This is an excellent book. While reading this book, I did feel rather sad that I have not yet read his earlier book, "Seven Years In Tibet". This is an omission that I must, and will, correct.

In this book, Heinrich Harrer returns to Tibet after a long gap of thirty years. During this time, Tibet has changed. It has changed politically. It has changed culturally, with the advent of the Chinese Communist Party and its people taking charge. The landscape has changed, as many of the old temples and structures have been demolished.

In this short book, he describes these changes in a style that is simple. While he does try to be dispassionate, his emotional turmoil is evident.

It is a beautiful book, written by a man who did count Tibet as his second home. ( )

Seven Years in Tibet told the incredible story of an idyllic life on the "roof of the world," before it was destroyed by the invading Chinese army. Now Austrian adventurer Heinrich Harrer revisits the people and places he left behind, in the extraordinary Return to Tibet. Against a backdrop of ruined monasteries and the beautiful, mysterious Himalayas, Harrer vividly evokes both a free Tibet, in which religion and faith were central features of daily life, and the present-day occupied nation, in which a profoundly spiritual culture is threatened with disappearance. He reflects on the country's problems, and in a reunion with his former pupil the Dalai Lama discusses ways of preserving the Tibetans' national character and their homeland.

I came at this book from an unusual direction, having owned Harrer´s ´Seven Years in Tibet´ for decades, but never having got around to reading it. In the sense that it has inspired me to go back to the original, ´Return..´ has served some good purpose. And as a postscript to the original (for those reading the two books in their proper order), it will be essential, but depressing reading.

But as a book in it´s own right it doesn´t stand up well. Harrer writes with passion and color, but the real impact of the decay in the life and fabric of Tibet can possibly only be appreciated when it is held up to the original depicted in his earlier book (where he describes his life in the inner circles of Tibet in the 1940´s with the young Dalai Lama). In ´Return..´ Harrer´s descriptions of what is no longer there, what is no longer celebrated, and what is no longer felt has a kind of numbing effect on the reader.

Harrer´s thesis, is that Tibet will ultimately survive whatever the Chinese throw at it. He suggests that it might perhaps prosper and re-embrace its spirituality (though noting the danger the former poses to the chances of the latter). And that is an uplifting thought - except that ´Return..´ was written in 1983, and as Harrer noted in a postscript the Chinese repression of Tibetan religion and society has gone up several notches since then. This contradicts Harrer´s observations (in 1983) that things seemed to be getting better, and that there seemed to be some prospect (then) for a reconciliation between the Chinese and the Dalai Lama. So in the end ´Return..´ points to a failure of hope. But as the Tibetan´s point out (and Harrer relates it but seems not to quite believe it), it may take hundreds of years to re-establish Tibet, but that is a small amount of time in their history and they can endure in the meantime.

Essentially this is an powerful extended postscript to Harrer´s ´Seven Years in Tibet´ and is a must-read in that context. ( )

Harrer's earlier book, 'Seven Years in Tibet', told of an idyllic life on the 'rooftop of the world', before Harrer was forced to flee from the invading Chinese armies. Thirty years later, he returns to describe how the Chinese have attempted to destroy this ancient civilisation. Meeting old Tibetan acquaintances, including the Dalai Lama now living in exile in northern India, Harrer examines the current thaw in Peking's relations with this isolated and mysterious country. In its vivid evocation of Tibet, past and present, ' Return to Tibet' provides a fascinating insight into the durability of this profoundly spiritual culture.

Onverwacht bijzonder boek, heel leuk en verhelderend om te lezen hoe Harrer tegen de veranderingen en bezoekers en bezetters van Tibet aankeek. Voor mij ook een bewijs van de integerheid van deze man. Mooie foto's. ( )