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The Siege of Shangri-La: The Quest for Tibet's Sacred Hidden Paradise

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McRae recreates the journeys of several adventurers seeking an undiscovered waterfall in Tibet. Old notebooks, rumors, sacred writings, and guides from remote villages lure these explorers into an exquisite landscape of dense rhododendrons and ferns, steep rock canyons, and snowy peaks, all framing an elusive river that became impossible to map. The physical challenge is overwhelming, sometimes leading to despair and even death. Rainstorms, clouds of insects, waist-deep mud, impassable vegetation, leeches, steep and slippery rock walls, and even a tribe of women known to poison visitors, all demand constant mindfulness. A chance meeting with a Lama, the sudden appearance of a rainbow, the discovery of refuge in a hidden temple, a gift of food and the guidance from a native are intermittent rewards for the constant struggle. 

Motives for the search were diverse, with some seeking ego-less spiritual enlightenment, while others lusted for recognition and glory.

McRae brings to life a world totally foreign to me in engaging prose, full of facts and well-researched details. I appreciate glimpsing the exotic, strange land McRae presents in his fascinating account of travels into this magical place.

This is not just a book about exploring remote places, but the spirituality of exploration itself. The Tsangpo River's gorge through the Himalayas in southern Tibet was probably the last place on Earth to be explored and mapped. This was not completed, at least by Westerners, until 1998. This is due to the area's extreme remoteness and isolation, and its impossible terrain. Add to that the West's not entirely accurate glorification of Tibetan geography and culture. Here McRae covers both the Western explorers who tried to "conquer" the gorge, and the native attitudes toward surrendering to it. "Classical" explorers made many attempts until the 1950's when China "liberated" Tibet and closed it off, followed by extreme sports adventurers in the 1990's. Also in the 90's, two expatriates named Ian Baker and Hamid Sardar became adepts at Buddhist/Tibetan spirituality and explored the gorge from a completely different standpoint - that of a pilgrimage to Tibet's spiritual centers. Theirs is the most interesting story of the book, as the Tibetans believe that any landscape can only be truly discovered if one surrenders to it (the Eastern way) rather than trying to conquer it (the Western way). Sadly, all the hubbub in the pro-conquest Western press of recent years will probably ruin the gorge's extreme beauty and isolation. But with this book's great coverage of the cultural and spiritual dimensions of Tibetan exploration, we know that this paradise will continue to confound conquerors but offer rich rewards for surrenderers. [~doomsdayer520~]

In The Siege of Shangri-La: The Quest for Tibet's Sacred Hidden Paradise, Michael McRae - a journalist for prestigious publications such as National Geographic Adventure, National Geographic, Outside, Audubon, Life, Men's Journal, and more discusses one of the last known unexplored areas in the world and the history surrounding it.

The Siege of Shangri-La is divided into three parts: the historical side, which discusses and details the various expeditions to the area of Tibet along the Tsangpo River and specifically into the Tsangpo River Gorge by the British over a hundred years ago; the second part details the different perceptions of paradise, specifically of certain Buddhist peoples and tribes and several Westerners; the third part is about the various reasons for traveling there for the Buddhists and the most recent expeditions once China re-opened Tibet.

McRae offers an exciting narrative about the gorge - the deepest in the world, and situated very near the tallest mountain peak in the world. He covers the expeditions from the last two hundred years, and the trials and tribulations the explorers faced in one of the most peculiar landscapes in the world. The romance of the Gorge leads back to initial exploration and reports of the area, where explorers revealed that the Tsangpo connected to various rivers in India - but the altitude the river dropped in such a short distance posed a mystery. The first few explorers conjectured a waterfall, grander than one hundred feet, as on of the reasons for the amazing altitude change of the river. However, all but a five mile gap of the river - a gap that was nearly impossible to reach - was explored until 1993. "The Lost Waterfalls" were then declared a romanticized vision, and believed not to exist.

The history of the Gorge and the stories involved are spectacular, and McRae truly creates a vision of words. His descriptions of the landscape encountered by the various explorers - and the hardships they faced - along with the various native peoples that in habit the region prove an exciting, fast-paced adventure read that will surely make the reader take a step back and look at society and worry about what will happen to nature - and one of the last remaining isolated spots on the map.

Sets the scene of a beautiful but forbidding region: jungles, glaciers, leeches, rainbows, frequent rearrangement by earthquake... discusses the meaning of exploration and discovery, of regions with indigenous populations. More respectful of nature, culture and spirituality than the brash kayakers who visited and published, but not as deep as - a useful pre-read to -
The Heart of the World: A Journey to Tibet's Lost Paradise by Ian Baker.

I am doing research for an upcoming trip to Shangri-la region, and this is the first English book I read on the subject. It did not offer much information on anything other than some very limited history of the exploration in the Tsangpo River Gorge region. Since the names of places used in the book is different from those used in another Chinese book I read before, I had hard time cross-referencing and squeezing any useful information out of this book at all. Book reads like a C+ to B- college term paper on the subject.