the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

of northern Canada, and theillusory terrors of a malevolentsupernatural creature of theice, it is something human thatproves to be the most terrifyingthing of all.60Wild Places:Wild Heartsby Allen Smutylo302 pp • Owen Sound, Ontario: TomThomson Art Gallery, 2007 • ISBN:978-0-929021-47-8 • $60Award-winning Canadian artistand author Allen Smutylo’sWild Places: Wild Hearts:Nomads of the Himalaya isboth an artist’s memoir andan anthropologist’s journey.After decades spent withnomadic peoples in the HighArctic, Patagonia, and theAmazon, Smutylo decided togo to the Himalaya. While ineastern Ladakh in 2001, heencountered the Changpa,a widely dispersed group ofTibetan nomads. Eventually,Smutylo joined the Kharnakpatribe—one of four groups hetraveled with—on migrationas they crossed an isolatedplateau of rock, sand, and ice4,500 meters above sea level,on yaks and horses. On thisjourney he met the chomos,nuns whose lives are spenton remote mountainsides inREVIEWSstone huts, weathering bitterwinters, waiting for theoccasional visit of the clanon migration. He writes thatas he moved between theworld of the Changpa and themodern world, he began tounderstand that far from beinga relic, the Changpa hadmuch to teach us. “In contrastto the tenets of our society,I saw compatibility with theenvironment, inclusiveness inspirituality, and an emphasison non-material things.”T h e H i g h R o a d t oChina: George Bogle,The pachen Lama, andthe first BritishExpedition to Tibetby Kate Teltscher336 pp • New York: farrar, straus,A nd Girou x , 20 07 • ISBN -10 : 0 3742170 0 9ISBN-13: 978-0374217006 • $26Kate Tektscher, authorof the acclaimed IndiaInscribed, begins her latestbook, High Road to China:George Bogle, the PanchenLama, and the First BritishExpedition to Tibet, with afascinating account of the1780 meeting between theThird Panchen Lama of Tibetand the Chinese EmperorQianlong in Chengde, the“two most exalted figureson Earth.” That it took thePanchen Lama a year to travelfrom Lhasa to Chengde to celebratethe emperor’s seventiethbirthday immediately setsthe stage. During the celebrations,the Lama asked theemperor to entertain relationswith the English governor ofIndia (Hindostan), WarrenHastings. Teltscher examinesthe purpose of this strangeencounter and the reasonsfor the Tibetan spiritualleader would have wanted tohelp the English achieve theirlong desired entry into China.Despite the warm personalrelationship that developedbetween the English representative,Scotsman GeorgeBogle—who had been sentto Tibet on behalf of theBritish East India Companyin 1774 to begin trade negotiations—andthe PanchenLama, diplomatic realtionsbetween England, Tibet, andChina were fraught, resultingin the Opium Wars of1839–42 and 1885–60. Inhis diaries, Bogle revealsa genuine curiosity andrespect for the Lama andthe Tibetans. Unfortunately,his successor, FrancisYounghusband, would massacre500 Tibetans on hisdiplomatic mission of 1904.Teltscher’s account of thisearly diplomatic foray and itsaftermath reverberates todayin the ever-changing politicallandscape of the Himalaya.