Rating: 
Summary: Very Entertaining
Review: A good sequel to Harrer's "Seven Years in Tibet." This book covers the time immediately after the Chinese 'liberation' of Tibet. The author's incredible story of survival after being illegally arrested is captivating. The author also has a sharp wit and some of the lies he tells the Chinese are hilarous. Especially the one about the 'real' reason Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest.
Rating: 
Summary: A thrilling read !
Review: As a Indian I was naturaly drawn to read an account of a brit mountaineer who was engaged in a spying operation for the Indian army...The feat of endurance is graphically elucidated by the author and is replete with descriptions of the freezing cold and the hardy spirit of the mountain people
Rating: 
Summary: Revisit to an Old Situation
Review: Forty years ago when I was an undergraduate I had an abiding interest in the "Roof of the World." the Himalayas and the Sinkiang and Tibetan areas. I was introduced to it by reading Heinrich Harrar's Seven Years in Tibet. I wentback and reread the accounts of Franc and Jean Bowie Shor which had appeared in the National Geographic in the late 40s. Also when I was a child I had read Lowell Thomas's account of his 1949 visit to Tibet in the Saturday Evening Post. Later when I took a job as a cartographer with the Army Map Service for a while I was assigned the area to keep up with. Nepal and India particularly. By then the high Asia area had been long closed to western travelers by the Red Chinese. For a few years in the late forties just after WW II there was a period of open borders when the Chinese Civil War was being settled and the areas mentioned were still friendly to westerners. Even in the midst of the war the American OSS had sent an expedition to Lhasa to explore opening a land supply route to China from India. While I was still studying geography, the Indo Chinese War of 1962 broke out along the narrow neck of India where then East Pakistan juts northward and almost cuts off the Northeast Frontier provinces. The war had been provoked by Indian government posturing, whose foreign minister V.K. Krishna Menon, a left wing appeaser, disagreed with the Army and their intent to reinforce themselves. The dispute with China had been provoked by Indian vague border claims inherited from the British in the area of Ladakh, which is way to the west of Tibet and south of Sinkiang. This "border" was shown on most maps with a dotted line which meant that it was a claim not a line of control. Neither the British or the Indians had ever patrolled or garrisonned Ladakh. The whole area is a cold barren plateau about as infertile as the Mohave desert. The only reason to want it is that the Chinese had constructed a road across the claimed area from Sinking to Tibet in order to facilitate their occupation of the latter. Although this is a mighty roundabout way to get to Lhasa from China proper, considering the expense of building a road across the folded mountains of the "Hump" it made sense. When the Indians started posturing and barking about this intrusion into their claimed lands, the Chinese swiftly invaded directly south from Tibet through Sikkim and gave the Indian Army a bloody setback. Having proved their point they then withdrew. Now comes the setting for this story. Among several nations who were sympathetic to the Tibetan's aspirations was the US and the CIA. That story of their support is covered elsewhere. However, the long snaky shaped nation of Nepal lies between India and Tibet. On the northern flank and part of Nepal is a bump on the map which is the Kingdom of Mustang. There are books about it also. This area being lower in altitude and the border being porous was an ideal location for air strips supplying the Tibetan resistance and a jumping off point for land expeditions against the Red Army. Though all this had to be kept quiet, the Mustang border was widely recognized if undemarcated so the Red Chinese could not for international political reasons move in there permanently. Now we come to the story told in this book. Before the development of high flying reconnaissance aircraft such as the U2 there were few planes available that could fly over the area clandestinely and not be spotted. As mapping runs require a regular pattern of repetitive flights, the activity is both apparent and readily vulnerable to attack. In any case the use of US planes was not possible and there were no air bases near either. So the only way to find anything out was to sneak and peek. The author was a British mountaineer who mounted a small expedition to Mustang. While passing through India he was secretly contacted by Indian Army intelligence and asked to dash over the border and check out a town which contained a Chinese garrison. While doeing so he was captured, jailed, and then set free to hike over the mountains in the winter. The book recounts his experiences in some detail and having been written many years later when most of the other players are long dead, has been able to be frank in his opinions.
