Tsybikov's book has both the vividness of a traveller's eyewitness account and the informed detachment of a scholar. It is a unique and invaluable snapshot of religious practices and the everyday life in Tibet before Chinese inroads during the twentieth century effaced that way of life.

Gombozhab Tsybikov (1873-1930) graduated from the Department of Oriental Languages of St. Petersburg University in 1899, and after his three-year expedition to Tibet, was appointed lecturer in the Mongolian language at the Oriental Institute in Vladivostok. Among his published writings are diaries of journeys to Mongolia (1895), China (1909), and Ugra (1927), commentary and translations on Mongolian literature, and such articles as 'Shamanism of Buryats and Mongols, ''National Holidays of Buryats, ' 'Mongolian Literature as an Instrument of National Culture, ' all in Russian.