AMONG THE TIBETANS Illustrated eBook Isabella L Bird
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Isabella Bird writes of her adventures in a manner that captivates her readers Isabella L Bird (1831 - 1904) was a 19th century British traveler and writer. Since her father was a Church of England priest the family moved many times during her childhood. Bird traveled to Colorado when she heard the air was very healthy. She covered the 800 miles on horseback riding like a man and not sidesaddle. Among The Tibetans begins "The Vale of Kashmir is too well known to require description. It is the 'happy hunting-ground' of the Anglo-Indian sportsman and tourist, the resort of artists and invalids, the home of pashm shawls and exquisitely embroidered fabrics, and the land of Lalla Rookh. Its inhabitants, chiefly Moslems, infamously governed by Hindus, are a feeble race, attracting little interest, valuable to travellers as 'coolies' or porters, and repulsive to them from the mingled cunning and obsequiousness which have been fostered by ages of oppression. But even for them there is the dawn of hope, for the Church Missionary Society has a strong medical and educational mission at the capital, a hospital and dispensary under the charge of a lady M.D. have been opened for women, and a capable and upright 'settlement officer, ' lent by the Indian Government, is investigating the iniquitous land arrangements with a view to a just settlement.
AMONG THE TIBETANS Illustrated eBook Isabella L Bird
I don’t recommend this book as a first reading of the author's many works unless one has traveled Jammu and Kashmir. I've read three of Isabella Birds' books and each was amazing as a literary work was much as a travel diary; this text is not. Her personal relationships with the people in these pages are not engaging as they are in "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains," The Hawaiian Archipelago," and "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan." In them we discover who she is as much as others. For me these latter texts were also more interesting as I've traveled and lived in their geography. While reading “Among the Tibetans” I found it helpful to reference Google Map and Wikipedia. I recommend her biography by Pat Barr, "A Curious Life For A Lady: The Story of Isabella Bird."Product details
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AMONG THE TIBETANS Illustrated eBook Isabella L Bird Reviews
I have been reading Isabella's books for the past year, and I still find her accounts incredible! It's fun to follow her trails on Google Earth and look at pictures of the daunting terrain that she encountered with tenacity, grace, and joy. when one considers the danger and hardship encountered by modern day trekkers in the Himalayas, her experiences seem even more fantastic. I am taken by her writing style, which some find dated, but I find charming and vivid. And her books all convey a 19th Century British point of view. If you are looking for a politically correct angle, you might find this offensive. I found it sincere and enlightening. And she treated all the souls she encountered with kindness, charity, and grace.
Great book on the history of Tibet by a great travel author----if you like this book you will also want to read
1. With the Tibetans in Tent and Temple (1901)
2. Lhasa and Its Mysteries With a Record of the Expedition of 1903-1904
3. Through China with a Camera (1899)
I've read both Among the Tibetans and Unbeaten Tracks Across Japan (where I lived for 8 years) and parts of Bird's A Lady's Life in the Rockies. Some other reviewers above find her uninvolved or distant, elitist and racist. But compared to other travelers of her time (some of the travelers who wrote about Japan, Kipling, Livingstone, Speke, Perry...), I think she was capable of seeing outside of herself much more than most, and I find her thoroughly engaged in her travel and usually extremely appreciative of her hosts. (And keep in mind, these were letters to her sister!) Her descriptions of nature -- very 19th century -- are really notable for being both rich and detailed, with plant names and lovely imagery "Trees and trailers drooped over the path, ferns and lilies bloomed in moist recesses, and among myriads of flowers a large blue and cream columbine was conspicuous by its beauty and exquisite odour. The charm of the detail tempted one to linger at very turn..." She crosses chasms, rides horses over streams, falls on the rocks, pushes through the snow and heat and gets furious with the Afghan leading the team when he mistreats the sherpas and steals their wages. To do all this in long skirts and sometimes without translators was a singularly bold thing to do in the 1890's and I'm fascinated by her descriptions of places that have now irrevocably changed. A great read!
Isabella Bird was an amazing woman who travelled all over the world for her "health," establishing hospitals where she could and always writing letters to her sister back in England. The letter were published and, like other women travelers of the late 19th century, she gained an international reputation. Her trip into western Tibet, published in 1894, is not as well known as A lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, but it is at least the equal of that adventure. Bird traveled with quite a large support group but often she was the only"traveler." A look at a modern map makes the reader realize that the regions of Kashmir and Tibet she traveled through are still remote. On steep mountain paths they lost some pack animals but Isabella carried on, visiting wandering herdsmen and their families, marveling at the stark landscape, the monasteries and rendering it all in vivid detail. For the contemporary couch potato, her account is so amazing that the reader would be insane to try a similar feat--riding side saddle in a dress. There is a fairly good biography of Bird available, but for the real thing, I recommend her own accounts of her travels in Persia, Japan, Tibet and the Rocky Mountains and points in between.
There's a edition that currently sells at $4.89 and the paperback at $7.45. I purchased the public domain edition (because it was free) and I was enthralled by Ms. Bird's descriptions of her experiences of her four month travel by horseback from India through the Himalayas in the late Eighteen Hundreds. Bird does exceptionally well in describing the rugged, impossibly difficult,and often breathtaking mountain passes that she traversed. My free edition did not have the sketches she made and which, I assume, are in the paid edition. On the otherhand, Bird has a gift for using words to paint vivid images of the Tibetans, their looks, costumes and decorations, ceremonies, music, as well as of their dwellings, temples, and monasteries. Although much has changed, I dare say that a lot of what she described is still true of Tibet. One thing that touched me was the realization of how extremely difficult it is to go from one village to another, to ford rivers that are icy cold, deep, and are more than a mile across, and to move fully loaded pack animals along a narrow ridge that is wide enough only for a single file but there's another caravan coming from the opposite direction. Life and nature can be very cruel on such a harsh journey so it was a treat to make the same journey while enjoying the comfort my chair.
I don’t recommend this book as a first reading of the author's many works unless one has traveled Jammu and Kashmir. I've read three of Isabella Birds' books and each was amazing as a literary work was much as a travel diary; this text is not. Her personal relationships with the people in these pages are not engaging as they are in "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains," The Hawaiian Archipelago," and "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan." In them we discover who she is as much as others. For me these latter texts were also more interesting as I've traveled and lived in their geography. While reading “Among the Tibetans” I found it helpful to reference Google Map and Wikipedia. I recommend her biography by Pat Barr, "A Curious Life For A Lady The Story of Isabella Bird."
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