To a Mountain in Tibet [Hardcover]

`A master at the top of his craft...brilliant and strangely bewitching book.' --The Oldie, January 18, 2011

`The subject matter - gloomy, perhaps, in other hands - shines in Thubron's beautiful prose' --* The Lady,

`The writing glitters. Thubron has always been a travel-writing stylist, in the lyrical mould of Patrick Leigh Fermor, but with the quartz-like eye of Freya Stark.' --The Scotsman,

`This is a bold and brave journey, an elegiac book by a master of prose at the height of his powers.' --Evening Standard,

`given that Thubron has shown himself over a lifetime's work to be our finest, is seems fitting that what is as much memoir as travel book should have as its setting the greatest spiritual pilgrimage the East has to offer' --The Daily Telegraph

'Thubron's books celebrate the terrible, pitiful, beautiful, human condition ... To a Mountain in Tibet offers no redemption and no conclusion. Instead, it is an elegy for everything that makes us human' --The Guardian

'the most profound and revealing thing [Thubron] has ever written' --The Spectator

`As he makes the arduous ritual circle of Kailas, the rocks and gullies come alive with their sacred meanings and give us an understanding of faiths held with a passion unfamiliar in the West. His profound, elegant and fascinating little book is much weightier than it appears' --Daily Mail

`This is not only a book about Tibet; it is a book about Colin Thubron and much the richer for that' --Country Life

`Thubron's descriptive writing is as dazzling as the scenery. His scholarship on the area's religious and political history is enthralling'
--Financial Times

`Daring and brilliant. Thubron has crafted a book which beautifully describes one man's experience of loss, familial love, and even the state of mortal indeterminacy itself - how we all keep our memories, consoled and bewildered by turns, the sun on our faces, and the birds carrying above' --The Observer

`A master class in travel writing that's also infused with the author's "shadowy melancholy" of ageing and grief...Thubron showcases here all the skills that have earned him the champion's belt as Britain's best living travel writer' --Sunday Times

'It could have been written for radio in how vividly it makes you see pictures, hear sounds, notice the worn trainers on the man who joined them for part of the trek, catch the tap of the sherpa's staff. It sounds like a conversation with the listener's imagination' --Daily Telegraph

`With a landscape that easily provokes superlatives or just stupefied wonder, and a culture steeped in esoteric beliefs, Tibet needs a writer of Thubron's caliber to do it justice' --Lonely Planet

`This is not only a book about Tibet; it is a book about Colin Thubron and much the richer for that' --Country Life

`Thubron's descriptive writing is as dazzling as the scenery. His scholarship on the area's religious and political history is enthralling' --Financial Times

`Exquisitely written, To a Mountain in Tibet is not just a travelogue; it amounts to a heart-felt hosanna to the travails of walking.'...`Colin Thubron takes us back to the days of exploration when the going was rough. To a Mountain in Tibet, a matchless work of literary travel, confirms Thubron as a wise and discriminate prospector in the affairs of man, as well as quite a heroic walker' --Irish Times

`He describes both landscapes and humans in sharp poetic detail and provides a deceptively simple account of both the inner and outer journey' --The Week

`In an elegiac mood and powerful prose. Thubron considers the significance of his journey, the poetry and politics of the region, and the bleak landscapes that reflect solitude' --Saga

`an utterly absorbing read ... an elegiac meditation on life, death, family and mortality. Beautiful' --Wanderlust

'Thubron is an impressive prose stylist..he writes with great elegiac precision' --Times Literary Supplement

4 star review

`this latest travelogue confirms Colin Thubron as one of the greatest contemporary travel writers' --Time Out, May 2011

A 'wonderfully poetic tale' --Compass

`Colin Thurbron's ode to a mystical mountain in Tibet [is] not to be missed' --Daily Telegraph

`It's a pleasure to follow Colin Thubron's hesitant pilgrimage... the last of the great post-war British travel writers.' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly

`Amid the desolation there is a beauty that comes not only from the things that Thubron chooses to describe but from the way in which he describes them.' --The Tablet

`What Thubron provides in his inimitable way is an account of both fellow pilgrims and himself.'
--Geographical

`I am haunted by its spare simplicity and beauty'
--The Daily Telegraph

"His measures prose matches the region's stark beauty. Refreshing." --The Financial Times

"haunting and profound."
--Sunday Express Magazine

The doyen of travel writing at his elegiac and luminous best