Long before a cast of trendy Hollywood celebrities "discovered" Tibet and the plight of the Dalai Lama, Heinrich Harrer, a renowned Austrian mountain climber, lived a real adventure in the mountain kingdom as thrilling and seductive as the present film.
Harrer’s book of the same title, a true story, follows a traditional path, like an ancient trade route retraced by modern tourists, of Westerners making a life-changing journey to the East. In 1943, Harrer and his friend Peter Aufschnaiter escape a British P.O.W. camp in India and steal over the border into Tibet, a country forbidden to virtually all foreigners.
By their wits, nerve and sheer determination, the two cross the vast, desolate interior of Tibet, reduced to rags, nearly
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