Seven Years in Tibet: From Nanga Parbat to Lhasa

In May 1939 Heinrich Harrer, an Austrian climber, joined a small German expedition to Nanga Parbat led by Peter Aufschnaiter. Their aim was to scout an easier way up the mountain, and they explored the Diamir Face. They concluded that the face was a viable route, but then World War II intervened. Harrer's biography also records that after the Anschluss of 1938 he joined the SS, which he later called a mistake of his youth.

Location precision: The pin marks the mountain; the expedition explored its whole Diamir Face, not one spot.

War caught the climbers in British India. Arrested as enemy aliens, they were held behind barbed wire and finally sent to Dehradun, to be detained with about 1,000 other enemy aliens. Harrer and Aufschnaiter found Tibet the more promising way out. They were recaptured several times before succeeding: on 29 April 1944 Harrer and six others walked out of the camp. His memoir opens with this escape from a British prisoner-of-war camp.

Location precision: The sources do not give the camp's exact site; the pin marks Dehradun.

The escapers split up, and those bound for Tibet headed for the nearest border via Landour, a cantonment town about 35 km from Dehradun. One of them, Sattler, gave up on 10 May. The remaining four crossed into Tibet on 17 May 1944 over the Tsang Chok-la Pass, at 5,896 m (19,350 ft), then split again: Harrer went on with Hans Kopp, Aufschnaiter with Bruno Treipel.

Location precision: Landour is only a waypoint named in the sources; the pass itself is not pinned.

Harrer and Aufschnaiter headed for Lhasa across Western Tibet, the south-west with Gyirong County, and the Northern Changthang. Months passed without visas for Tibet, and in the end Kopp gave up and left for Nepal. Aufschnaiter counted 26 temples and monasteries around Gyirong in 1945, one of many details of a country few outsiders had seen.

Location precision: The sources name Gyirong County but not a single stop on the walk; the pin marks the county's main settlement.

Harrer and Aufschnaiter reached Lhasa on 15 January 1946, eight months after Nazi Germany's surrender. The city lies at 3,656 m (11,990 ft), one of the highest in the world. Harrer became a salaried official of the Tibetan government in 1948, translating foreign news and acting as the court photographer.

Location precision: The sources give the city, not a street; the pin marks central Lhasa.

Harrer met the 14th Dalai Lama when summoned to the Potala Palace and asked to make a film about ice skating, which he had introduced to Tibet. He soon became the Dalai Lama's tutor in English, geography and some science, and the two stayed friends for life. The Potala was the Dalai Lamas' residence from 1649 until 1959.