by Ed Douglas
13. The Tibetan aristocrat Lungshar, left, with the four Tibetan boys sent to Rugby for education, Mondo, Ringang, Kyipup and Gongkar, after being presented to George V at Buckingham Palace in June 1913.
14. The viceroy of India Lord Curzon stands over the tiger he has just shot, during his visit to Nepal in early 1901, shortly before the coup that brought the more reliable Chandra Shamsher to power.
15. The young Chandra Shamsher, maharaja of Nepal from 1901 to 1929.
16. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, botanist and close friend of Charles Darwin, four years after his landmark three-year visit to the eastern Himalaya.
17. Reflecting the sudden influx of labour, a group of Nepalis and Bhotias in Darjeeling, photographed in the 1860s by Samuel Bourne, partner in the well-known Simla studio Bourne & Shepherd. ‘Bhotia’ was a colonial term used by the British as a catch-all for ethnic groups with their roots in Tibet living on the Indian side of the mountains.
18. The plant explorer William Purdom, dressed as a brigand, in Tibet in 1911.
19. Francis Younghusband in his greatcoat surrounded by staff officers on the bloody and quixotic British invasion of Tibet in 1904. Two future frontier cadre officers stand behind, Eric ‘Hatter’ Bailey with the cane and Frank O’Connor with hands in pockets.
20. Ugyen Wangchuk, governor of Trongsa in Bhutan. In 1907 he was crowned king with support from the British: reward for his support during their invasion of Tibet. Until this point, following defeat by the British and the Treaty of Sinchula in 1865, Bhutanese politics had been fractious. The photo was taken by John Claude White in 1905 as he invested Ugyen with the insignia of Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire.
21. The political officer for Sikkim Charles Bell sits with Thubten Gyatso, the thirteenth Dalai Lama. Standing is Sidkeong Tulku Namgyal, crown prince of Sikkim. Educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, his reign was brief.
22. A bronze image of Buddha from the late eighth century made in Kashmir or Gilgit. He rests on a stylised interpretation of the cosmic mountain Meru, often identified as Kailas, pictured above.
23. The fabled eleventhcentury poet Milarepa, a major figure in the history of the Kagyu school of Buddhism, and associated with Kailas. His life story, as told by his fifteenth-century biographer Tsangnyon Heruka, helped underpin the lineage of Kagyu teachers.
24. A complex series of rock art symbols from Tibet’s protohistoric period including a swastika, crescent moon, the sun, trees, a bird of prey, yak and other wild herbivores and possibly a hunter, reflecting the venatic (hunting) lifestyle. Some of these symbols were adopted into the symbolism of Tibetan Buddhism, although hunting was antithetical to it.
25. A stone pendant of malachite and a cylindrical bead of turquoise included on a string of beads dating back to the middle or late Neolithic, some four to five thousand years ago, found at the archaeological site at Kharub, near Chamdo, in eastern Tibet.
26. The Tang dynasty emperor Taizong receives the Tibetan envoy and general Gar Tongtsen, sent in 641 by the Tibetan king Songtsen Gampo, at his capital Chang’an.
27. An image of Padmasambhava, the eighth-century Buddhist master who helped found Tibet’s first monastery at Samye. Born in modern Pakistan’s Swat valley, he is also known in Tibet as Guru Rinpoche.
28. Tilly Kettle’s painting The Teshu Lama Giving Audience, painted around 1775. The Scottish explorer George Bogle, emissary of the East India Company and the first Briton to visit Tibet, presents a kada, or ceremonial scarf, to Lobsang Palden Yeshe, the sixth Panchen Lama.
29. The great Buddhist teacher Atisa, born into royalty in Bengal, then the focus of the Pala Empire. Brought to the Guge kingdom in western Tibet by its king Yeshe O, Atisa was instrumental in the second diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet in the eleventh century.
30. The fortress of Tsaparang in the upper Sutlej valley, once capital of the Guge kingdom, responsible for a Buddhist renaissance in western Tibet during the eleventh century.
31. A thirteenth-century bronze sculpture of the goddess Tara, emblematic of the immense sophistication and skill of the Kathmandu valley’s Newari artisans under the Malla kings who ruled the valley for six centuries.
