"Orville Schell here recounts the tale of those Western adventurers, explorers, and spiritualists who for centuries were bent on reaching forbidden Tibet and the holy city of Lhasa. He traces the many roles the West has assigned Tibet; for Catholic missionaries, a refuge for heathens; for countless Europeans, a land of unparalleled spirituality, for British imperialists, the heart-land of the Great Game, for Nazi ideologues, the acme of racial purity.

He also explores the less than salutary consequences such projections have often had for the Tibetans." "Virtual Tibet takes us beyond the fantasies to the reality of an isolated country that has repeatedly won the West's adoration, and more than once paid the price for believing that our allegiance is profound."--BOOK JACKET.