Beyond the Last Village by Alan Rabinowitz, Aurum Press, £19.99,
ISBN 1854108190
THERE are not many really remote places left on the planet. But one is the
mountainous fastness of northern Myanmar, formerly Burma. It is cut off by
topography and rainforest, by political ostracism and the bureaucracy of a nasty
regime, and by the simple fact of being a long way from anywhere.
But Alan Rabinowitz, an American biologist and explorer of some repute,
determined in the early 1990s to try to go there. In this telling of his
journey, he gradually leaves behind the unpleasant reality of modern Myanmar and
the generals he tricked into letting him in, and heads beyond the “last village”
to a world of strange creatures barely known to science, of blue sheep and red
gorals and takin, and of even stranger people.
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The story is written as a kind of “heart of darkness” in reverse. Rabinowitz
delves into his soul as he penetrates deep into the mountains. And, while
ostensibly collecting and identifying unknown species, he also charts a personal
voyage of the soul in which he finds not the blackness and barbarism of Joseph
Conrad’s journey into Africa, but goodness and compassion and peace. It is an
easy read. Too easy, in many ways. A trifle pat in its moralising and
sentimentality. But it is heartfelt and honestly told.