The Soul is in Tibet

“We gaze into the past and daydream about the eternal future. We manacle ourselves with the shackle of time. We fight phantoms. We trade our emotions for illusions of our memories and desires. The moment passes without our taking notice. And so our lives turn into a vale of tears. Past and future – they are strong links in the shackle of our mysery.”

Whose voice is heard by the novel’s protagonist in the Samye monastery, where he flees from a family tragedy hoping to bear the unbearable, comprehend the incomprehensible in the loneliness of a monk’s cell?

Two people from two different parts of the world, a man and a woman meet in Tibet. They’re both searching for the Road that can guide them back to themselves. They’re searching for the Silence that can answer their questions. This enterprise is not without its risks but they have nothing to lose: either they keep on living their broken lives in the noisy, teeming urban jungle where they’ve come from, or find spiritual peace at the top of the world, locked in the silence of six-thousand-meter high mountain peaks and endless snow fields. On their hazardous pilgrimage the protagonists are guided by Congka, the young buddhist monk who introduces them, and the reader, to Tibet’s religious, cultural and social mysteries.

The final destination of his torturous-majestic spirital journey is the Tibetans’ holiest mountain: Kailash.

It is this painfully beautiful, difficult but spiritually enriching and transcendental journey that the writer is inviting us.