Among Warriors: A Woman Martial Artist in Tibet - Softcover

Logan, Pamela

3.52

62 ratings by Goodreads

9781585675470: Among Warriors: A Woman Martial Artist in Tibet

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585675474 ISBN 13: 9781585675470

Publisher: The Overlook Press, 2004

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In the tradition of Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, a rare look at a journey to eastern Tibet in search of its legendary warriors.

Scientist-turned-adventurer Pamela Logan travels to the wilds of eastern Tibet in search of knowledge and inspiration for her karate practice. Her goal is Kham, whose people are famed for their ferocity, banditry, and ruthlessness. Overcoming mountains, snowstorms, sickness, and interfering police, she traces routes used by famous Himalayan travelers Alexandra David-Neel and Peter Matthiessen ― and blazes some new trails of her own.

Biking and hitchhiking, traveling on horseback and on foot, she explores a rugged, spectacular region that since the Chinese occupation of Tibet has been closed to outsiders. Along the way she meets scores of memorable characters: Muslim farmers and Tibetan monks, Western pilgrims and Chinese police. Her journey brings her face to face with Tibet's incredible prostrating pilgrims; from this and other experiences she slowly pieces together a spiritual connection between her martial arts training and Tibetan Buddhism. As she explores the heart of Kham, she discovers a kind of courage that gives new meaning to the word "warrior" ― and is an unexpected source of inspiration for her martial arts.

This remarkable book of a woman's quest for warriorhood will fascinate anyone who is interested in pushing their physical and spiritual limits: travelers, athletes, philosophers, Buddhists, martial artists and pilgrims of every stripe.

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Review:

Chasing elusive chimeras is familiar territory for many exotic travel books. Take Pamela Logan: an overeducated, third-degree karate black belt who landed a grant to crisscross China and Tibet in search of a route into the forbidden province of Kham. In that stony, mountainous terrain live the Khampa, horsemen renowned for bitter guerrilla battles against the Chinese army that annexed Tibet.

An extremely hardy soul, Logan bicycles though high snowy passes, hitchhikes across barren reaches broken by few settlements, stumbles through driving rain with Buddhist pilgrims, befriends orange-robed monks, and treks along slick ice pathways hung over precipitous drops in eastern Tibet. En route, she ponders the discipline of karate and swallows gallons of yak butter tea. The dialogue she recreates is stiff but fresh; vivid phrasing beautifully renders the people, the landscape, and her own evolution. --Francesca Coltrera

From the Inside Flap:

In the fortress that is Tibet no place is more remote than the province of Kham and no people more elusive than the Khampa, the fierce horsemen who for twenty-five years waged a relentless guerrilla war against the Chinese occupation. In Among Warriors, a different kind of warrior sets out to find the Khampa: Pamela Logan, an American with a Ph.D. in aerospace science, and a third-degree black belt in karate. Logan cycles, hitchhikes, and treks across the windswept plateaus and icy mountain passes of eastern Tibet. She drinks tea with monks and herdsmen, dodges Chinese police, and watches in awe as religious pilgrims inch their way toward Lhasa by prostrating themselves at every body length. Writing with vast sensory power and sympathy, Logan produces a gem that will captivate those interested in Buddhism, the martial arts, and one of the world's last inaccessible regions.
"[Logan] writes of getting to Lhasa with all the wistfulness of Chekhov's three sisters dreaming of Moscow."--New York Times Book Review

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