The last Barbarians
Subtitle: the discovery of the source of the Mekong in Tibet
By: Michel Peissel.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: H. Holt
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 253
Subjects: Horses, Fossil -- China -- Tibet.; Tibet (China) -- Discovery and exploration.; Mekong River -- Discovery and exploration.
Other titles: Discovery of the source of the Mekong in Tibet
Description: In 1994, seizing the rarest of opportunities to journey deep into occupied Tibet, Michel Peissel accomplished what scores of Western explorers had tried and failed to do for more than a hundred years: He found the source of the Mekong River in the ice-strewn fields on the "roof of the world.".

This immensely readable account tells how a small group of modern adventurers made history not once, but twice, in the course of a single year: by accurately charting the origins of one of Asia's most majestic and storied waterways and by finding a living fossil, the Riwoche horse, a species unknown to contemporary zoology that may prove to be a missing link in equine evolution.

The book's stage is forbidden Tibet - with its tragic politics, its natural wonder, and its fiercely independent nomadic tribes, who are known to the Chinese as "the last barbarians."
Notes: Maps of Greater Tibet and Source of the Mekong on endpapers.
Includes index.