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Book of the Week: Colin Thubron - To a Mountain in Tibet

Book of the Week: Colin Thubron - To a Mountain in Tibet: Episode 5

Factual: Travel

To a Mountain in Tibet

Episode 5

Colin Thubron - To a Mountain in Tibet

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Colin Thubron - To a Mountain in Tibet, Episode 5

Near the top of Mount Kailas, the pilgrims cluster and cries of exultation are heard.

On Mount Kailas, the air thins, the pilgrims cluster, and there is a cry of 'victory to the gods'. Read by Stephen Boxer.

"By trekkers' standards our party is small and swift: a guide, a cook, a horse-man, myself. We move scattered above the river, while loan traders pass us the other way, leading their stocky horse and mule-trains between lonely villages. They look fierce and open, and laughingly meet your eyes. The delicacy of the plains has gone..."

Renowned travel writer Colin Thubron is about to climb Mount Kailas in Tibet, one of the holiest places in the world and hardly visited by westerners. Its slopes are rugged, glacial, and peopled by the toughest types alive. It'Its slopes are also full of stories: Hindu and Buddhist tales of struggle, devotion and intrigue. But on from these lower reaches, Kailas's peak rises sacrosanct. Forbiddingly distant. And it is here that Thubron casts his gaze, then walks towards, as listeners can discover in his new account.

5.Near the top of Mt Kailas, the air thins, the pilgrims cluster, and there is a cry of 'victory to the gods'...

Read by Stephen Boxer.

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Travel writer Colin Thubron's account of climbing the holy Mount Kailas in Tibet

Travel writer Colin Thubron's account of climbing the holy Mount Kailas in Tibet. Read by Stephen Boxer

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