with which all human traveling—whatever its achievements and successes—can never transcend the abysm of futility.
JAS ELSNER AND JOAN-PAU RUBIES,
Voyages & Visions
There have always been two kinds of arcadia: shaggy and smooth; dark and light; a place of bucolic leisure and a place of primitive panic . . . the idyllic as well as the wild.
SIMON SCHAMA, Landscape and Memory
PENGUIN BOOKS
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2004
Published in Penguin Books 2006
Copyright © Ian Baker, 2004
All rights reserved
Photograph credits appear here
The heart of the world : a journey to the last secret place / Ian Baker ; introduction by
His Holiness the Dalai Lama. p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-11780-4
DS786.B255 2004
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Version_5
For the Unbound . . .
Contents
Praise for The Heart of the World
About the Author
Epigraph
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
PART ONE - THE CALL OF HIDDEN-LANDS
A Curriculum of Caves
The Search for Scrolls
The Quest for a Waterfall
Measuring Darkness
The Invitation
PART TWO - THE GORGE
April 1993 - The Year of the Water Bird
The Falls of Shinje Chogyal
Descent into the Upper Gorge
Pemakochung
The Valley of the White Crystal
The Great Bend
Tselung
The Lower Gorge
Lamaling
PART THREE - THE MOUNTAIN
July 1995 - The Year of the Wood Boar
Into Tibet
The Valley of Powo
The Dashing-La
The Valley of Chimdro
Crossing the River
The Gates of the Beyul
A Treatise on Paradise
Hell Night
The Pungpung-La
The Wrath of the Nagas
The Bogs of Paradise
The Outer Kora
The Heart of the Goddess
The Key in the Wall
Rinchenpung
The Fortress of Flowers
The Pass of Sharp Stones
PART FOUR - THE WATERFALL
October 1998 - The Year of the Earth Tiger
Closing the Gap
On the Trail of the Takin
The Exploration Council
Departure for the Gorge
Down the Po Tsangpo
Shechen-La—Pass of Great Glory
The Shape of Falling Water
The Secret Door
The Missing Link
The Way Out
Epilogue
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
In the borderlands between Tibet and India, in the land of savages, lies Pemako, the supreme of all hidden-lands. This lotus-like realm is described as the body of Dorje Pagmo with five chakras . . . the cloud and ocean like gathering places of dakas and dakinis. There is a constant menace here from poisonous snakes, leeches, flies, clawed and long-snouted animals with fangs, dangerous wildmen, and vicious savages. One can easily succumb to fever and gout, while blisters, abscesses, ulcers, and sores add to the physical obstacles. The land is full of mischievous spirits [that] . . . constantly display magic and miracles. Those without courage; or those with lingering doubts, too many mental conceptions, or who are strongly attached to the appearances of this life or who . . . out of ignorance, fall into accepting and rejecting . . . such people will have difficulty reaching this land and getting through unscathed. When observed in their essential nature, all the mountains, rocks, trees, and rivers [here] appear as magical realms or deities. . . . Those obstructed by spiritual transgressions can never enter this great mandala.
LELUNG SHEPE DORJE
The Delightful True Stories of the Supreme Land of Pemako, 1729
Not only is Pemako extraordinarily difficult to reach from any direction, it is still more difficult to penetrate and explore when reached. Surrounded on three sides by the gorges of the Tsangpo, the fourth is blocked by mighty ranges of snow mountains, whose passes are only open for a few months in the
year. Beyond these immediate barriers to east and west and south, are dense trackless forests, inhabited by wild unfriendly tribes. . . . Add to this . . . a climate which varies from the sub-tropical to arctic, the only thing common to the whole region being perpetual rain, snakes and wild animals, giant stinging nettles and myriads of biting and blood-sucking ticks, hornets, flies and leeches, and you have some idea of what the traveler has to contend with.
FRANK KINGDON WARD
The Riddle of the Tsangpo Gorges, 1925
Although we are accustomed to separate nature and human perception into two realms, they are, in fact indivisible . . . landscape is the work of the mind. Its scenery is built as much from strata of memory as from layers of rock. SIMON SCHAMA, Landscape and Memory
Preface
IN A HISTORY OF EXPLORATION along the Tibetan frontier, a British field officer wrote of the futile quest for the Falls of the Tsangpo, a colossal waterfall long dreamed of by Victorian geographers. The author invoked a menacing deity that appears to pilgrims from behind a veil of water at the entrance to Tibet’s Tsangpo gorge. This shape-shifting cascade, the author wrote, had lured generations of explorers into a quixotic—and often fatal—search for a numinous waterfall in the depths of the earth’s deepest chasm. As the author concluded, Shinje Chogyal—the Lord of Death—“had not yet finished his sport with those disposed to listen to his siren-song.” Had they been listening, he maintained, “they might have heard . . . demon laughter borne to them on the wind.”1 This book is a tribute to that ambiguous laughter, an exploration of the forces, internal and external, that led me and others to attend to the hidden voices of the Tsangpo gorge; the perennial call of unknown, secret places.