When I look on the time I have spent among the Hills, it appears like a fairy dream … The novelty of the Scenes, and the People I have met with, and the novelty of the life I have led, seems a perfect illusion … Farewell ye honest and simple People. May ye long enjoy that Happiness which is denied to more polished Nations; and while they are engaged in the endless pursuits of avarice and ambition, defended by your barren mountains, may ye continue to live in Peace and Contentment, and know no wants but those of nature. 

There it is: the first expression of Tibet as Shangri-La, the fantasy of a paradise on earth, immortalised in the book and, forty years later, the film Lost Horizon and still convincing millions. It was the farewell valediction, in 1775, of the Scot George Bogle, the first British