Seven Years in Tibet

‘Like the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, it deserves to take its place among the few great travel stories of our own times’
The Times

‘Few adventureres in this century have had the combined luck and hardihood to return with such news as this. Fewer still have rendered it so powerfully unadorned.’
Times Literary Supplement

‘Some books, like some mountains, are lonely and unrivalled peaks, and this is one of these.’ Economist

In the summer of 1939, climber and Olympic ski champion Heinrich Harrer was in India when war was declared. He found himself a prisoner of the British and was interned at the POW camp at Dehra- Dun.

‘Up here,’ says Harrer, ‘we had the Himalayas right in front of us. How attractive to a mountaineer was the thought of winning through to Tibet over the passes... Even if my plan failed it would be worth having a spell of high freedom in the high mountains.’ So began an adventure of epic proportions.

With few possessions and little money, Harrer escaped in 1944 and succeeded in reaching Tibet only to discover that the Tibetans did not welcome strangers. Eventually, after great hardship and some remarkable experiences, battling against both the ferocity of the elements and the indifference of officials to his plight, he succeeded in reaching the forbidden city of Lhasa where he became a tutor and friend of the present Dalai Lama, then a young boy, only leaving the country when the Red Chinese invasion forced the Dalai Lama to flee.

“Like the voyage of the Kon Tiki, it deserves to take its place among the few great travel stories of our own times.”
THE TIMES

“Few adventurers in this century have had the combined luck and hardihood to return with such news as this. Fewer still have rendered it so powerfully unadorned.”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT