My Recollections on Seven Years in Tibet

Seven Years in Tibet

By Jigme Duntak

In 1997 the movie Seven Years in Tibet arrived in theaters starring Brad Pitt and based from the book by Heinrich Harrer published in 1953.

Austrian Heinrich Harrer recounts the story of his experiences as an mountaineer in Northern India before the onset of the war in 1939. When the Second World War finally begins, following the invasion of Poland by Germany, Harrer and his fellow mountaineers find themselves taken captive as prisoners of war in British India. Heinrich and a few other captives manage to escape and eventually Heinrich and Peter Aufschnaiter make it into Tibet and finally to the ‘forbidden city’ of Lhasa. There the two travelers find refuge and work from the Lhasa government on various projects, particularly Harrer who eventually develops a very personal relationship with the young Dalai Lama as his mentor on the West.

I can remember the excitement that had surrounded this movie among the Tibetan community in my hometown, and also with the movie Kundun which was released a few months following Seven Years in Tibet. For the first time a mainstream Hollywood movie had been made about Tibet