Customer Reviews

The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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".

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

The Heart of the World is a book that is hard to put down. Outwardly, it may appear as an adventure travel book but it is so much more. It is really about the journey within. As such, it is inspiring and fascinating.
I award it five stars and have ordered it for all of my in-laws for Christmas!

I am "living" with this overwhelmingly beautiful story (as I reread it for the second time) of a very human man searching for his soul through the Buddhist path of ritual, prayer and right action. Every phrase is eloquently presented and researched with the historical Buddhist, as well as, British explorers commentary of searching for the Tsangpo gorge. Mr. Baker documents his journey with every possible visceral experience and challenges the reader to find the metaphor into the "real" journey of the soul. I was captivated by how precious every interaction with both nature and his fellow travelers impacted if and when they could move further into the gorge. The interdependence of people, Mother Nature and the spirit of non-attachment to the outcome, was palpable. I was so moved to see the photographs (timeless in their black and white quality) documenting (for the skeptical) the journey and attempting to show the scale of the gorge. Never have I been so motivated to resume my daily meditation, yoga, vegetarian eating and mindful right action toward all sentient beings. Ian Baker has mastered both the art of describing a physical adventure, all the while, taking us through a spiritual journey to find the true meaning of the "heart" in ourselves. His final photo (Swan in flight over Mill House falls) suggests the liberation and beauty of all things discovered and yet still unknown. This is a "must read" for any spiritual explorer!

I found myself capitavated by this story. It is an adventure on many levels. I appreciate the depth of Ian Baker's writing and after reading the book feel that in some way I have gotten to journey along with Ian to the hidden realms of Tibet that exist in the both the ordinary and non-ordinary world. I found myself traveling with him in my dreams and meeting the spirits of the places he visited. I couldn't put the book down and when I finished reading it I felt that I had somehow entered the beyul with him. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Tibet or adventuring into unknown realms both in the physical world and beyond.

This book is an enchantment and, in the able hands of author Ian Baker, the land Herself the mighty sorcerer. Baker tells us just enough about the odd mix of pilgrims to make our travels flavor-full, but not so much as to distract us from the main characters, the sacred landscape and her culture, perhaps as they will never be viewed again. Good job! In fact, great job! I've always wanted to travel to Tibet, climb the mightiest mountains, and experience the soul of a raging river. What a fulfilling journey this is...
While we never really go through the lama's doorway at the back of the waterfall, that was understandably not Baker's sacred purpose here. Our vision has now experienced serious practice and holy inspiration. For any reader left wanting, I recommend R. Alan Fuller's tale of shamanic initiation (and entry through such portals) at 17,000 foot elevation at Marcawasi (Peru), as related in his book "High Holy Adventure".

Reactions here of readers appear to be largely ecstatic: it's a testament to Baker's evocative powers of description. I read this over a couple of weeks filled with unusual tension & stress personally, and it seemed as if the first half of the book took as long for me to traverse as the events did for Baker. Taking the journey vicariously with the author forced me to slow down, and adapt to a quite different mental as well as physical atmosphere.

This is both the genius and the bit of frustration from its first half. He tends to circle about his often rarified topics rather than take them on linearly. While suiting well the uncertainty principle from quantum physics applied late in the account to the search for the fabled waterfall, it does tangle the narrative as it tends towards repetition of earlier expeditions that blend into the fresh journey he makes over a decade or so in piecemeal fashion.

Because the quest takes so long to germinate before blossoming, the more engaging quality of an author's straightforward tale here becomes refracted, suspended, and long-delayed. Perfect for a Buddhist approach that challenges conventional Western attempts to chart and dissect the natural and the spiritual realms of "sacred geography," but for non-adepts like me, the overwhelming erudition mixed with mundane details (however engrossing) of trails taken and meals made means you have to "go with the flow" of Baker's idiosyncratically rendered if gripping story.

Certainly the compassion, unselfishness, and detachment aspired to by Baker, the Tibetans he meets who share his devotion, and (some of) his fellow expeditioners exude from these densely written but often eloquent pages. This is a book I will recommend to my friends who practice meditation, but I admit I was intrigued, if still after pondering this tome barely enlightened, about how Baker and pals would retreat to a cave for a month and stay focused. He tends to gloss over the types of curious concerns that Westerners, for better or worse, would be most puzzled about. I know that this is part of the lesson Baker and Buddhism teaches, but the confident reticence often arising when spiritual practices are touched upon and attended to made for a annoyingly teasing read at times. I wish Baker would have shared more--for the benefit of readers such as myself ignorant of Eastern thought and belief--of his own path to Buddhism and how he learned so much so as to become accepted as an insider by a famously complex culture in a very different language and mindset.

Distractions pop up in less exalted fashion; the book needed careful spell-checking, as typos diminished its effectiveness. I kept having to flip to the too generally drawn map at the front, which is much less detailed than it should be if one means to follow the complicated itineraries and locales in unfamiliar languages. A more focused map of the area of greatest mystery is tucked deep into the text at the appropriate moments (as are the many marginal illustrations), but this lack of cartographic assistance means that it's easy to become as disoriented as the explorers themselves became when entering the lotus realm of hidden Pemako.

Perfect detail: Baker's watch stops as they enter the realm; the style of the narrative perks up here, and overcomes its earlier miasma to become a more readable, better paced, account. His reticence at describing, say, his Tantric consort, Hamid's many amours, or much "backstory" of many of his fellow campers appears coy. This may have been due to Baker's wish to keep the focus on the journey rather than its participants, but this does make for a rather disembodied trek, when I was wondering constantly but never really understood how Baker financed the expeditions, and how the teams kept alive and apparently largely in excellent shape for such gallivanting over such rugged terrain at such heights on so little for so long.

This enormous story contains much to admire and to lament--Baker holds back what could've been harsher criticism of the Chinese occupiers & unrelenting cadres of exploiters who endanger this fragile and holy landscape, but his thorough endnotes, bibliography, and glossary allow readers to delve a bit more deeply into some of the larger questions he raises. His literary allusions, wider contexts (such as film, politics, and the role of such agencies as National Geographic, sponsorship, and documentarians reveal much more thought about how larger concerns inform the extreme precision in which he places particular information. The book gets better as it goes on closer to the shimmering goal of the waterfalls, and the best writing and thought emerge late in the text. His sustained sensitivity and refusal to romanticize the harshness under which the natives live makes for as honest a story as he could tell, and he tells it well.

There is a true Buddhist spirit at work here (as far as I am qualified to say). The book is a very enjoyable read for both Buddhists and those interested in exploration (see also: those who need some inspiration). The concept of "beyul", a hidden pure realm - whose concept intertwines with the plot, is fascinating, profound and mythologically important. The Heart of the World is an apt title. I am slowly reading my last 90 pages so that the trip won't end too soon. Thank you Ian and crew! Definitely recommended and very accessible.

I devoured this book. Ian Baker is an extraordinarily gifted story-teller and writer. He has woven his adventures, the adventures of his companions, his spiritual quest, the history of the area, and the culture of the area into a sinuous story that fully captures the reader. Ian makes the book accessible on many levels: read the book straight through and you have an amazing adventure story. Read the book with the footnotes, glossary, and captions, you begin to understand the complexity of the journey-and the questions and challenges that accompany it. This is a story of discovery, but it has very little to do with the actual waterfall that Ian `found'. I would highly recommend it to anyone.