Finding Ani

If you've never hit the mystical Tibetan tour, tracked the snow leopard, had an encounter with the elusive Yeti, heard of the adventures of Francis Younghusband, sought the Lost Horizons of Hollywood fame, or blundered into Sherlock Holmes going the Mandala way in Jamyang Norbu's story of suspense in the ranges of the Tibetan mindscape, you might as well start with Claire Scobie.

She's a common or garden seeker, the sort who doesn't know what she's looking for, but knows she'll get somewhere if she digs hard. She's dogged, and can be both endearing and irritating. It's part journalese and part zeal to care for something larger than herself &mdash so why not Tibet

When we first meet her, she's looking for a crimson lily, something so rare that nobody has seen it in a long time. She is lucky enough to join a group of professional Tibet enthusiasts. The way Scobie allows us to plod in her own uncertain footsteps, experiencing every whiff of the yak butter, the snarling face of Chinese fascist rule, a sudden rainbow that lassoes a landscape of wild beauty, makes us slowly warm to her. She does find the lily, but the way she wraps it up and puts it away, she may as well have been at a deli watching her grocer pack a slice of fresh Parma ham.

This is because the lily is just a semi-colon in the main story of her quest. As we know from the book's sub-title ('The Story of an Extraordinary Friendship in Tibet'), Scobie's life-transforming Tibet experience is her meeting with a nomad woman, Ani, a nun with a hard life who joins the first trip as a helper. Each of Scobie's journeys with Ani make for a gripping part of the quest. Maybe the story should have been called Finding Ani. It's through her meeting with Ani that Scobie finds herself and, maybe, something of Tibet. More than anything, she leads readers to seek their own lost horizons by providing a valuable bibliography at the end. It's a bone with enough meat in it for both the casual reader and the more discerning kind.