Between Heaven & Hell: Trouble and Joy in a Lost Himalayan Paradise

by Bob Shacochis

In a world that seems connected by the mere touch of a computer key, is there any place left where life goes on as it did during ancient times, separate and idyllic, uncontaminated by modernity? The vaunted novelist, traveler, and National Book Award winner Bob Shacochis decides to find out. “There’s so little left of the world,” he writes in "Between Heaven and Hell"—a new Byliner Original in the tradition of travel narratives by Peter Matthiessen and Colin Thubron—“where men and women live their lives in the luminous presence—and ominous throb—of its physical sacredness.”

Toward this end, he enlists his intrepid wife, Cat, and flies to Nepal, where they join up with a mismatched band of travelers, including the so-called Bangkok Bachelors, two adventurers who arrive “stewed in whiskey and well-ingested recreationals.” They mount horses and set off toward the ancient kingdom of Mustang, a land formerly forbidden to outsiders, where they traverse rocky, windswept deserts, climb vertiginous slopes, and creep along terrifying cliff side paths that find Cat, with her fear of heights, frozen in place, unable to go a single step further. Thank goodness for the nightly cocktails in the tents!

In the course of their travels, they discover an imperfect paradise, an old world in which the citizens of Mustang are trying to gain entrance into a new order of economic opportunity and political freedom. "Between Heaven and Hell" is both an eloquent tribute to the trekker’s ideal of an unspoiled realm and a poignant testament to the inevitability of change even amid the icy, enduring altitudes of the Himalayas.

77 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Bob Shacochis is an American fiction writer and literary journalist.
He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

Reviews

[Amy Lou Jenkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can we invest our spirit in an unadulterated landscape and find sacredness? Bob Schacochis’ new travel adventure explores this question within a community of travelers. The Nepalese district of Mustang fosters the original Tibetan culture and was about as undeveloped as any place that harbors ancient culture can be (a highway has since cut the region). This seems to be the place where one would be able to explore the human connection to wilderness. Yet it is the focus on the people acting in response to the raw places, more than the place itself, which reveal the sinuous threads of meaning. Rest of review at http://www.examiner.com/review/book-r...

[Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick, easy, interesting, educational read with a surprising, thought-provoking end.