flickering pictures

National Geographic reprints the amazing first-person account of Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian soldier who escaped from a British P.O.W. camp in modern-day Pakistan and fled to Tibet, where he ended up as one of the Dalai Lama’s tutors. The article chronicles his extended stay in Lhasa, and originally ran 53 years ago.

Here’s an excerpt:

War had trapped our expedition in Karachi. Enemy aliens, we were interned in a British prisoner-of-war camp in India. We mountaineers decided to attempt an escape over the towering Himalayas.

I drew maps, studied Tibetan, hoarded money and medicines and other essentials.

After several abortive breaks we reached freedom. Our comrades, appalled by the hardships, turned back, but Aufschnaiter and I had struggled and bluffed our way across Tibet’s desolate Chang Tang, a wasteland that even the natives shun in winter (pages 6 and 10). We had subsisted on raw yak meat and yak-butter tea and dried meal. And now at last, after 21 months of wandering in which we had almost given up hope, the golden roofs of the Potala were in sight.

[…] My swimming and diving fascinated the picnickers. Few Lhasans know how to swim, because the Kyi River is unpleasantly cold and treacherous. I suspected that I was invited on many excursions as a sort of vaudeville act. But my ability proved a blessing. I managed to save three persons from drowning, among them the 14-year-old son of Foreign Minister Surkhang. The episode led to an intimate friendship with the family.

The Tibetans had by now accepted Aufschnaiter and me as citizens of Lhasa. We were consulted on every conceivable type of problem.

Aufschnaiter completed the water channel, greatly increasing the irrigation potential in the plain bordering Lhasa. The Government then asked him to repair the creaking old electric plant which powered the mint near Lhasa. Coolies who brought the boxed parts from India 20 years earlier did not appreciate the delicate nature of their cargo. It was always suspected that some crates were rolled down the Himalayan slopes. True or not, the plant had never worked very well.

An examination of the plant convinced Aufschnaiter that it could not be nursed to health. He proposed to harness the tumbling Kyi’s water power. There was grave concern about the possible reaction of the river gods, but Aufschnaiter beguiled the Government into letting him undertake the project.

I don’t have time to read all 17 pages just now, but you can bet I will. Harrer’s photos have been reprinted as well, and can be found in a slideshow on National Geographic’s site.

Link via Boing Boing.

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