Seven Years in Tibet

‘Like the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, it deserves to take its place among the few great travel stories of our own times’ The Times ‘Few adventureres in this century have had the combined luck and hardihood to return with such news as this. Fewer still have rendered it so powerfully unadorned.’ Times Literary Supplement ‘Some books, like some mountains, are lonely and unrivalled peaks, and this is one of these.’ Economist

Heinrich Harrer was born in 1912 in Carinthia. His skiing prowess won him a place in the 1936 Austrian Olympic team. He was in the party which first ascended the notorious North Wall of the Eiger in 1938, and is the author of the classic climbing book The White Spider – a full history of the attempts to make that terrible climb. While climbing in the Himalayas he was caught by the outbreak of World War II, and, being Austrian, was interned in India. From here he succeeded in escaping to Tibet where he stayed for seven years. During this time Harrer became friend and tutor to the young Dalai Lama, and accompanied him into India when he was put to flight by the Red Chinese invasion.