32. The fifteenth-century Tibetan engineer and spiritual master Tangtong Gyalpo, known as Chakzampa, the iron-bridge builder, whose structures can still be seen in Bhutan but who operated across the Himalaya.
33. The princess Choekyi Dronma, born into the royal family that ruled the small Tibetan kingdom of Mangyul Gungthang, was the consort of Tangtong Gyalpo, who recognised her as the reincarnation of the eleventhcentury female tantric adept Machig Labdron. Despite her short life, she established convents and founded the most important female lineage in Tibetan Buddhism: the Samding Dorje Phagmo.
34. Copperplate after George Stubbs’ painting The Yak of Tartary, modelled on the first yak to reach Britain, a male brought back by the second mission to Tibet led by Samuel Turner. When it perished, the yak was stuffed and exhibited at the Ethnology Court, a kind of anthropological exhibition held at the Crystal Palace in 1854.
35. One of eight engravings depicting The Pacification of the Gurkhas, a collaboration between Chinese artists and Jesuit missionaries in China, with engravings done in Paris. The images commemorate two campaigns to expel Gorkha troops from Tibet, part of the Manchu dynasty’s Ten Great Campaigns (including two against Tibetans in Sichuan) that expanded the Qing Empire, but at great financial cost.
36. A miniature watercolour of the Gorkhali prime minister Bhimsen Thapa, who effectively ruled Nepal for over thirty years in the early nineteenth century. Dated 1839, the image was probably painted after his downfall and suicide but portrays him at the height of his powers.
37. This coloured aquatint of Gorkhali soldiers was made from a plate in James Baillie Fraser’s Views in the Himala Mountains, published in 1820. Fraser wrote admiringly of the Gorkhali army’s courage and strength. His brother William had been political agent to Major General Martindell during the Nepal war, leading Gorkhali irregulars who had swapped sides.
38. Major General Sir David Ochterlony, painted in the aftermath of war with Gorkha, where he led the only truly successful British column.
39. The diplomat and scholar Brian Houghton Hodgson aged around sixty, in the aftermath of the Indian rebellion and his lobbying for Gorkhali support of the British.
40. A watercolour showing the artist Hyder Jung Hearsey and William Moorcroft meeting two Tibetan traders in the summer of 1812 as they crossed into Tibet on their way to Manasarovar.
41. Rhododendron edgeworthii, still popular in gardens around the world, discovered by Joseph Hooker in Sikkim in 1849 and painted by his father’s regular artist Walter Hood Fitch.
42. Camellia sinensis, the tea plant, smuggled out from China; its ability to prosper in the eastern Himalaya transformed the region’s economy and society.
43. Charles Bruce and Fred Mummery on their way to Nanga Parbat in 1895. Mummery would wear two soft hats, with snow packed between them, to keep his head cool in the hot sun.
44. Frank Smythe’s portrait of the irrepressible Charles Bruce, Himalayan climbing pioneer and leader of the first full expedition to Everest in 1922.
45. The summit of Trisul on 12 June 1907, the first peak over seven thousand metres to be climbed. The successful party included Tom Longstaff, Courmayeur guides Henri and Alexis Brocherel, and a Gurkha, Karbir Budhathoki, who succeeded despite frostbite.
46. The Canadian doctor and Protestant missionary Susie Carson Rijnhart, whose infant son Charles perished on the Tibetan plateau.
47. Eric Shipton and Bill Tilman became the first mountain explorers to reach the Nanda Devi Sanctuary in 1934, supported by the legendary Sherpa Ang Tharkay, Pasang Bhotia and Ang Tharkay’s cousin Kusang.
48. The anthropologist Bruno Beger measuring a Tibetan woman’s head during the 1938–9 Schäfer expedition. Beger was convicted in 1971 for his role in the Jewish skeleton collection.
49. The Nechung Oracle,
photographed by the Schäfer expedition. The oracle had been institutionalised under the fifth Dalai Lama, a protector for the new Ganden Phodrang system of government. In 1947 the oracle warned of great danger facing Tibet in the next Year of the Tiger: 1950.
50. Archibald Steele’s 1939 photograph of the young fourteenth Dalai Lama, taken during his assignment to visit the child at the Kumbum monastery in Amdo.
51. The capable Tsarong Dzasa, who despite his humble birth became a major force in Tibetan politics, and the gifted Italian anthropologist Giuseppe Tucci, pictured in 1948 at Tsarong’s home. Tucci was consulting his library.
