In an effort to gather more information about the Tea Horse Trade, I drove out to the village of Shu-he. Here, a museum had been set up by a private company to commemorate the age-old exchange of horses and tea leaves between China and Tibet.
Aside from the famous Silk Road, there was another lesser known network of paths used by what is now called the Tea Horse Trade. This Trade involved the ancient exchange between China and Tibet, with tea coming from the former and horses from the latter.
The visit to the country this week of an eminent holy man has highlighted a controversial issue within the Karma Kagyu, one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
Rummaging through the bins of a second-hand store in Makati, I came upon a volume with a curious title: ” Imagining Tibet.” That’s when it struck me that, indeed, the Land at the Roof of the World is a place that exists not only on this planet but in our minds. The 1957 book by Peter Goullart, “Forgotten Kingdom,” and the more recent “Searching for Shangri-La,” by Laurence Brahm (published in 2003), are additional examples which show how this entire region has been mythologized by writers from the West. The lovely paintings by the Russian mystic Nicholas Roerich of lonely citadels set in an expanse of mist shrouded peaks also helped to further enhance European fascination.Forgotten Kingdom,
