To the holiest in the height

Colin Thubron’s new book will disappoint those of his readers who admire him for his reserve. He is the last and perhaps the best of the gentleman travellers of the old school, his books distinguished by scholarship, rigour and that extraordinary ability that he has made his own: the capacity to immerse himself in someone else’s culture and yet remain utterly detached. Those same readers may also be disappointed by the slimness of the present volume, which occupies days rather than months and encompasses a mere province rather than the usual continent. But they would be wrong to dismiss To a Mountain in Tibet as lightweight. Nothing Thubron writes cannot but be taken seriously, and this same book may come to be seen not only as the most revealing he has ever published but also the most profound.

To a Mountain in Tibet is a first-person account of a short trek over the Central Himalayan chain from Nepal to the Chang Tang plateau of far western Tibet, followed by a circumambulation of the sacred peak of Mount Kailas.