Travel to exotic lands, meet new people . . . and criticize them
In 1889, at around the age of 60, Bird departed on a trip to India and Tibet, then into Central Asia and on to the Middle East. She recounted the Tibetan portion of this journey in her book Among the Tibetans, published in 1894. The book opens with Bird in Kashmir as she’s leaving India to enter into Tibet. From the Kashmiri city of Srinigar, she travelled to the Tibetan city of Leh and from there explored the Nubra Valley. By today’s maps, these sites are located in the Ladakh region of Indian-administered Kashmir, not in the Tibet Autonomous Region. At the time of Bird’s travels, it is unclear to me who actually had political control over the lands she visited, but historically the inhabitants and culture of Leh and Nubra are Tibetan.
Bird deserves to be seen as a feminist heroine for her accomplishments, and I admire and envy her travels. Her writing, however, as exhibited in this book at least, leaves a lot to be desired. It suffers from many of the faults also seen in writings of her male contemporaries. This was the golden age of British imperialism, and many British authors of the era write as if the whole world was merely meant to provide comfort and amusement to British travelers. Whatever fails to do so is deemed “primitive” and “savage.” Bird goes on and on about how the people she encounters are ugly, dirty, stupid, and unreliable. (The fact that she deems the residents of this or that region more handsome than another doesn’t really make up for that.) Although not averse to roughing it in the mountains, once Bird enters a city or town she complains about the squalid accommodations as if she were writing spiteful hotel reviews on Tripadvisor. She also laments that she can’t get a decent cup of tea, even though she’s in the birthplace of tea.
The primary standard by which I judge this book is how much did I really learn about Tibet. The answer, unfortunately, is not much. Bird devotes more ink to her horses than she does to Tibetan culture. Perhaps readers of her time would have enjoyed reading all this horse talk as an integral part of the adventure they could identify with. Considering the general public of Britain likely knew almost nothing about Tibet in 1894, Bird’s book might very well have been a breath of fresh air for them. It does dispense some rudimentary insight into Tibetan life and Buddhism. There’s maybe one good chapter out of five. For today’s readers, however, who grew up on National Geographic, the Travel Channel, and Wikipedia, Among the Tibetans is unlikely to offer any surprise revelations, and the relentless tone of imperialist condescension is off-putting. While today’s travel writers usually adopt an attitude of “When in Rome, do as Romans do,” Bird’s travelog is more, “When in Rome, complain that you’re not in London.”
Bird was a fascinating person, but her writing on Tibet did not fascinate me. I would probably prefer reading a recent biography of Bird (if one exits) rather than her own travel accounts written in antiquated prose with antiquated perspectives.
