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Buckley thrives on adventuring in remote places β whether rappelling from the treetops in Costa Rica, trekking through the jungles of Borneo, cave-kayaking in the south of Thailand, or bicycling the Karakoram Highway. He sees travel as transformation β a constant learning experience on the road. My travels embrace the Tibetan cultural sphere of influence: Himalayan India, Mongolia, Kham and Amdo, occupied Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan β the vast and majestic region of the Tibetan plateau.
The three major sections are based more on chronological travels and theme than on geographic areas. Inspiration, Insights, Thanks First and foremost, my heartfelt gratitude goes out to a number of Tibetans I met, but who cannot be named here their identities have also been concealed in the book. Their fearlessness and candour provided the main inspiration for this book. It was with the help of another Divine Agent β the literary kind β that this manuscript found its way into publication: special thanks to Robert Mackwood for seeing this project through its final stages.
Thus of the whole enormous area which was once the spirited domain of Tibetan culture and religion, stretching from Ladakh in the west to the borders of the Chinese provinces of Szechuan and Yunnan in the east, from the Himalayas in the south to the Mongolian steppes and the vast wastes of northern Tibet, now only Bhutan seems to survive as the one resolute and selfcontained representative of a fast-disappearing civilisation.
In that level, the national boundary not important. So therefore, from Ladakh up to Arunachal in the Himalayan range, then Tibet, then further north, you see, Mongolia, Inner Mongolia and in Russian Federation republics β Kalmykia, Tuva, Buryatia β¦ So all these thirteen, fourteen millions follow same religion β Tibetan Buddhism.
