Brave the Icy Wastes: When Explorers Become Eternal
Travelers moving through Tibet one after another found themselves in awe of the snow-covered peaks' holy purity, the lakes' peaceful stillness, and the residents' calm contentedness. Yet a curious thing had occurred as soon as real Westerners entered these frozen lands: their curses, malicious guesses, and harsh criticisms evaporated without any trace. Those previously arrogant white men, who had once regarded Tibet with contempt, overnight became its devotees, pursuers, and dreamers.
During the 19th century, Lhasa began closing its doors to outsiders, and hostility toward Westerners grew increasingly intense. Consequently, Western explorers faced considerably worse fortune than their predecessors. This obstruction did not deter them; rather, it sparked an even more alluring and irresistible dream of the snow-covered lands in their hearts. At the time, almost no Westerner could enter the Holy City. To those who had never set foot in Tibet, it remained the last untouched sanctuary on Earth.
A peculiar and arbitrary map emerged, sketched with concentric barriers of varying degrees. As Michèle Taylor observed, the Tibetans' closed-door policy—also endorsed by the Qing court—only made things more alluring for Westerners. Although they had left their footprints across Africa, South America, and the Arctic, the Holy City remained beyond their grasp, even at its very gates. All they could do was gaze longingly, never penetrating its mystery or gaining its sacred wisdom.
In 1844, a rather farcical episode saw the French missionary Évariste Régis Huc (1813–1860) and his companion disguise themselves, darkening their skin and posing as itinerant monks on a journey from Gansu to the Holy City. The barriers along the way—the outer borders, the inner boundaries of the central provinces, and the enigmatic snow-covered lands beyond—became more heavily guarded the closer one approached the Holy City.
At the time, Huc was one of only a handful of Westerners to leave Tibet alive, largely because Tibetan authorities and locals regarded him as a harmless missionary with no reason to cause him harm. Unbeknownst to him, while he was smugly congratulating himself on his clever trick, his movements were being closely watched by officials. Not long afterward, Qishan, then the Imperial Resident in Tibet, ordered his expulsion. After returning to China proper, Huc finished writing his travel account, *Travels in Tartary and Tibet*.
During the same era, the British clergyman Thomas Manning (1772–1840) also travelled to Lhasa. His Tibetan notes were, unfortunately, sometimes too brief, and at other times discontinuous and banal. As for the book, its author's multidisciplinary expertise gave it extraordinary depth and breadth. In addition to its literary qualities, readers were fascinated by its eclectic and often quirky observations. Most striking were his overdrawn depictions of Tibet, which simultaneously startled and fascinated Western audiences, provoking intense interest in the forbidden land.
In the 19th century, during Britain's glorious Victorian era, British explorers unquestionably became the foremost figures in Tibetan exploration—hence the "stage of British explorers." Meanwhile, the man in question seemed unable to view Tibet with aesthetic appreciation, and his impression of Lhasa was negative, likely because his stay there had been unsatisfactory. His reports mainly emphasized the city's dirt and poverty, so they had little significant impact on the Western world.
In that era, British colonial expansion surged without letup. After the full annexation of India, the East India Company’s aggressive ambitions turned toward the Himalayan foothill states and Tibet. This culminated in a successful British invasion of the snow-covered territories in 1888, launched from a base in Sikkim, which opened a new phase in the exploration of Tibet by British adventurers, officials, and missionaries. Among these figures, the British missionary Annie Royle Taylor (1855–1922) stood out as particularly notable.
Though barred from the Holy City, she earned worldwide renown as the first Western woman to enter Tibet. Her expedition, undertaken in 1892, was driven by devout faith, and she was physically frail yet spiritually resolute. In a move that added to her legend, Taylor chose, after completing her seven-month journey, to live quietly in the Chumbi Valley—known as Tibet's "southern gateway"—where she ran a small shop for many years. Around the same time, a group of Britons including Arnold Henry Savage-Landor and Deasy also entered Tibet. Very little is known about H.
Judging by the photographs that have survived, Deasy was a young man during his Tibetan stay. Most of his travelogue *In the Forbidden Land* deals with his travels across Tibet's empty regions; his handful of references to entering settled areas are short and cursory. While his dates of birth and death are unknown, he is known to have served as a captain with the British XVIII Hussars. He regarded the Tibetan people as, for the most part, filthy and neglected.
Of all the villages he entered, he recounted: "It was the dirtiest and most dilapidated housing we had ever seen—and never wished to see again." The villagers, he noted, suffered from blindness, lameness, or a host of other ailments, their clothes tattered and filthy, as they lounged lazily on the sunbaked mud ground. Nevertheless, he regarded merchant caravans and monks with warmth, presumably because they had lent him a hand.
Another notable figure operating in Central Asia and Tibet at that time was the Swedish explorer Sven Anders Hedin (1865–1952), who worked for the British Indian authorities. As for the caravan leader, he commented that the man was "handsome, dignified, tall, and highly respected." A young monk at Kumbum Monastery also made a strong impression on him, appearing intelligent and learned, fluent with ease in Chinese, Mongolian, and Tibetan, and offering valuable information thanks to his extensive knowledge.
