Seven Years in Tibet Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Preface

  Chapter 1 - Internment

  Chapter 2 - Escape

  Chapter 3 - Into Tibet

  Chapter 4 - The Village of Happiness

  Chapter 5 - On the Move

  Chapter 6 - The Worst Trek of All

  Chapter 7 - The Forbidden City

  Chapter 8 - Calm Waters

  Chapter 9 - Asylum Granted

  Chapter 10 - Life in Lhasa—I

  Chapter 11 - Life in Lhasa—II

  Chapter 12 - An Attempted Coup d’Etat

  Chapter 13 - Commissions from the Government

  Chapter 14 - Tibet Prepares for Trouble

  Chapter 15 - Tutor to the Dalai Lama

  Chapter 16 - Tibet Is Invaded

  Chapter 17 - I Leave Tibet

  Epilogue: 1996

  About the Author

  THE TARCHER CORNERSTONE EDITIONS

  THE TARCHER CORNERSTONE EDITIONS

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  Seven Years in Tibet

  by Heinrich Harrer

  The New Religions

  by Jacob Needleman

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  Harrer, Heinrich, date.

  Seven years in Tibet.

  Translation of: Sieben Jahre in Tibet.

  1. Tibet (China)—Description and travel. 2. Harrer,

  Heinrich, date. I. Title.

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  THE DALAI LAMA

  TMEKCHEN CHOELINS

  MCLEOD GANJ 176219

  KANGRA DISTRICT

  HIMACHAL PRADESH

  F O R E W O R D

  Prof. Heinrich Harrer is one of those in the West who knows Tibet intimately. His book came at a time when there were much misconceptions about the life and culture of Tibet - and most of the books available then certainly did not help to clear away these wrong impressions.

  Having been forced to come to Tibet under unfortunate circumstances, he chose to live among our people and share their simple way of life, thus he made many friends and is regarded with much affection.

  I am happy that his book “Seven Years in Tibet” which gives a true and vivid picture of Tibet before 1959 is being reprinted when there is a renewed interest on Tibet.

  January 29, 1982

  Introduction

  For the British, and, indeed, I think for most Europeans, Tibet has during the last fifty years held a growing and a particular fascination. In 1904, Younghusband, in a campaign scarcely matched in the annals of war either for its administrative difficulties or for the combination of audacity and humanity with which it was conducted, marched to Lhasa and subdued Tibet. The Tibetans, whose persistent intransigence upon an imperial frontier had at length provoked our incursion, were granted the most chivalrous of terms, and on the remote, mysterious plateau—silhouetted for a time in sharp, painstaking relief by the dispatches that trickled back over the passes from the handful of correspondents with Younghusband’s expedition—a veil once more descended.

  It was a thick veil, and it did not get much thinner as the years went by. The end of the nineteenth century found Europe’s eyes turning toward Asia. The geographical challenge of Africa had been, in its essentials, met, and on that continent the political problems, save in South Africa, appeared in those days to be soluble only in the chanceries of European capitals. In Asia, by contrast, imponderable and exotic forces were on the move. Russia’s conquests in Central Asia had fulfilled what was believed to be only the first phase of her territorial ambitions; in the minds of Lord Curzon and of Kipling, her attempts to probe with reconnaissance parties the mountain barrier that separated her armies from India produced apprehensions that the event proved to be disproportionate.

  But here again Asia came into the picture, for while Young-husband—bringing artillery into action, for the first and so far the last time in history, at 17,000 feet above sea level—was defeating the Tibetans, the Japanese, with much less of apology in their manner, were defeating the Russians in Manchuria. And only three years earlier, in the Boxer Rebellion, an international expedition had raised the siege of the Legation Quarter in Peking.

  Tibet did no more then than she had before, or has since, to gratify Europe’s curiosities about Asia. She continued, increasingly, to stimulate them; the extent to which she reciprocated them was inimical. Once four Tibetan boys (in the pages that follow, you will meet briefly the o
nly survivor of a sensible experiment that the Tibetans never got around to repeating) were sent to be educated at Rugby; and until the Chinese Communist forces took the country over, in 1950, the sons of noblemen quite often went to school in India, learning (among other things) the English language. Europe would have welcomed Tibetans gladly, as she has welcomed travelers and students from every other Asiatic country, but whereas—broadly speaking—Europe wants like anything to go to Tibet, Tibet has never evinced the slightest desire to go to Europe.

