Seven Years in Tibet at the very least can be said is off the beaten path of this course. Talking about Tibet in anyway invokes the images of mountains and of the Dalai Lama – both prime subjects of this book. To Harrier mountains are seen as a luxury as he dashes about attempting to escape from captivity in various forms. I found it remarkable that he managed on so many different occasion not only to escape but also to flee through various different terrains. He went through jungle and then up through freezing mountain passes (did a little bit of climbing) and trekked through great expanses of Tibet. It was a miracle that he managed to survive all of that with the small amount of resources at his disposal.

I found the part of his escape attempts and journey to Lhasa far more interesting than the actual time he spent there. It is in the narrative of his escape that can be seen the relevant part to the larger meaning of this seminar. In spite of being on the run, fearful that he may be turned back into British India and sent back to the POW camp, Harrier still takes time to not just mention the mountains that got him stuck in this part of the world in the first place, but to lament over the fact that he is so close but at the same time the furthest from climbing them he ever could be. It is in this time of dodging captivity and attempting to seek refuge in Tibet that the Himalaya represent to Harrier freedom as he has never understood it before. It was one of his great ambitions before the marking of himself as a fugitive, and as someone on the run their meaning is escalated but deprived from him.

Was it really fair in the first place to throw Harrier into a POW camp at the start of the war? Of course war is not fair, but was he really a threat to anyone up in the Himalaya? The British might as well as let at least allowed him to attempt a climb of Nanga Parbat before dragging him into custody – the mountain may very well have removed him from not only British concerns but Austrian ones as well, with the high fatality rate that comes with climbing in the Himalaya. It seems too me a little much to label a climber a war prisoner, and an extreme to put him into prison. He did not seem too much of a threat to anyone to me; but then again this reading is written by him and no doubt someone had a good enough reason to put him in captivity.

Even in spite of the questionable motives of putting him in captivity, I do not blame the initial ill-receiving of Harrier in Tibet. Tibet was filled with problems of its own at the time and the last thing in the world that it particularly needed was poor and ill-equipped POWs flooding into ranks seeking asylum.  It had neither the motives or means to make itself an Asian Switzerland (not that harrier did not try to paint it in that light) and I find it very comical that after all of the outlaying governors rejections Harrier ends up becoming the tutor to the Dalai Lama.