Over the course of several months during 1931 and 1932, Robert Byron journeyed to three countries teetering on the brink of change. In Russia, which was stricken by famine, Lenin had just died, Stalin's dictatorship was in its infancy and the Great Terror had yet to begin. Having taken the first commercial flight to India, which took an astounding seven days, Byron was thrown into the tumultuous last years of the British Raj. Gandhi was imprisoned,...

In the West, when we think about food in China, what usually comes to mind are the signature dishes of Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai. But beyond the urbanized eastern third of China lie the high open spaces and sacred places of Tibet, the Silk Road oases of Xinjiang, the steppelands of Inner Mongolia, and the steeply terraced hills of Yunnan and Guizhou. The peoples who live in these regions are culturally distinct, with their own history and their...

Tired of being an armchair activist, Isabel Losada decides to take matters into her own hands. From the streets of London to the temples of Dharamsala, in this adventure, Isabel falls in love with a monk, impersonates a member of the Chinese army, starts an activist organization, breaks the law, puts lives at risk (including her own), and appears on the news around the world. In the end, she meets the Dalai Lama to ask him the crucial question, "Can...

Offers an intimate travelogue of the author's trek to Kailas, the holiest mountain in Tibet, in the wake of the death of his mother and the loss of his family.

Every Bible student knows there are several years in the life of Christ that are unaccounted for. But what accounts for that gap? Was Jesus in Nazareth from the ages of thirteen through twenty-nine? Or was he teaching and studying in India, as this thoroughly intriguing-and controversial-book suggests? The story begins in 1887, when Russian explorer Nicolas Notovitch went on an expedition to learn about the customs of the people of India. During his...

Isabella Bird was the greatest travel writer of the late nineteenth century and she undertook her journey into western Tibet in the early summer of 1889, when she was already in her late fifties. But she was not the slightest bit fazed at the prospect of discomfort and possible death. And nearly die she did, at least once, before the trip was over. Isabella travelled over several months through some of the remotest places on the planet and her descriptions...