JOURNEY WITH LOSHAY

The story of a medical missionary's perilous passage from Kham, Tibet to Upper Assam and Calcutta, India involves the thrills of danger and the treat of Tibetan ways and wiles. Hoping to make the essential jorney to India for supplies during the negotiation period of the Chinese Communists with the Tibetans and before the monsoons struck, the venturesome author took a pioneer route that carried him across wavering suspension bridges, ice fields, and mountains. Armed with ulag offered by Dege Sey, accompanied by his servant Loshay who displayed the sense of humor, romance and face suitable to a Tibetan, escorted by two military men who beat the headmen of villages which were deficient in hospitality, Patterson made his way. The engaging commentaries on the Tibetan love patterns, descriptions of the villages and various types of houses, eulogy to the yak and oration on bridges combine with the actual happenings of the trip, with the author's pitting of wile against wile in a book genuine in sentiment and hardihood. Before Patterson could return to Tibet, the Chinese Communists took it over; the friend he had left behind eventually escaped after imprisonment via Hong Kong. Another informed voice speaks of a Tibet no longer open to us, and there is knowledge as well as adventure to be gained here.