![]() Matthiessen embarked on his journey in the autumn of 1973 at the invitation of the celebrated field biologist George Schaller, (whose photographs of the people and places of that trail we publish for the first time). Returning to its opening pages now, in a beautiful new Folio Society edition marking both the 40th anniversary of its initial publication and four years since Matthiessen’s death, nevertheless feels like an uncanny invitation to breathe a little more deeply and see a little more clearly. ![]() I’ve read the book a few times over the years, though never yet visited the places it describes. ![]() ![]() Since it was first published in 1978, The Snow Leopard has no doubt been the inspiration for more hippy trails and backpacker expeditions to Kathmandu and beyond than any other volume (it is unmovable at the top of Amazon’s “Himalayas” chart). ![]() No book I’ve read, certainly among those written in my lifetime, gives a more authentic account of a “journey of the heart” than Matthiessen’s celebrated trek to the Dolpo, the high, ancient Tibetan plateau of the Himalayas. I s it possible to be an armchair Zen Buddhist? That’s one of the questions that Peter Matthiessen’s great quest The Snow Leopard seems to present. ![]()
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