352 pages : 25 cm; How many springs do we see? --Leaving the Ba River behind --The fugitive monk --The ghost town --The long dead --The bombing of Belgrade --The horror of home --The Torugart Pass --Genghis Khan's ancestors --The bridge nobody crosses --Self-annihilating arguments --An orphanage in Amritsar --The maharaja of ruin --A detour to Hong Kong --The holy places --The Synagogue of Calcutta --The Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram --To the Kunjerab Pass --The nightmare bus to Khotan --The southern oases to Dunhuang.; "Richard Bernstein's story of his long journey through Asia is at once a memoir of adventurous travel and a record of cultural discovery and spiritual quest." "In the year 629, a greatly revered Chinese Buddhist monk, Hsuan Tsang, set out across Asia in search of the Buddhist Truth, to settle what he called the "perplexities of my mind." Nearly a millenium and a half later, Richard Bernstein retraces the monk's steps: from the Tang dynasty capital at Xian through ancient Silk Road oases, over forbidding mountain passes to Tashkent, Samarkand, and the Amu-Darya River, across Pakistan to the holiest cities of India - and back." "Ultimate Journey is a vivid, profoundly felt account of two stirring adventures - one in the past and one in the present - in pursuit of illumination."--Jacket.; 

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