From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet

A travelogue of the author's journey in his student days around China to Nepal through Tibet during 1981, a time when travel in the region was heavily policed and restricted and unknown to the outside world. The uncertainty of travels in those days - particularly within the aforementioned context -, the boldness of Seth's actions contrasted with his everyman relatability, the nonexistent plans dictated by impromptu/unexpected connections/coincidences, all create a very heady mixture of excitement and adventure and nostalgia and exploration less common in travel these days. For self-indulgence purposes, having the Chinese name of the places pencilled in next to their phonetically transliterated English names was especially satisfying. As show more a constant admirer of the Seth prose, I heartily recommend this quietly unassuming travelogue to all his fans. show less

On the face of it, it might seem surprising that the author of the longest Indian family-saga novel ever to have dominated the bestseller lists should have started his writing career with this modest little travel book that you can read in a day. But Seth is clearly someone who doesn't like to be tied down to one style or genre: remember that he’s also written a verse novel, a biography of his aunt and uncle, and a novel about a string quartet.

From Heaven Lake was written while Seth was a research student at Stanford in the early 1980s. His research involved a two-year stay at Nanjing university in China. When it was time to travel back to see his family in India at the end of his first year, in August 1981, he decided to try to show more travel overland via Tibet. The book describes his journey, starting with Seth and fellow foreign students on an organised trip to Xinjiang, where they visit the eponymous Heaven Lake. With a combination of charm, deviousness, and the experience of dealing with Chinese officials he's built up during his year in the country, he manages to get the necessary permit to visit Tibet, and then persuades a local security official in Liuyuan to arrange a lift for him in a truck going to Lhasa. Most of the book is taken up with his account of the epic 1800km truck journey across the desert and mountains into Tibet and of his short stay in Lhasa: the onward journey over the border to Kathmandu, which seems to have been pretty exciting too, is treated rather more superficially, and is just a sort of epilogue to the main text.

Seth is interested in the places and their landscape and culture, but his first concern, and the bulk of his descriptive effort, is always with the people he meets on his journey. Like Thesiger, he has the gift of turning random encounters into fully-developed portraits that could be characters in a novel. I don't think you would read this book for what it tells you about the temples in Lhasa, but it is definitely worth it for its account of Sui the truck driver, the Tibetan Norbu whose family suffered during the Cultural Revolution, Mr Ho of the Lhasa Foreign Affairs department, and all the rest of the many characters we are introduced to. And through them, of course, we get an idea of what life in China (in 1981) is really like. Obviously, a lot of that is down to Seth’s knowledge of the Chinese language, his patience as a listener and his ability to charm people into telling him about themselves, but clearly the novelist’s insight is involved too.

Seth is conscious that readers will expect this book to give “an Indian’s view of China”, and devotes a bit of time to discussing the differences between the two biggest Asian nations, but he doesn't really get beyond the obvious with this, and his comments sometimes seem disconcertingly sophomoric. And of course somewhat irrelevant, thirty years on. Perhaps that is one place where the book suffers from his relative naivety and lack of experience as a writer, which elsewhere gives it a lot of its appeal.

Probably not the top of the reading list for anyone going to Tibet, but definitely worth a look. show less

A travelogue that is an intimate account of the interiors of China in the 1980s. A rare opportunity of peeking inside the Iron Curtain by an Indian.

Vikram Seth is vooral bekend als auteur van "A suitable boy *****", een dikke pil van bijna 1500 blz die zich afspeelt in het India van de jaren vijftig en die bij het lezen grote indruk op mij heeft gemaakt.
"From Heaven Lake" is het prozadebuut van Seth. Seth is een Indiër die in opdracht van een Amerikaanse universiteit 2 jaar onderzoek heeft gedaan aan de universiteit van Nanjing. Als Seth samen met vrienden van de universiteit een georganiseerde rondreis maakt in de buurt van Heaven Lake bedenkt hij dat hij graag naar Tibet wil. Hij slaagt erin om toestemming van de autoriteiten te krijgen om naar Tibet te mogen gaan. Hij vindt een lift met een vrachtwagen en komt zo aan in Tibet.
"From Heaven Lake" is niet zo'n dik boek, maar het show more is in prachtig Engels opgeschreven en zeer onderhoudend. Wat mij betreft een klassieker onder de reisverhalen en een absolute must voor iedereen met interesse voor Tibet. Jammer dat Seth niet meer reisverhalen heeft geschreven!
Uitgelezen: dinsdag 15 augustus 2000 show less

> Récit de voyage de la plus pure tradition, bourré d'anecdotes, de choses vues, de réflexions, ce journal ( un road movie) d'un périple en stop à travers la Chine, le Tibet et le Népal se lit comme un roman...
—Danieljean (Babelio)

> Citations et Extraits (Babelio) : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Seth-Le-lac-du-ciel--De-Sin-Kiang-au-Tibet/299085...

> Le Lac du ciel by VIKRAM SETH
Se reporter au compte rendu de Solange FASQUELLE
In: Revue des Deux Mondes, (JUIN 1997), p. 187