9 Months in Tibet
Travel, Memoir, Adventure, Farce
REVIEWS:
"A wacky, witty, off-the-cuff tale...Honest at all times, and without bravado or self-regard." Country Life.
"One of the beautiful paradoxes of 9 Months in Tibet is that being such an amateur and reckless traveller makes Wolfe Murray an exemplary one." The Herald.
"The book is a true story, set in 1986 and 1987, when Tibet was briefly open to independent travellers. It’s about looking for work on the roof of the world, rubbing along with annoying backpackers, adapting to a strange culture, trekking among nomads and yaks, riding a horse across Tibet, witnessing a violent protest of Buddhist monks against the Chinese police and getting expelled by the Chinese police." Press and Journal.
“This is a fascinating and thoroughly engrossing tale of a strange time spent in a strange place. Like the best travel writing, it conveys just what it must have been like to have the adventure of a lifetime. We are there with Mr. Wolfe Murray, experiencing his discomfort and anxiety, but sharing, too, his insights.” From the foreword by Alexander McCall Smith
Publisher: Scotland Street Press, Edinburgh, UK
Format: Large Paperback.
To get a paperback copy of the book click here: https://www.scotlandstreetpress.com/product/9-months-in-tibet
If you'd like me to give a talk about this book (or set up a book-busking stall outside your place) please email me on wolfemurray@gmail.com
By Rupert Wolfe Murray, 2nd May 2026
Why I wrote this book?
"I've had cause to justify using the cliché ‘I couldn't put it down’ on very few occasions, and this is one of them. It really is unputdownable - a highly unlikely but irresistible combination of Robert Byron and Hunter S. Thompson.’ - Charles Ramble, Director of Studies in Tibetan History and Philology at the EPHE (Sorbonne), Paris.
Book summary
“Wolfe-Murray’s trick is to deliver stunningly unusual observations deadpan...The descriptions of the rioting in Lhasa – which the author witnessed by accident and parlayed into his first outing as a foreign correspondent – are brilliant, particularly because he gives a compelling eyewitness account without putting his own dramatic experience of danger at the centre of things.” Kevin Sullivan
Feedback
“This is an amazing book and I’m so glad the author lived to tell the tale… it felt like a miracle that he did! It is an almost unbelievable story, consisting of a million almost unbelievable stories – utterly hilarious, or quirky, or hair-raising, or disturbing, and all of them memorable! I find his no-nonsense style of telling very attractive." Gabriella Bullock
“It reads well, with fine touches of humour and a refreshing absence of self-importance...The Tibet section catches well the atmosphere, the spirit, the significance of events at the time. The pen-portraits that he paints of people he met there are sharply drawn, catching our foibles and our dialogue very well. It works.” Robbie Barnett, Professor of Tibetan Studies, Columbia University, NYC.