The Forbidden Country
Tibetan Marches. By Andre Migot. Translated by Peter Fleming. (Hart-Davis, 18s.)
NOT even the news that the Chinese Communists have driven a motor road the thirteen hundred miles from Sinkiang to Lhasa can dispel the romantic haze through which the European glimpses Tibet.
Dr. Migot, in 1946, leapt eagerly at a chance to explore— religiously and archmologically—the mountain lands of Western China and Eastern Tibet. Yet he is a traveller by compulsion rather than conviction : 'What demon,' he writes, 'drives me forward on my travels when I know perfectly well that inner peace is here, within easy reach? But it's no good; I am quite incapable as yet of subduing the silly, sterile wanderlust with which Western culture has inflicted me.' This wanderlust pulls always against his yearning for the contemplative life, that inner tranquillity which comes only from study of the technique of meditation. He is most impressive when writing of his stay at the little monastery of Shengu where, `in the grip of a secret and compelling force,' he is initiated into Buddhist mySteries and given the password to further him down the path towards the ultimate ends of Lamaism.
From this it might be thought that Dr. Migot is an unworldly dreamer, little suited to the tribulations of Central Asian travel.
The contrary is true : 'Although one occasionally passed a decapitated human head tactfully fastened to a tree trunk beside the Vali, I did not take the alleged bandits very seriously.' Such insouciance could hardly be bettered by Sandy Arbuthnot himself. And when he met a further gang of bandits—evidently more worthy of serious attention—and was left without 'shoes, clothes, luggage, food or money, in a remote village, unable to speak a word of the local dialect, his reaction was tp roar with laughter. Dr. Migot never got as far as Lhasa but he penetrated to places where few, if any, Europeans had been before and observed all around him with perception and the liveliest sympathy.
He has been fortunate in his translator. There are few places where Mr. Fleming has not beep—though Dr. Migot has fotind out one or two of them—and there can be no one better qualified to
undertake such work. As might be expected, it is done smoothly and with style. As for Dr. Migot, one can only wish him the life of contemplation he desires, though hoping that first his sterile wanderlust will bear further fruit in the shape of books as good as
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