Dervla Murphy is full of praise for Mark Boyden's 'A Journey to a Closed Kingdom'. She writes in the foreword, “Some years ago Mark Boyden was privileged to travel through Zanskar, one of the few Himalayan regions as yet unmodernised.

For political reasons this peripheral province of old Tibet had remained isolated while elsewhere motor-roads, and all that those entail, were abruptly ending a way of life that had survived almost unchanged for millennia.

Travels in Zanskar is both a gripping adventure story (every detail rings true) and a sensitive interpretation of an ancient culture on the eve of its demolition ... our reward here is a travel book in the classic tradition.”