On this wet, cold, miserable, early morning, without leaving my comfortable chair in the lounge, I have been transported on an emotional journey by the TV. With a flick of a button, transported thousands of miles and across oceans to a place which, in many aspects, other than in war time, has stood still. The quest was to find Shangri-La, the mythical place that stimulated a writer to write a book called Shangri-La. Is it real, or found not to be?
I once flew over this amazing area in daylight, or close to it. How can people live down there, I wondered. The land looked as if it had been pushed by gigantic force into a jagged, rugged, concertina-like, mountainous area, where life could be sustained only in some of the beautiful valleys.
The programme transported me, by Jeep and on foot, with the presenter (historian Michael Wood), into a world I would never have been able to see, meeting and listening to people rarely visited. “Do you know Shangri-La?” was his anxious enquiry. “No! We have knowledge of James Hilton the writer, as told to us by the elders in the village where he stayed.”
Michael gently probed and asked if he could be shown the village. They escorted him through the village, introducing people and places of interest. He was coming to the conclusion that this may have been the inspiration for Shangri-La, a place where peace and love stood still.
Up the hill, he was escorted to their ancestral graveyard, where current reality struck. Gravestones were upended, bones scattered all over the place, mixed up. This was an act of pure hatred! Why?
The eternal trigger: religion. They were non-Muslims, surrounded by Muslim countries. Their valley and ones nearby supported 80,000 people; now only about 2,000 remain. Their life was precarious, no longer an example of that sought-after place called Shangri-La.
I slipped back into my life in the lounge, safe but sad at what I had witnessed, at the roof of the world and at the crossroads of several countries. Yet, after generations of struggle, peace is not embedded there. Still, I dare to hope for change.
H Happiness
O Opportunity
P for People
E Everywhere
NOTE
From the BBC documentary series In Search of Myths and Legends, presented by historian Michael Wood.
© 2023 Penny Wobbly of WobblingPen
Photo: Pixabay License
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