JOURNEY INTO TIBET with Robert Thurman

For the twentieth anniversary of our trip to Mt. Kailash, I’ve gone through the film and added subtitles — trimmed some of the longer scenes, and tried to let the audience experience directly what it was like to take a trip to Geographic Expeditions, go to Lhasa and travel with Robert Thurman across Tibet. (For more info: THUS.ORG)

This film exists because I was making a Bollywood movie in Mumbai (My Bollywood Bride) when I got a email from Robert Thurman inviting me to join their trip around Tibet and Mt Kailash. I left the hot sound stages of Juhi and found myself in Katmandu, then in Lhasa.

From there we visit the Jokhang temple, take a trip to Sera, Drepung and the Nechung Monasteries, then to Samye monastery, then off to Shigatse and Tashi Lumpo monastery, then to Gyantse and the Kumbum there. from there it’s a trip to Darchen, and then to a kora around Mt. Kailash, a visit with a saddhu Bikash Giri who lives in a cave overlooking Lake Mansarovar.

This is two hours of a four week trip, funded by Geographic Expeditions out of San Francisco, and created for Menla, Tibet House in NYC. Robert Thurman is a former Tibetan Buddhist monk who became a professor at Columbia University, is the emeritus chair of the Jey Tsong Khapa studies…