Hedin's perspective on Tibetan culture was fairly balanced and objective, likely due to his scholarly disposition. Where other Western explorers differed, he viewed Tibetan nomads as largely honest, kind, simple, and winsome, and he remarked on their philosophical stance toward life and death, their tranquil state of mind, and their unconcerned lifestyle. His careful record of his four journeys into Tibet, along with these observations, was presented in *Trans-Himalaya*, a publication that provoked considerable excitement.
Love for the Untamed Land
Among the West's many exoticized constructs, Tibet stood as the ultimate canvas for boundless imagination. By the 20th century, Western fantasies had concentrated on three sacred icons: the Holy City, the Potala Palace, and the Dalai Lama himself. Even though 19th-century explorers had mapped much of Tibet and uncovered many of its truths, this did not lessen the land's mystique; it only intensified.
Robert B. Ekvall (1898–1983) stood out in that era, born near the Gansu-Qinghai border to parents who had served as long-term missionaries in Tibet, and he was fluent in both Chinese and Tibetan, with a profound attachment to the local people. After he moved to the U.S. in 1951, he relied on his recollections to produce Tibetan Skylines . At the same time, Britain’s exploratory zeal endured, while the American frontier spirit and French chivalric romanticism contributed to a proliferation of travel memoirs.
Rather than a sensationalist narrative, the book read as a wistful memoir that fostered lasting Western sympathy for Tibet. Ekvall's affectionate nicknames—"Fan-Ear Jiancun," "Flat-Face Renzhen," "Kindhearted Dancho Tsering"—made his friends feel vividly present. He stood apart from shallow adventurers by portraying Tibetan happiness and grief with fine-grained intimacy. Above all, the volume was filled with admiration for Tibetan character and scenery, to the point that Ekvall frequently appeared to cast off his Western identity and blend into the local way of life.
Born in Paris in 1868, Alexandra David-Néel earned recognition as a celebrated figure in both Eastern and Western scholarly circles. After studying Sanskrit in Sri Lanka and India, she toured Europe as an opera singer before heading back to Asia, where she journeyed through Burma, Japan, Korea, and China. Her enduring fascination with Tibet drove her to mount four expeditions there over the course of her life. Her adventurous feats won her widespread acclaim among Western audiences. The publication of her travelogue, My Journey to Lhasa , stirred enormous excitement throughout the West.
Her writings—marked by both substantial historical significance and literary grace, infused with a romantic spirit of discovery—offer meticulous, scholarly accounts of the customs, etiquette, faith, peoples, urban layouts, and architectural forms she observed upon arriving at the Holy City. They also narrate her extraordinary exploits, including disguising herself by staining her skin with charcoal and ink, and pretending to be a beggar to escape bandits along the road, among other adventures.
I felt as though I were living inside a romantic novel, one set among the lowest strata of society—a stratum filled with marvels and exoticism!" In her prose, the Holy City embodied a utopian charm and purity, while every Tibetan vista was at once majestic and enchanting. The Tibetan people, she wrote, lived joyfully, as free as birds. And even in the most remote corners of Tibet, travelers unfailingly offered a cup of hot tea to passersby—a humble yet profound act of kindness.
Invited by the Kashag to undertake surveys in Tibet, geologist Henry Hubert Hayden (1869–1923) wrote an expedition journal, Sport and Travel in the Highlands of Tibet: A Geological Exploration , that, as the work of a scholar, mostly presented even-handed, factual findings. In it, he describes how every person there luxuriated in the brilliant sunlight, living with the liberty of birds under the blue sky, and carrying within their souls a happiness gene.
However, among the descriptions of Tibetan women, one passage is particularly striking. It says they adore gemstones: women don elaborate jeweled headpieces, while the affluent layer necklaces of emerald, coral, amber, and pearl. Their features are mostly alike—not delicate, with the broad, flat face and almond-shaped eyes typical of the Mongoloid type; their skin is somewhat fairer than other Easterners', their cheeks are rosy, and their hair is always black.
The botanist Joseph Rock (1884–1962) never wed, and his notes suggest he formed no lasting friendships or romantic ties. His biographer, S. B. Sutton, speculated that the untamed landscape of Tibet itself may have been his one true love. It is also said that “Even the poorest wear a golden locket on their chests, containing emeralds and inscribed papers bearing charms, spells, or blessings.”
Legend holds that Lost Horizon drew its inspiration, to a significant degree, from Rock’s travel accounts. In his work The Discovery of Dreamlike Shangri-La, Rock carefully recorded the religious practices, chieftain systems, funerary rites, and other cultural and geographical characteristics of Yunnan’s Tibetan areas, supplementing the text with numerous photographs. These writings stirred a deep fascination and admiration for the East among Western audiences. This article is a translation of a piece from Dalu’s blog, titled The Deeper, The Love Grows.