Tibet

I’m reading Patrick French’s Tibet Tibet having started it a year ago and then got sidetracked. Now seems a good time to pick it up again having recently finished Rob Lilwall’s Cycling Home from Siberia (in which he passed through Tibet) and James Hilton’s Lost Horizon – the classic (and surprisingly short) story of Shangri-la which was supposed to be somewhere in Tibet. Interestingly, the Chinese town of Zhongdian in Yunnan province near the Tibetan border has claimed that it is the fabled city and has formally changed its name to Shangri-la. How can a real place also be a fictitious place? Anyway, I’m planning on going there in April; very excited about that. Have just ordered the 1937 film version directed by Frank Capra. Liz and I recently watched Scorsese’s 1997 film, Kundun, about the young Dalai Lama, which we actually found a bit dull. And today, the real Dalai Lama starts his US visit and will meet Obama tomorrow. And that's enough about Tibet for one day.