Cigars had burned low, and we were beginning to sample the disillusionment that usually afflicts old school friends who have met again as men and found themselves with less in common than they had believed they had."
So begins "Lost Horizon", the book which gave us the word "Shangri-La". The Shangri-La hotel chain bought the rights to the book and placed a copy on every bedside table instead of the usual Gideon Bible, which is how I obtained my first copy of the book when I stayed at the Shangri-La Hotel on Singapore's Orchard Road in January 1983. It became one of my favourite books and it is also the first book Bill Bryson fell in love with.
(By travelling we develop our web of associations. Ever since my stay at the Shangri-La, whenever I read "Lost Horizon" I think of Singapore and my friends there. Sensibility is one of the unheralded fruits of travel.)
I still have the book and also the shirts from the hotel's laundry
The plot is straightforward. A plane crash leaves four Westerners stranded in the remote Himalayas. They are promptly rescued and welcomed into the valley of the Blue Moon — a hidden paradise nestled among brutal and impassable mountains. They are sheltered in a tranquil lamasery named Shangri-La, where they eventually learn about themselves, each other, and the mission of the lamasery itself.
It's a book that soothes the soul. Overloaded as we are by the excesses of modern life, we can eagerly relate to a book which has moderation at its heart and soul. It leaves us wishing, as in the last three minutes of Frank Capra's classic movie from 1937, "that we all find our Shangri-La".
