Lhasa and its Mysteries

A successful officer in the colonial Indian Medical Service, Glasgow-educated Laurence Austine Waddell (1854–1938) was fascinated by the landscapes and cultures of Darjeeling and Tibet, studied local languages, and spent his leisure time researching and writing on Tibetan topics. His earlier books The Buddhism of Tibet (1895) and Among the Himalayas (1899) are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. Waddell had attempted to enter Lhasa (then closed to foreigners) in disguise in 1892, but did not succeed until he accompanied the controversial British expedition to Tibet in 1903–4; he describes his arrival there as 'the realisation of a vivid and long-cherished dream'. His eyewitness account of how the 'peaceful mission' became an 'invasion' occupies the first half of this 1905 publication. The later chapters vividly portray the city and its inhabitants. The book includes more than a hundred of Waddell's own photographs, as well as maps and line drawings.