Lost in Tibet
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From the book
Flying 'the Hump'
British Mission in Lhasa
Chinese Mission in Lhasa
Tibetan independence
Chinese invasion
The Dalai Lama
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Richard Starks
Miriam Murcutt
Other books by authors
Along The River
that Flows Uphill
Lost in
Tibet
by Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt
The first Americans to reach Lhasa
Americans first reached the Forbidden City of Lhasa in 1922. That was when an anthropologist named Dr. William McGovern arrived in the Tibetan capital, after traveling overland from India as part of a British mission.
The second American to reach Lhasa was Charles Suydam Cutting, a globe-trotting naturalist and investment banker. He was also an avid sportsman (he was the 1926 US Amateur Singles Court Tennis Champion); a glittering socialite; and the man credited with introducing the Lhasa Apso, a Dalai Lama favorite, to the dog-loving American public.
Cutting arrived in Lhasa in 1935 and returned two years later with his wife, Helen, the first American woman to reach the city.
Cutting's second visit overlapped that of Theos Bernard, an American lawyer-turned-Buddhist, who later became the first American llama. The Cuttings made a point of avoiding Bernard, even though the three travelers were the only Americans in the same (small) city in a country the size of Western Europe.
Bernard was followed by the fifth and sixth Americans - Ilia Tolstoy and Brooke Dolan. They were sent on a secret mission by US President Franklin Roosevelt (and were thus the first of many American spies to enter Lhasa) near the end of 1942. They were also the first Americans to meet a Dalai Lama - the 14th and current one, who, of course, was then just a child.
"Tolstoy was a dashing, 39-year-old, aristocrat and former cavalry officer," says Lost in Tibet, "as well as the grandson of Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist who wrote War and Peace. Dolan was an independently wealthy, 34-year-old explorer who spoke Tibetan and understood the intricacies of the Buddhist faith. On paper, he was the ideal companion for Tolstoy, but unfortunately it soon transpired that the two men could not stand the sight of each other..."
The seventh, eighth,
ninth, tenth and eleventh Americans to reach the Tibetan capital - on
December 15, 1943 - were the five airmen (shown here) who had been
flying 'the Hump'
when they were forced to bail out after their plane was blown hundreds
of miles off course.They arrived in the Tibetan capital two years before Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet. It is their story that is told in Lost in Tibet.
"The five Americans were only dimly aware of the historic nature of their arrival in Lhasa," the book says. "Other travelers - whether explorers, missionaries, adventurers, fortune hunters, or spies - had given their all to reach this city. To them, the Tibetan capital was the culmination of all their dreams. It was for this moment that they had pressed on against unimaginable hardship and danger.
"But for the five Americans, their arrival was one they would barely remember, lost as it was in a numbing haze of South African brandy, Chinese wine, and Tibetan chang..."
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©
Richard Starks and Miriam Murcutt
Lost in Tibet
"A gripping, detailed account of a time and place that most Americans have never glimpsed." - Joint Forces Journal.
"The recreation of these airmen's experiences is well told, easy to read, and so realistically portrayed that the reader shares their experiences." - MyShelf.com.