First Russia, then Tibet – A Rich Evocation of Russia, India and Tibet in the 1930s –

“The publication in 1933 of First Russia, Then Tibet assured Robert Byron’s reputation as a traveller and a connoisseur of civilizations.

First Russia – snow-smothered streets, crowded railway carriages, crumbling palaces, ancient churches, icons, frescoes – all of them speaking through the socialist régime of ‘forces that are older than the Revolution and will long survive it’.

Next, a hair-raising account of the first commercial passenger flight from England to India.

Then Tibet – a country remote, isolated, and eerily beautiful, its hospitable people as yet untainted by the influence of any other civilization. And throughout, Robert Byron writes with such infectious enjoyment that at the close of the narrative the reader too can ‘think one more of the blue sky and clear air of the plateau, of the wind and sun, of the sweeping ranges, and the chant of ploughman and thresher …'”