Across the Snow Mountains: From Tibet to Exile

“A moving portrait of endurance, hope, and the unbreakable ties of culture and faith.”

Across the Roof-Top of the world, on the windswept passes of the Himalayas, four Tibetan women embarked on journeys few could imagine—let alone survive. Battling hunger, exhaustion, and the bullets of border patrols, they crossed the Snow Mountains on foot to reach India and the 14th Dalai Lama. Their stories are testaments to endurance, faith, and the unbreakable will to be free.

But survival across the mountains was only the beginning. In exile, they faced new trials: the ache of separation from their families, the challenge of preserving their culture, and the daily struggle of life in a land that was never meant to be home.

In Across the Snow Mountains, Rebecca S. Orton interweaves the women’s gripping personal narratives with the wider history of China’s occupation of Tibet and the fate of its diaspora. At once intimate and historical, it is a portrait of extraordinary courage and of a people’s unyielding spirit in the face of loss.