The Search for Shangri-La

Starting with James Hilton's fictional Shangri-La, Charles Allen travels through Tibet in search of the historical and religious traditions that fed Western ideas of a hidden Himalayan paradise. His journeys lead through monasteries, remote valleys and contested landscapes while he investigates how travellers, missionaries, explorers and scholars turned Tibet into a place of mystery in the European imagination.

Allen then looks behind that image to the older history of the Tibetan plateau, including the pre-Buddhist Bon tradition, the rise of Tibetan Buddhism and the political struggles that shaped the region before Chinese rule. The book combines travel writing with historical argument, questioning romantic visions of an unchanging spiritual sanctuary and presenting Tibet as a society formed by conflict, religious competition and contact with neighbouring powers.