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Tibetan Venture
The expedition to Eastern Tibet by Andre Guibaut and Louis Liotard cost Liotard his life. Guibaut's book, written five years later, movingly portrays a sense of impending catastrophe.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
240 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1988
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 29, 2022
In May 1940 who young French scientist / explorers set forth on their second Tibetan expedition. Andre Guibaut and Louis Victor Liotard headed out beyond the known map to the wilds of Tibet visited by only a few pioneering explorers before them. Their anthropological and geographical works involved mapping and surveying - of the land and rivers but also taking measurements of the Tibetan's themselves, and recording their customs.
The largest part of the book however deals with the violent ambush of the men and their team, and the death of Louis Liotard. Tibet was well known for it wild and old world brigands, so this type of confrontation was always a risk, but this attack took the men by surprise, and Guibaut was lucky to have been able to escape. Bullets had pierced his clothing in four places (two bullets) although he was unharmed, his two Tibetan assistants who survived, Tchrachy with a bullet lodged near his spine, Yong Rine miraculously unharmed, make a long journey for a large monastery. Here they recuperate while a search is made of the pass where the attack took place, but they find Liotard and Tze, the cook are dead.
After spending a number of weeks at the Monastery, the men make their return journey to Chinese civilisation. He arrives back September 1940, some four months after departing.
Well written Guibaut explains well the uncertainty after the attack - he is separated from his companion, one moving forward from the yaks, the other retreating backwards, and the desperate scramble to escape - wanting to return and check on his friend, but unable; the weeks in the Monastery, while they negotiate for guides and assistance to return to China; even the uncertainty of the position of France - Vichy France vs the Free French, while was all in play as he was isolated in Tibet.
Unlikely to be a commonly found book, it is worth keeping an eye out for.
4 stars
P167 - on the return ride
The largest part of the book however deals with the violent ambush of the men and their team, and the death of Louis Liotard. Tibet was well known for it wild and old world brigands, so this type of confrontation was always a risk, but this attack took the men by surprise, and Guibaut was lucky to have been able to escape. Bullets had pierced his clothing in four places (two bullets) although he was unharmed, his two Tibetan assistants who survived, Tchrachy with a bullet lodged near his spine, Yong Rine miraculously unharmed, make a long journey for a large monastery. Here they recuperate while a search is made of the pass where the attack took place, but they find Liotard and Tze, the cook are dead.
After spending a number of weeks at the Monastery, the men make their return journey to Chinese civilisation. He arrives back September 1940, some four months after departing.
Well written Guibaut explains well the uncertainty after the attack - he is separated from his companion, one moving forward from the yaks, the other retreating backwards, and the desperate scramble to escape - wanting to return and check on his friend, but unable; the weeks in the Monastery, while they negotiate for guides and assistance to return to China; even the uncertainty of the position of France - Vichy France vs the Free French, while was all in play as he was isolated in Tibet.
Unlikely to be a commonly found book, it is worth keeping an eye out for.
4 stars
P167 - on the return ride
"... but like them I took great pieces of meat in my hands and tore them apart with my teeth; like them I wiped my greasy hands on my clothes with a gesture that had very soon become second-nature to me. It doesn't take long to strip off the varnish of civilisation."P175 - on being reunited with Chinese civilisation.
"I gazed with particular excitement - may the reader excuse my childishness - at a plain toothbrush in a glass, and could not decide which caused me the greatest pleasure, the brush or the glass."
April 20, 2018
Not the most readable but so interesting because it is a snapshot of a time, people, a way of life that we'll never see again. Though the Tibetans still, proudly hold onto as much of their culture as they can, the Chinese have brought massive restrictions and strict, even brutal, control. Travel and culture there will never be anything like it was then. (on the positive side, though thieving is still an issue, you're not likely to get killed.)
It's a shame some of Andre G's notes were lost. I would have liked more of his ethnological views. He seemed to be more open and empathetic to these people than most foreigners would have been.
"Tibetans are still a heavily oppressed people. Thousands of Tibetans attempt to flee over the Himalayas every year. The official punishment for this is imprisonment, though many are shot by border guards, and those who remain live under constant military surveillance. It is illegal to carry a photograph of the Dalai Lama or a Tibetan flag, or even to utter the words “Bo rangzen” (“Free Tibet”), yet many still do, and arrest, imprisonment, re-education, and torture are rife."
from Fodor's Travel, Tibet Travel Guide.
It's a shame some of Andre G's notes were lost. I would have liked more of his ethnological views. He seemed to be more open and empathetic to these people than most foreigners would have been.
"Tibetans are still a heavily oppressed people. Thousands of Tibetans attempt to flee over the Himalayas every year. The official punishment for this is imprisonment, though many are shot by border guards, and those who remain live under constant military surveillance. It is illegal to carry a photograph of the Dalai Lama or a Tibetan flag, or even to utter the words “Bo rangzen” (“Free Tibet”), yet many still do, and arrest, imprisonment, re-education, and torture are rife."
from Fodor's Travel, Tibet Travel Guide.
