A Mountain in Tibet

From 1808 to 1908 a succession of explorers and adventurers set out into the Himalayas and Tibet to discover the sources of the four great rivers of the Indian sub-continent: the Indus, Sutlej, Ganga and Brahmaputra. This is an account of that "last great adventure".

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Throughout the East there runs a legend of a great mountain at the centre of the world, where four rivers have their source. Charles Allen traces this legend to Western Tibet where there stands Kailas, worshipped by Hindus and Buddhists alike as the home of their gods and the navel of the world. Close by are the sources of four mighty rivers: the sacred Ganges, the Indus, the Sutlej and Tsangpo-Brahmaputra. For centuries Kailas remained an enigma to the outside world. Then a succession of remarkable men took up the challenge of penetrating the hostile, frozen wastelands beyond the Western Himalayas, culminating in the great age of discovery, the final years of the Victorian era. A MOUNTAIN IN TIBET is an extraordinary story of exploration and high adventure, full of the excitement and colour expected from the author of PLAIN TALES OF THE RAJ.