"Do you want to go to the other side of the world?"

        A friend's call to Peter Jenkins down on his Tennessee farm was the beginning of a rare journey that took the author of two of America's best-loved books, deep into Tibet, to Mount Everest, and across China from the windswept plains of Mongolia to a forbidden fishing village                                                                               south of Shanghai  

          join Peter on a trip to Shangri-La and gaze across a land that few westerners have ever seen.  stand with him as he bargains in sign language at the Lhasa bazaar while marvelling Tibetans tug at his red beard. experience with him the anguish of a holy man whose temples have been destroyed by the communists. come along as pere rides with "Parnelli yak," the death-defying  driver of the Himalayan highroads, and follow some of the  world's most daring adventurers,"bad boy." wick, Geo, the "boy king,"

and the rest of the 1984 chin/Everest expedition as they struggle to place an American on top of Mount Everest.