April 12, 2015
When Andre Guibaut and Louis Victor Liotard reached Tibet in 1940, they were headed for a region of the country that was unmapped and largely unknown to the western world. This was their second expedition to Tibet, but the first to the high plateaux inhabited by nomadic herdsmen notorious for their brutal hostility to intruders.
The aims of the mission were geographical and anthropological, and "Tibetan Venture" covers both aspects of the journey. But the heart of this gripping book is the death of Liotard, who was shot by bandits, leaving Guibaut at once grieving for his close friend and fearfully alone in an alien and dangerous land.
Guibaut conveys the explorers’ excitement as they set out on their journey. “We are at the end of the world—of our world—and on the fringe of a new one,” he writes. He is drawn to the desolate splendor of the land and driven by the challenge of discovery: “We must find out all we can.” Trained in ethnology, he is fascinated by Tibetan customs and the pervasive spirituality, and he is eager to understand the fierce Ngolo tribe of the plateaux, so different from the farmers of the valleys.
But from the first, the expedition’s mood is unsettled. Before setting out, the men learn that France has fallen to the Germans, news that infuses the mission with patriotism but also tinges it with sorrow. And gradually the journey grows ominous. Mishaps occur. There are delays. A sinister group of horsemen appear and reappear. Finally, at a pass, brigands ambush the group and among those killed is Liotard. Distraught, disoriented, Guibaut, accompanied by two guides—one badly injured—makes his way to a monastery, where the lamas organize his passage to safety.
Guibaut is a superb narrator: intelligent, self-aware, humane, honest, and keenly observant. He is a sophisticated writer and his open acknowledgement that he is telling a story intensifies the narrative’s power.
What if they had not at a certain moment delayed? he asks. What if they had turned right, as they had been warned to do, rather than left? Would their fate have been averted?
“When one reflects upon the circumstances of well-known exploring disasters,” he says, “…one is sometimes amazed at the apparent acquiescence of leaders of expeditions in the decrees of fate. Each time it seems that they have been driven to the crisis, at the very place where it was fated they should die, like lambs led to the slaughter. One is over-inclined I think to criticize these expeditions in a ‘wise after the event’ manner and to study them like Greek tragedies, forgetting that, though the author of a play may know in advance how it will end, the actors of these real dramas who write them by their deeds, know nothing of the ultimate turn of events.”
As Pamela Nightingale says in her introduction, Guibaut’s story has been rendered still more poignant by the events which have occurred since the book was written—by the Communist takeover of Tibet and the destruction of the monasteries, the shrines, the spirituality so vital to Tibetan life. The world described in this moving book has disappeared.
The aims of the mission were geographical and anthropological, and "Tibetan Venture" covers both aspects of the journey. But the heart of this gripping book is the death of Liotard, who was shot by bandits, leaving Guibaut at once grieving for his close friend and fearfully alone in an alien and dangerous land.
Guibaut conveys the explorers’ excitement as they set out on their journey. “We are at the end of the world—of our world—and on the fringe of a new one,” he writes. He is drawn to the desolate splendor of the land and driven by the challenge of discovery: “We must find out all we can.” Trained in ethnology, he is fascinated by Tibetan customs and the pervasive spirituality, and he is eager to understand the fierce Ngolo tribe of the plateaux, so different from the farmers of the valleys.
But from the first, the expedition’s mood is unsettled. Before setting out, the men learn that France has fallen to the Germans, news that infuses the mission with patriotism but also tinges it with sorrow. And gradually the journey grows ominous. Mishaps occur. There are delays. A sinister group of horsemen appear and reappear. Finally, at a pass, brigands ambush the group and among those killed is Liotard. Distraught, disoriented, Guibaut, accompanied by two guides—one badly injured—makes his way to a monastery, where the lamas organize his passage to safety.
Guibaut is a superb narrator: intelligent, self-aware, humane, honest, and keenly observant. He is a sophisticated writer and his open acknowledgement that he is telling a story intensifies the narrative’s power.
What if they had not at a certain moment delayed? he asks. What if they had turned right, as they had been warned to do, rather than left? Would their fate have been averted?
“When one reflects upon the circumstances of well-known exploring disasters,” he says, “…one is sometimes amazed at the apparent acquiescence of leaders of expeditions in the decrees of fate. Each time it seems that they have been driven to the crisis, at the very place where it was fated they should die, like lambs led to the slaughter. One is over-inclined I think to criticize these expeditions in a ‘wise after the event’ manner and to study them like Greek tragedies, forgetting that, though the author of a play may know in advance how it will end, the actors of these real dramas who write them by their deeds, know nothing of the ultimate turn of events.”
As Pamela Nightingale says in her introduction, Guibaut’s story has been rendered still more poignant by the events which have occurred since the book was written—by the Communist takeover of Tibet and the destruction of the monasteries, the shrines, the spirituality so vital to Tibetan life. The world described in this moving book has disappeared.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews