I enjoyed this travel book – a day by day account of a naturalist\u2019s journey accompanying an expedition to a remote part of Tibet to observe the wildlife there, including a rare opportunity to see wild snow leopards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This took place back in the 1970s in a completely different time. There are a lot of detailed descriptions of Buddhism (and the various cultures practicing it), a focus on meditation, and a great deal of explanation of Eastern religious thought. In other words, this is not only a physical journey but a metaphysical one, and if you are OK with that you\u2019ll enjoy the book more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I especially liked the descriptions of the lonely and beautiful places that were (at that time) isolated and less traveled by westerners. Watching out for snow leopards created a tension that built throughout the book, and the resolution of this tension was both unique and ingenious – so I don\u2019t want to spoil anything here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes I had trouble with the author\u2019s attitudes – he was kind of a jerk to the locals occasionally. Even though he had recently been through a lot with the death of his wife it felt like his short temper flared up at the oddest times. After spending a long time at the remote location in the spiritual heart of the area contemplating Buddhism and mindfulness, it took less than a week for him to start complaining about his travel companions. From the amount of energy and research he has put into his Buddhist studies and practice I felt like he got remarkably little in return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Next I am reading The Vegetarian by Han Kang.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I enjoyed this travel book – a day by day account of a naturalist\u2019s journey accompanying an expedition to a remote part of Tibet to observe the wildlife there, including a rare opportunity to see wild snow leopards. This took place back in the 1970s in a completely different time. There are a lot of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-3779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-YX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}