Himalayan Pilgrimage describes a seven months' journey which the author made through the remote Tibetan regions of Western Nepal in 1956. Travelling everywhere on foot with his Nepalese companion, Pasang Khambache Sherpa, who is eulogized in this new edition, Dr. Snellgrove covered more than a thousand miles of mountainous country and crossed some fifteen major passes of between seventeen-and twenty-thousand feet in altitude. The intention of the journey was to learn of the different regions and people and to study in particular the type of Tibetan religion practiced in those remote land. The most interesting of these is perhaps Dolpo, through which very few foreigners have passed, then or to the present day.
The author, well know for his Buddhist studies and for his affection for Tibetan peoples, gives a lively and sympathetic account of the traditional lives and beliefs of these cheerful people.