I was 28 years old and enjoying the kind of life
I might have dreamed of as a boy: a 25th-floor
office in Midtown Manhattan, a stimulating
job writing on international affairs, a studio
apartment next to a one occupied by a
gaggle of runway models. Yet something
in me intuited that the enticements and
exhilarations of this world might prove so all-
consuming that I’d wake up one day, aged 70,
and realise I hadn’t lived at all.
So, I asked my bosses for a six-month leave
of absence and flew to Tokyo. Within a few
days, I was in Hiroshima; silent, watching
red and yellow and emerald lanterns sent
floating down the Motoyasu River on the
40th anniversary of the dropping of the
atomic bomb. Soon, I was staying in a broken
room in Manila’s red-light district, heading
out each morning to join the demonstrations
that would culminate in the toppling of
Ferdinand Marcos through the nonviolent
People Power Revolution. Later, I was riding
an overnight train from Guangzhou to
Beijing, stepping out to find the capital’s
wide streets entirely car-less, citizens in blue
Mao jackets playing badminton in the main
boulevards leading to Tiananmen Square.
The moment that transformed me, however,
came after I flew to Lhasa, in Tibet. My
parents had introduced me to Tibetan monks
while I was a little boy, in Oxford, and as a
teenager I’d made my first trip to Dharamsala
(with my father) to meet the Dalai Lama. But
nothing had prepared me for the shockingly
blue skies on the plateau itself, the silence
around the great monasteries of Drepung
and Sera, the tear-streaked faces of pilgrims
who’d walked 1,200 miles — some prostrating
themselves every few steps — to see the
Jokhang Temple by flickering candlelight.
Lhasa then was still a cluster of whitewashed
shops and houses under the protective gaze of
the 1,000-roomed Potala Palace high above.
One bright September afternoon, I took
the steep walk up to the home of the Dalai
Lama, and, after passing through rooms full
of statues and mandalas, stepped out onto a
terrace to look across the valley. The elements
had a sharpness I’d never seen, even at higher
altitudes in the Andes. The monks chanting
inside conferred an air of solemnity. The few
other visitors were mostly pilgrims, excitedly
buying scrolls near the rooms where their
spiritual leaders once lived. At that moment,
I felt not just on the ‘rooftop of the world’, as
all the guidebooks had it; I was on the rooftop
of my being, as clear and elevated as I could
ever remember feeling before, freed of every
distraction. By the end of my four-month
journey across Asia, I’d decided to tell my
bosses I was leaving my comfortable job
and moving to Japan, where still I live, 35
years later. But it was that one moment in
Tibet, in the midst of all the oppression and
destruction that culture had suffered, that
reminded me if I didn’t follow some intuition
to leave the familiar world behind, I could
remain an exile all my life.Pico Iyer is the author of 15 books, most
recently, Autumn Light and its companion
piece A Beginner’s Guide to Japan, both
published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
picoiyerjourneys.comTHE ROOFTOP OF MY BEING
PICO IYER
“ Clear and elevated
as I could never
remember feeling
before. Freed of every
distraction.”
A Buddhist ceremony involving
butter tea, taking place at Sera
Monastery, Lhassa, Tibet
TOP: Resident monks stroll through
Jokhang Temple, Lhasa IMAGES: GETTY; AWL IMAGES; DEREK SHAPTON; BECOMINGX/SAM MCELWEETIBET66 nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel
THE POWER OF PLACE