The Snow Leopard

In 1973 Peter Matthiessen and the field biologist George Schaller went to Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and, possibly, to glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard.

They undertook their trek as winter snows were sweeping into the high passes, and five weeks were required to reach their destination.

For Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, there was a spiritual quest as well, for he hoped to find the revered Lama of Shey at the ancient Buddhist shrine on the Crystal Mountain. Any trip is an experience that tests the life of the traveler. But this one especially was a real passage, unfolding and revealing the narrator and his world. The Snow Leopard is Matthiessen’s radiant and deeply moving account of a “true pilgrimage, a journey of the heart.”