52. Mao Zedong with the fourteenth Dalai Lama and tenth Panchen Lama in Beijing in 1956.
53. The young journalist Liz Hawley.
54. Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, tiger hunting in Nepal in March 1961, weeks after King Mahendra had seized power from a democratically elected government and put the prime minister B P Koirala in jail.
55. The crown prince of Nepal Birendra and his bride Aishwarya at Frankfurt airport in July 1970. Having acceded to the throne in 1972, Birendra, facing huge popular demonstrations, restored democracy in 1990. He, his wife and two of their three children were murdered by Prince Dipendra on 1 June 2001.
56. Nepali Congress leader Ganesh Man Singh meeting President George H W Bush at the White House in 1990. That year, co-operating with Nepal’s communists, he was at the forefront of the jana andolan movement to restore democracy. Born in 1915, Singh had a reputation for integrity and was arrested with B P Koirala in 1960, spending eight years in jail without trial.
Acknowledgements
Given that the gestation of this book stretches back 25 years, it’s hardly surprising that I am indebted to a large number of individuals and organisations throughout the region, ranging from yak men and farmers to government ministers and reincarnate lamas. It seems unnecessary to list them, and even invidious, since I’m liable to forget someone important or else identify someone who would rather not be. Some of those I most wish to thank are people whose name I never learned, including those who offered shelter and food when I needed them even though they had little enough of their own. This impulse of generosity among the region’s poorest is one of the most humbling aspects of travel in the Himalaya. I do however want to thank my agent David Godwin for being supportive and brilliant, and Will Hammond, my editor at The Bodley Head for backing the idea and being so deeply engaged in the editing process, as well as Henry Howard for his close and knowledgeable attention to detail. I must also thank my family for putting up with my long absences and for sometimes coming with me.
All maps © Bill Donohoe 2020. The following images in the picture sections are © the following organisations and individuals and/or reproduced with their permission: 1: Image courtesy of the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center • 2: with thanks to Mike Searle / Colliding Continents • 3: Dongju Zhang, Lanzhou University • 4: blickwinkel / Alamy Stock Photo • 5, 7, 10, 11, 14, 17, 19, 20, 37 and 40: British Library Board. All Rights Reserved / Bridgeman Images • 6: Bundesarchiv, Bild 135-KA-06-039 / reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany licence • 8: Xinhua / Alamy Stock Photo • 9: Crawford, Charles. (1819, December 14). Kathmandu, Nepal. Map of Charles Crawford, 1802-03. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2245205 • 12: Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy • 16: National Portrait Gallery, London • 18: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Arnold Arboretum Archives • 19 and 47: Royal Geographical Society / Getty • 21: Bridgeman Images • 22 (bronze), 31 and 32: Art Institute of Chicago • 22 (Kailas) and 30: Ed Douglas • 23: Asian Purchase Campaign Endowment and Robert Ross Fund • 24 and 25: with thanks to John V. Bellezza • 27: Everett and Ann McNear Collection • 28: Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020 • 33: Hildegard Diemberger • 34: Florilegius / Alamy • 35: Ethnological Museum of Berlin • 36: IndianMiniature-Paintings / Peter Blohm • 38: National Army Museum • 39: Art Collection 2 / Alamy • 41 and 42: Biodiversity Heritage Library. Contributed by Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library. www.biodiversitylibrary.org • 43 and 45: Alpine Club Photo Library, London • 47: Royal Geographical Society / Getty • 48: Ernst Krause, Federal Archives • 49: Ernst Schäfer / Bundesarchiv • 50: Archibald Steele • 51: Courtesy of Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente (Is.I.A.O.) in l.c.a. and Ministero Degli Affari Esteri e della Cooperazione Internazionale • 53: Courtesy of Michael Leonard • 54 and 55: Keystone Press / Alamy Stock Photo • 56: George Bush Presidential Library and Museum
A Note on Sources
During the long gestation of this book, I found myself at dinner with a former Conservative cabinet minister. He was graceful enough to take an interest, and seemed delighted with some of what I told him about the Himalaya. And then, to conclude the conversation, he said: ‘Of course, no strategic interest.’ This seemed to me a revealing comment. Not because it’s true, because it isn’t: just ask political scientists in Delhi, Beijing or Kathmandu. Rather, it opened a window on how the British imperial project – from which, however self-ironically, he was drawn – saw India’s northern border. Ultimately, the British Empire regarded the Himalaya as peripheral, somewhere exotic, a place for yarns, or adventure, not resources or policy, a place to recruit troops, not send them. Moreover, he had no inkling about how British interest in the relationship between China and Tibet made that relationship more combustible.