  She has, moreover, made it as difficult as possible for Europeans, or indeed for any non-Tibetans, to set foot on Tibetan territory, however impeccable their credentials. The veil of secrecy, or perhaps rather of exclusiveness, which was lifted by Young-husband and then so tantalizingly dropped again, has in the last fifty years been effectively penetrated by very few, and of these it is safe to say that not one attained to the remarkable position that the author of this book, toward the end of his five years’ residence in Lhasa, found himself occupying in the entourage of the young Dalai Lama.

  The European traveler is accustomed to seeing Asia, or anyhow the backwoods of Asia, from above. By that I mean that, although at times his situation may be precarious and his resources slender, the European is generally a good deal better off than the primitive people through whose territory he is passing. He possesses things that they do not—money and firearms, soap and medicines, tents and can openers; he has, moreover, in another part of the planet a government that, should he get into trouble, will try to get him out of it. So the foreigner tends to ride upon the high though not very reliable horse of privilege, and to view the backwoods and their denizens from above.

  It was otherwise with Herr Harrer. When, in 1943, he made a third and successful attempt to escape from an internment camp at Dehra Dun and headed for Tibet, he was seeing Asia from below. He traveled on foot, carried his few possessions on his back, and slept on the ground in the open. He was a fugitive, with no status, no papers, and very limited funds. For a well-found expedition to follow his circuitous winter route across the Changthang plateau and down to Lhasa would have been a creditable feat; as performed by Harrer and his companion, Aufschnaiter, the journey was an astonishing tour de force. When they reached Lhasa, they were penniless and in rags.

  Though there was no shred of justification for their presence in the Tibetan capital, they met with great kindness there, and the various subterfuges that they had practiced upon officials along the route aroused merriment rather than indignation. They had, nevertheless, every reason to expect to be expelled from the country, and although the war was now over, Harrer assumed, on rather slender grounds, that expulsion would mean their re-internment in India. He spoke by now fairly fluent Tibetan, though with a country accent that amused the sophisticates of Lhasa, and he never ceased to entreat permission to stay where he was and to do useful work for the government.

  I have not met Herr Harrer, but from the pages that follow, he emerges as a sensible, unassuming, and very brave man, with simple tastes and solid standards. It is clear that from the first the Tibetans liked him, and it must, I think, have been his integrity of character that led the authorities to connive at, if never formally to authorize, his five years’ sojourn in Lhasa. During this period he rose—always, it would seem, because of the confidence he inspired rather than because he angled for preferment—from being a destitute and alien vagabond to a well-rewarded post as tutor and confidant of the young Dalai Lama. Of this fourteen-year-old potentate, Harrer, who was certainly closer to him than any foreigner (with the possible exception of Sir Charles Bell) has been to any of his predecessors, gives a fascinating and sympathetic account. When the Chinese Communists invaded Tibet, in 1950, Harrer’s parting from this lonely, able, and affectionate youth was clearly a wrench to both of them.

  It is unlikely that their conquerors will be able to alter the Tibetan character, so curiously compounded of mysticism and jollity, of shrewdness and superstition, of tolerance and strict convention; but the ancient, ramshackle structure of Tibetan society, over which the Dalai Lama in his successive Incarnations presides, is full of flaws and anachronisms, and will scarcely survive in its traditional form the ideological stresses to which it is now being subjected. It is the luckiest of chances that Herr Harrer should have had, and should have made such admirable use of, the opportunity to study on intimate terms a people with whom the West is now denied even the vestigial contacts that it had before. The story of what he did and what he saw equals in strangeness Mr. Heyerdahl’s account of his voyage on the Kon-Tiki; and it is told, I am happy to say, in the same sort of simple, unpretentious style.

