As a precocious youngster I devoured Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian climber who after World War II became tutor to the young Dalai Lama in Tibet.
I still have the newspaper clippings of the thrilling escape of the Dalai Lama into India from Chinese troops in 1959. I then had no idea that over 50 years later I would myself see the golden roofs of the gigantic Potala Palace in Lhasa and cross the vast plateau with its nomads and herds of yaks.
Roof of the Potala Palace
