The Heart of the World – A Journey to the last secret place –

“Ian Baker travels into the unexplored heart of the world’s deepest gorge, and discovers the fabled waterfall that Tibetan Buddhists believe is a gateway to the mystical paradise of Shangri-La.

In Buddhist tradition there are beyuls, hidden-lands, and the mosre remote and inaccessible the beyul the more illuminating the paradise it conceals. The greatest of these sanctuaries is at the eastern edge of the Himalayas, veiled by an enormous waterfall in the heart of the forbidding Tsangpo gorge, the world’s most impenetrable chasm. Tibetan pilgrims and westerners have been searching for a route to this mystic waterfall for generations.

Until Ian Baker, British explorer, world-class climber and Buddhist scholar, the heart of the Tsangpo gorge had remained a blank spot on the map of world exploration. Ian Baker set out to discover the truth behind the Tibetan legends and after twenty years of interviewing lamas, deciphering obscure Tantric texts and making pilgrimages to the gorge he made international headlines by reaching the bottom of the gorge and finding a 108-foot-high waterfall. He had discovered the legendary grail of both Western explorers and Tibetan seekers.

One of the most captivating stories of discovery in recent memory, an extraordinary voyage not only into one of the most remote places on earth but a pilgrimage into the heart of the Tibetan Buddhist faith, and a meditation on man’s place in nature.”