  PETER FLEMING

  Preface

  All our dreams begin in youth. As a child I found the achievements of the heroes of our day far more inspiring than book learning. The men who went out to explore new lands, or with toil and self-sacrifice fitted themselves to become champions in the field of sport, the conquerors of the great peaks—to imitate such men was the goal of my ambition.

  But I lacked the advice and guidance of experienced counselors and so wasted many years before I realized that one must not pursue several aims at the same time. I had tried my hand at various forms of sport without achieving the success that might have satisfied me. So at last I determined to concentrate on the two that I had always loved for their close association with nature—skiing and mountain climbing.

  I had spent most of my childhood in the Alps and had occupied most of my time out of school climbing in summer and ski running in winter. My ambition was spurred on by small successes, and in 1936, I succeeded after severe training in gaining a place on the Austrian Olympic Team. A year later, I was the winner of the Downhill Race in the World Students’ Championships.

  In these contests, I experienced the joy of speed and the glorious satisfaction of a victory into which one has put all that one has. But victory over human rivals and the public recognition of success did not satisfy me. I began to feel that the only worthwhile ambition was to measure my strength against the mountains. So for whole months together, I practiced on rock and ice, until I became so fit that no precipice seemed to me unconquerable. But I had my troubles to contend with and had to pay for my experience. Once I fell 170 feet, and it was only by a miracle that I did not lose my life—and, of course, lesser mishaps were constantly occurring.

  Returning to life at the university always meant a big wrench. But I ought not to complain; I had opportunities for studying all sorts of works on mountaineering and travel, and as I devoured these books there grew in my mind, out of a complex of vague desires, the ambition to realize the dream of all climbers—to take part in an expedition in the Himalayas.

  But how dared an unknown youngster like myself toy with such ambitious dreams? Why, to get to the Himalayas one had either to be very rich or to belong to the nation whose sons at that time still had the chance of being sent to India on service. For a man who was neither British nor wealthy, there was only one way. One had to make use of one of those rare opportunities open even to outsiders and do something that made it impossible for one’s claims to be passed over. But what performance would put one in this class? Every Alpine peak has long been climbed, even the worst ridges and rock faces have yielded to the incredible skill and daring of mountaineers. But stay! There was still one unconquered precipice—the highest and most dangerous of all—the North Wall of the Eiger.

  This 6,700 feet of sheer rock face had never been climbed to the top. All attempts had failed, and many men had lost their lives in the attempt. A cluster of legends had gathered round this monstrous mountain wall, and at last the Swiss government had forbidden Alpinists to climb on it.

  No doubt that was the adventure I was looking for. If I broke through the virgin defenses of the North Wall, I would have a legitimate right, as it were, to be selected for an expedition to the Himalayas. I brooded long over the idea of attempting this almost hopeless feat. How, in 1938, I succeeded with my fr
iends Fritz Kasparek, Anderl Heckmair, and Wiggerl Vörg in climbing the dreaded wall has been described in several books.

  After this adventure, I spent the autumn in continuing my training with the hope always in mind that I would be invited to join in the Nanga Parbat Expedition planned for the summer of 1939. It seemed as though I would have to go on hoping, for winter came and nothing happened. Others were selected to reconnoiter the fateful mountain in Kashmir. And so nothing was left for me but to sign, with a heavy heart, a contract to take part in a ski film.

  Rehearsals were well advanced when I was suddenly called to the telephone. It was the long-desired summons to take part in the Himalaya Expedition, which was starting in four days. I had no need to reflect. I broke my contract without an instant’s hesitation, traveled home to Graz, spent a day in packing my things, and on the following day was en route for Antwerp with Peter Aufschnaiter, the leader of the German Nanga Parbat Expedition, Lutz Chicken, and Hans Lobenhoffer, the other members of the group.

  Up to that time there had been four attempts to climb this 25,000-foot mountain. All had failed. They had cost many lives, and so it had been decided to look for a new way up. That was to be our job, and the attack on the peak was planned for the following year.

  On this expedition to Nanga Parbat I succumbed to the magic of the Himalayas. The beauty of these gigantic mountains, the immensity of the lands on which they look down, the strangeness of the people of India—all these worked on my mind like a spell.