I felt The Snow Leopard would be a fitting book following The Open Road, especially when Pico Iyer is also the one who introduced one of the editions of this book. This book also won the National Book Award in 1978 when it was published. Incidentally, Peter Matthiessen is the only author who won the National Book Award both in fiction & non-fiction categories.
… I began to appreciate the way it tells so many stories at the same time, and does what only the very best of the writers of discovery of discovery – Pamuk, Kapuscinski, Naipaul – do, which is to offer at once the story of a real, meticulously described trip, and also to outline a kind of ageless fable
Introduction
The book is a very detailed sojourn of naturalist (and a spiritual seeker) Peter Matthiessen & field biologist George Schaller through Nepal & Tibet with the purpose of finally finding the Lama of Shey on the Crystal Mountain.
The journey started with their intent to find & observe the Himalayan blue sheep, the bharal, and motivated by the author’s deep faith & practice of Zen Buddhism. Throughout the book, Zen & daily life of research are intertwined.
As in the chapter November 6 he writes:
I have a meditation place on Sumdo mountain, a broken rock outcrop like an alter set into the hillside, protected from all but the south wind by shards of granite & dense thorn. In the full sun it is warm..
Their journey starts late fall, end of September & continues through the early months of winter into November. This period incidentally is an almost no-no for casual travelers to this region of high altitude and snow storms & almost always remain cut off from the mainland during the high winter.
We have to bear in mind the time of their travel. Unlike today when there are some roads, some means of communications and a much better chance of being rescued in case something goes terribly wrong, they had to depend on the usual Tibetan shepherds’ lifestyle during their journey. This means often staying in caves, eating meat & meals cooked the traditional shepherds’ way & getting some relief with carrying loads by enlisting the local porters.
A marvelous documentary for anyone who the mountains call!