One consequence of this perspective is a lacuna in how the Himalayan region has been mediated by outsiders. It is not that the Himalaya is an intellectual blank on the map: there’s a wealth of scholarship on every aspect of life there. It’s more that myths and legends about the Himalaya continue to dominate popular culture, insulating the West from using that scholarship to create a wider understanding of the region. In a small way, this book is an attempt to bridge that gap. It is, for better or worse, an attempt to write something of popular appeal to those with an interest who want to know more, using the insights of a long interest and much reading in Himalayan studies. That’s why I’ve deliberately not included endnotes, which would make a big subject even more unwieldy. Most scholars specialising in the region will recognise where most of what’s written here comes from. The bibliography below sets out the sources and offers a starting point for those who wish to read more wildly and more deeply. I draw particular attention to bibliographies from John Whelpton on Nepali history and Julie Marshall’s magisterial work on Tibet.
Largely missing from this list are the myriad media outlets that I’ve relied on over the years, the Nepali Times, the Kathmandu Post, Himal and its successor Himal South Asian, The Record, Phayul, the Tibet Sun and Tibet Post and the Nepali literary magazine La.Lit. There are many Himalayan bloggers at work today but I enjoy particularly Jamyang Norbu’s ‘Shadow Tibet’ and Tim Chamberlain’s ‘Waymarks’. John Vincent Bellezza’s ‘Flight of the Khyung’ is referenced in the bibliography. The work of the Tibetan activist and writer Woeser appears on the website ‘High Peaks Pure Earth’. Other online resources I found useful included the website ‘Treasury of Lives’, which offers a useful guide to the complex world of Tibetan Buddhism and ‘Himalayan Art Resources’, art being perhaps one of the most accessible ways of appreciating the range and depth of Himalayan culture. Also missing, necessarily, is the Himalayan fiction that has deepened my appreciation and knowledge of the region. Manjushree Thapa’s non-fiction is referenced, but not her novels The Tutor of History and Each of Us in Our Own Lives. She and the outstanding short-story writer Prawin Adhikari have both translated works by the major Darjeeling author Indra Bahadur Rai, whose haunting work is consequently now available to non-Nepali speakers. Rai had such a particular voice and his writing catches a world that non-fiction, especially from an outsider, could never hope to match. Shradha Ghale is another Nepali writer who bridges non-fiction and fiction: her novel The Wayward Daughter is a beautifully written insight into the t
rials of growing up a young woman in modern Nepal, as well as revealing how Kathmandu is changing in the age of identity. There are many others: Rabi Thapa, Pranaya S J B Rana, Samrat Upadhyay and the Sikkimese architect and author Chetan Raj Shrestha. Himalayan writers deserve much more attention than they get, living as they do in the shadow of India. I’ve also benefitted from the work of Himalayan film-makers, particularly Kesang Tseten but also Ngawang Choephel, Khyentse Norbu, Deepak Rauniyar and Lu Chuan, to name but a few.
Of the works listed below, I want to pick out a very few that the general reader will enjoy. Apart from the Himalayan writers already mentioned, Kate Teltscher’s book on George Bogle, The High Road to China, is a delight. So, for different reasons, is Nicola Shulman’s sharp-witted portrait of the self-absorbed plant collector Reginald Farrer, A Rage for Rock Gardening. Thomas Bell’s layered and shifting Kathmandu catches not only the complexities of this ancient city but those of modern Nepali politics as well. Robbie Barnett’s Lhasa: Streets with Memories does something similar for Tibet’s capital, capturing something of the old city before it was remade. Sam Cowan’s Essays on Nepal have all the insight you’d expect from a former Colonel Commandant of the Brigade of Gurkhas but are accessible and full of energy. I would also want to draw attention to the collections of academic essays included in the bibliography, for their variety of voices and the tight focus of subjects.