44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exotic, Engrossing, Enchanting, October 26, 2005
An incredible book for anyone intrigued by the mysteries of Asia. The tale begins in 1982 when Baker overhears a conversation about a Tibetan sage who found a hidden paradise between vaulting cliffs in a little-explored corner of Tibet. Baker was curious. He had heard about Tibet's `hidden lands,' secret places that - Tibetans believe - can only be found by a devout pilgrim who can endure physical challenge, and spiritual challenge, too. Baker, an accomplished climber and a determined student of Tibetan culture, resolved to find out more.
He trekked into the mountains outside Kathmandu to find the sage, an old man with a long white beard, sitting in a small cabin on the skin of a goat. Baker asked for guidance on how to find a sacred Tibetan land, and the sage told him about a cave where he should first go meditate alone for a month. Baker complied. He even stayed an extra week.
Back at his home in Kathmandu, Baker studied Tibetan and Western texts about searches for the `hidden lands.' He zeroed in on a mysterious section of the Tsangpo River had for centuries tantalized explorers who were seeking a mythic waterfall. None had been able to find it, and Baker now wanted to try. Battling rough terrain and political obstacles, Baker traveled repeatedly into Tibet, a forbidding land of mountainous desert and striking Himalayan peaks. Each voyage was an exhausting ordeal, yet each one brought Baker circling a little closer to his prized goal, the unseen waterfall.
In his marvel-filled book, Baker tells a story of uncompromising pursuit of hidden lands, and the spiritual adventures he has along the way. It is a remarkable tale, lyrically written in a way that captures the magic of wilderness travel. `The cobalt-blue flash of a monal pheasant lured me down a steep track that soon dissipated into dense forest. Garlands of moss swayed sensuously from ancient oaks and broad-leafed rhododendrons,' he writes in one passage.
Tibetan Buddhism is the richly-colored tapestry in the background of this story, and Baker weaves it with firm authority, describing a myriad of goddesses, dakinis and prophets of the Tibetan pantheon. He also delivers detailed historical asides about British and Indian explorers from centuries past, who suffered through the same terrain. Attractive photographs, many taken by Baker, are sprinkled generously through the text. In an odd decision, Baker and his publisher relegated captions to the back of the book, as if too many facts might intrude on the telling of a good story.
The trials of travel into the Tsangpo Gorge become frighteningly clear. Baker and his various accomplices brave sheer cliffs, hike and camp in violent downpours and venture through jungle so thick that only at day's end do they find the 40 or more leeches burrowing under clothing to suck blood. Hardly a Garden of Eden. Baker's sage warned him at the outset that the paradise of secret lands described in ancient Tibetan writings were not actually so heavenly. Rather, they are `perfect places for Buddhist practice, with multiple dimensions corresponding to increasingly subtle levels of perception.'
In other words, it's all in the mind. And an open mind can be richer than most of us know. Baker works hard to straddle the physical, mental and spiritual. He is aiming for the upper realms of consciousness, yet we can feel his earthly determination to win the prize of discovering a secret place in Tibet, for which his exhaustive preparation has made him an ideal candidate. Baker does not muse on, much less explain, what it is that drives him to take on the near-impossible, over and over. His writing is majestic and scholarly, but it lacks a self-reflective depth that might have given his story more humanity. Many of his personal encounters - one with the gorgeous daughter of the Tibetan sage, another with an Indian consort at a Buddhist retreat where Baker investigates the importance of Tantric sex - are poetically stilted.
After defying the odds and finding his waterfall, Baker announced his discovery through National Geographic and won a few seconds of world fame. He was roundly criticized by fellow wilderness travelers, who ridiculed the notion that he `discovered' a place in a region populated by Tibetan hunters. Baker tries to downplay the controversy and instead muses thoughtfully about the pointlessness of geographical discovery, quoting a Tibetan monk's throwaway observation: `It'sjust another place, isn't it?' Regardless, Baker succeeds in telling a tale of timeless search for meaning, and finding it in an exotic locale where the borders of topography and human possibility meet.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing!, November 28, 2004
This is an amazing story. Amazing. I give it 5 stars. This is wilderness exploration at its best, going far beyond the adage "because it was there" and describing a concurrent spiritual journey as intense, earnest and daring as the raw physical adventure itself. All of us who wander in the wild remote know about this inner world; few if any of us can describe it well. Ian Baker must be the most articulate nonfiction writer on the planet right now. In "The Heart of the World: Journey to the Last Secret Place", his language captures not just a visceral sense of the unparallelled Tsangpo Gorge, the hardships of an impossible journey, and the complexities of his research, but somehow manages to parallel the story-line with a most welcome comprehensible tale of an extraordinary spiritual endeavor. The unimaginable and indefinable not only make sense but grace the realm of possibility. I am at once inspired and in awe, wanting to know what comes after the next obstacle, over the next mountain pass, beyond the next spiritual abyss. The book is satisfying on all accounts - an awesome adventure, a spiritual quest, a tale of a holy grail actually found. How often on this ever-shrinking crowded planet will such an adventure occur? This book speaks to anyone: mountaineer, adventurer, intellectual, scientist, nature-lover, dreamer, priest, shaman you name it.
I'm reading another customer's review of this book and wondering what could have inspired such a person to be interested in anything beyond the most well-trod spring-break hot-spots of the so-called civilized world -- I will say that if you're looking for a "travel log" as that reviewer is, you'd be better off watching "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous". If you're looking for the truly extraordinary, check out "The Heart of the World".
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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Fusion of Physical and Spiritual Enlightenment, December 26, 2005
How does a writer condense fifteen years of a journey to seek the sacred places of Tibet? Enter the covers of this fascinating if overly long book, release your sense of time, absorb the tenants of Buddhism, and discover how an obsession controlled the life and vision of one Ian Baker.
Much has been written about this physically demanding and spiritually enlightening journey Baker made from 1982 to 1997, but though the facts of the hardships and the challenges of the physical trek through the treacherous mountains of Tibet in search of the mystical waterfall in the Tsangpro gorge may be familiar to some, the final rewards of accompanying Baker through the pages of this book are experiences not found through reviews. This is a book that, though long, must be approached by a fellow traveler willing to endure the disappointments and the frustrations Baker endured in his search for the Last Secret Place. The journey is well worth the investment of time of the reader as it is impossible not to feel the spiritual enlightenment along with Baker as he reaches his goal.
This is a book for the patient reader in search of true adventure, willing to absorb the mystical qualities of Tibetan Buddhism, and desirous of acknowledging the fact that there remain on this very disturbed planet places where we can become as close to the meaning of life as possible. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 05
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