Every once in a while I come across a particularly noteworthy coffeetable book. Today I want to spotlight one such wonderful book, Matthieu Ricard’s stunning Tibet: An Inner Journey.
Tibet exerts a pull that few other countries can match. Partly it’s the country’s high solitude and mountain-ringed inaccessibility. Partly it’s the culture’s association with a rich, esoteric and austere spirituality. Today, its precarious position, uneasily negotiating co-existence with China, makes its allure even more poignant.
Matthieu Ricard’s book, Tibet: An Inner Journey, is a fitting testament to Tibet’s enduring traditions and attractions. In his introduction, Ricard writes, “In this book I have sought to illustrate the surviving elements of traditional Tibet: its spirituality, the purity and grandeur of its landscape, its festivals and its nomadic and peasant populations.”
In page after page of evocative photos and eloquent accounts, informed with an urgent energy, Ricard grandly realizes this quest. His writing is informed and compelling; his photographs are amazing for their technical brilliance and even more for their profound humanity.
Tibet: An Inner Journey is a rare eye-, mind- and heart-opening triumph, a book that is as beautiful, haunting, and inspiring as the land and the people it so expansively celebrates.
[Tibet: An Inner Journey; text and photography by Matthieu Ricard; published by Thames & Hudson; hardcover; 232 pages;$45.]
For information on Adventure Collection members’ trips to Tibet, visit AdventureCollection.com.
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