No Passport To Tibet

I have previously read another of Bailey's books - Mission To Tashkent, which I 3 starred and was a bit critical of. That book is certainly ripe for a re-read, and I think I would probably get more from it now. That book outlined a part of Bailey's military career. This book describes an expedition into Tibet undertaken while on leave and without the authorisation of the military.

Published in 1957, written in 1956, it was pulled together by the author from his diaries, and covers around six months of 1913 in Tibet. Over that six months Bailey and Morshead (Captain Henry Morshead of the Royal Engineers - a surveyor) travelled by foot over 1500 miles in country previously unsurveyed and for the main part unknown (to Westerners) except for some Indian pundits sent out in disguise by the Indian Survey Department in the years prior.

1913 was a critical time as China and Britain (via India) were both engaging (in very different ways) with Tibet and very closely after the completion of the expedition the Simla Conference was held with Tibetan and Chinese representatives meeting with the British to fix the boundary between India and Tibet and to reach an agreement about Chinese and British representation in Tibet.

This proved how the work of Morshead and Bailey was highly valuable as one of their primary goals was to solve the mystery of the Tsangpo Gorges and thus to survey and map the country forming the geographic frontier between Tibet and Assam.

While Morshead was primarily responsible for the survey work, Bailey took the lead on managing the organisation of the journey, negotiating with local officials and investigations in the realms of natural history. He collected samples of many birds and mammals, many new discoveries. The blue poppy is perhaps the most famous one, which Bailey didn't collect but did write about (Kingdon Ward later brought seed back and named it Meconopsis betonicifolia baileyi. There were also many butterflies and also goral (a goat-like animal) and Ovis Ammon (a Tibetan sheep with massive horns) and various birds collected.

I really enjoyed this one. The writing wasn't as repetitive as it should have been in a repetitive expedition. Bailey mentions in the foreword that to relive the expedition as he wrote this book was exciting for him, and that excitement of discovery and experience is transmitted to the reader. He is very complimentary towards Morshead - although they spent much of heir time on their own tasks and Bailey is up front about writing about what he undertook and what he shared with Morshead he couldn't very well write much detail about his companions experience.

There are numerous black and white photos which are very good for the era as well as very good maps attributed to KC Jordan. There were many twists and turns and interesting situations they found themselves in. I won't spoil them for other readers.

This review is long enough already, but I did mark a short passage to quote, so I will finish with that. It is a common situation experienced by travellers unchanged by time of location that I am sure everyone will recognise in some form.

P123

When we reached Gaya we found tents prepared for us and a meal for out coolies. The people of Gaya warned us against the people of Po me, who were unscrupulous and unreliable, bad people, unlike the people of Kongbo. In Po me, we had received the same warning about the people of Kongbo. It seems to be universal, the inability of human beings to feel virtuous except when surrounded on all sides by rogues and villains. What astonished us both in Po me and Kongbo was the degree of security we felt, though we were carrying with us a considerable sum in money and were very lightly armed.