So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas

In the Himalayas, people believe that somewhere among those mountains there was once a rope that led to the land of the immortals.  Then one day a careless king cut it down, and nothing was ever the same again.  So, too, the principalities of Tibet, Ladakh and Sikkim, once sanctuaries of Tantric Buddhism, have been gobble up by their more powerful neighbors.  Today only the reclusive kindom of Bhutan remains true to that religion's riotous marriage of esoteric theology and georgeous ritual, serenely meditating Buddhas and snarling deities entwined in sexual embrace. 
 
This extravagantly colorful book takes us into a world that is just emerging from the middle ages and peering warily into the twenty-first century.