Rating:
Summary: Revisit to an Old Situation
Review: Forty years ago when I was an undergraduate I had an abiding interest in the "Roof of the World." the Himalayas and the Sinkiang and Tibetan areas. I was introduced to it by reading Heinrich Harrar's Seven Years in Tibet. I wentback and reread the accounts of Franc and Jean Bowie Shor which had appeared in the National Geographic in the late 40s. Also when I was a child I had read Lowell Thomas's account of his 1949 visit to Tibet in the Saturday Evening Post. Later when I took a job as a cartographer with the Army Map Service for a while I was assigned the area to keep up with. Nepal and India particularly. By then the high Asia area had been long closed to western travelers by the Red Chinese. For a few years in the late forties just after WW II there was a period of open borders when the Chinese Civil War was being settled and the areas mentioned were still friendly to westerners. Even in the midst of the war the American OSS had sent an expedition to Lhasa to explore opening a land supply route to China from India. While I was still studying geography, the Indo Chinese War of 1962 broke out along the narrow neck of India where then East Pakistan juts northward and almost cuts off the Northeast Frontier provinces. The war had been provoked by Indian government posturing, whose foreign minister V.K. Krishna Menon, a left wing appeaser, disagreed with the Army and their intent to reinforce themselves. The dispute with China had been provoked by Indian vague border claims inherited from the British in the area of Ladakh, which is way to the west of Tibet and south of Sinkiang. This "border" was shown on most maps with a dotted line which meant that it was a claim not a line of control. Neither the British or the Indians had ever patrolled or garrisonned Ladakh. The whole area is a cold barren plateau about as infertile as the Mohave desert. The only reason to want it is that the Chinese had constructed a road across the claimed area from Sinking to Tibet in order to facilitate their occupation of the latter. Although this is a mighty roundabout way to get to Lhasa from China proper, considering the expense of building a road across the folded mountains of the "Hump" it made sense. When the Indians started posturing and barking about this intrusion into their claimed lands, the Chinese swiftly invaded directly south from Tibet through Sikkim and gave the Indian Army a bloody setback. Having proved their point they then withdrew. Now comes the setting for this story. Among several nations who were sympathetic to the Tibetan's aspirations was the US and the CIA. That story of their support is covered elsewhere. However, the long snaky shaped nation of Nepal lies between India and Tibet. On the northern flank and part of Nepal is a bump on the map which is the Kingdom of Mustang. There are books about it also. This area being lower in altitude and the border being porous was an ideal location for air strips supplying the Tibetan resistance and a jumping off point for land expeditions against the Red Army. Though all this had to be kept quiet, the Mustang border was widely recognized if undemarcated so the Red Chinese could not for international political reasons move in there permanently. Now we come to the story told in this book. Before the development of high flying reconnaissance aircraft such as the U2 there were few planes available that could fly over the area clandestinely and not be spotted. As mapping runs require a regular pattern of repetitive flights, the activity is both apparent and readily vulnerable to attack. In any case the use of US planes was not possible and there were no air bases near either. So the only way to find anything out was to sneak and peek. The author was a British mountaineer who mounted a small expedition to Mustang. While passing through India he was secretly contacted by Indian Army intelligence and asked to dash over the border and check out a town which contained a Chinese garrison. While doeing so he was captured, jailed, and then set free to hike over the mountains in the winter. The book recounts his experiences in some detail and having been written many years later when most of the other players are long dead, has been able to be frank in his opinions.
Rating:
Summary: Gripping
Review: I read this book years ago and it still stands out as one of the must reads for anyone with an interest in Tibet and it's "liberation" by China. More time is spent in prison than climbing, but it is still a true adventure story. I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: Spying and climbing
Review: If you like non-fiction adventure stories, this is the book for you! It's more about spying than climbing, so don't expect a Krakauer story, but it is a fascinating and gripping true story. Buy it; you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Spying and climbing
Review: If you like non-fiction adventure stories, this is the book for you! It's more about spying than climbing, so don't expect a Krakauer story, but it is a fascinating and gripping true story. Buy it; you won't regret it.
Rating: 
Summary: An amazing story of mountaineering and espionage
Review: In 1955, Sydney Wignall organized a group of climbers into a band he called the Welsh Himalayan Expedition. Their objective: to climb Tibet's highest mountain, Urla Mandhata. But Wignall and two of his companions were to be more than just mountaineers; before departing Wignall had been recruited to spy for a rogue faction of Indian intelligence to report on the Chinese military buildup in Tibet. He was to be a deep-cover agent, operating without any protection and one whose life would be at risk were he to be captured by the Red Army. Wignall and two companions were captured early on, beginning an ordeal that would draw on their every ounce of physical and mental strength. Wignall, his body wracked with dysentery, underwent months of harrowing interrogation. Each night he returned to his freezing cell, his only companion a pregnant rat named Megan, and wrote his journal on whatever scraps of paper he could scrounge up. To hide the journal, he stuffed it down the air tube of his inflatable mattress. Throughout his interrogations, Wignall never once cracked and admitted his mission or his secret employer. Instead he sent the Chinese on a veritable wild goose chase of disinformation and rumor. International pressure convinced the Chinese to release Wignall and his two companions but the military commander was hopeful that three spies would not make it back to Nepal with the information he knew they had learned from their months in Tibet. He gave the three spies what was hoped was their death warrant: strict instructions to return via the Seti Gorge. It was December and the gorge was considered suicide even in summer. Now, with high winds, snow, ice and the three travelers malnourished, battered and suffering from frostbite and dysentery, the odds were against Wignall and company every returning and the truth of China's buildup ever getting back to the spymasters. SPY ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD is a spellbinding tale, one that the Dalai Lama has called "a fascinating story of great courage and determination." Infused with the author's wit and insight, it is sure to find its place among the great adventure tales of all time. Included within the book are 16 pages of black and white photographs, from film secreted out with Wignall.
Sydney Wignall is an explorer for more than thirty years and is a fellow of Royal Geographic Society and a member of the Himalayan Club. As a marine archaeologist, he discovered two flagships of the Spanish Armada and searched for Drake's coffin off of Panama. He lives with his wife in North Wales.
Rating:
Summary: Spy on the roof of the world
Review: One of the best books I have read in a long time. I really enjoyed Wignall's recount of his journey. I would not hesitate to recommend this to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Factual & Damning
Review: This book goes into the period just after the Chinese 'liberation' of Tibet and the war with India due to their land grabbing.
The author has written out of personal experience, and his lack of writing skills must be excused. Sometimes the narrative might get kinda boring, but the work has to be read as a historical gem rather than an interesting story.
Goes into good detail about the crimes committed by the Chinese against the Tibetans.
A very good read.
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