Tibetan Terror by Peter Sherwood

Tibetan Terror
by Peter Sherwood
Carlyle Books 1979

Englishman Robert Calder travels to Afghanistan to look for his missing sister Julia, who has fallen in with a dangerous cult.  Since he's English, he spends most of his time drinking until he is able to find a guide, who pretty much just says "that way", and after a quick trip into the mountains Robert is captured by robed cultists.

Robert is drugged into amnesia and spends what seems like months with the cult.  He pairs up with another drugged victim named Josie, and in what is the only interesting scene he gets buggered by Kashun, who is the incarnation of Krad, which is some kind of evil god or force or something, nobody elaborates except that it's presented as real.

The cult seems to operate solely on drugs and human sacrifice, and there's no word on what their ideology is at all.  They are led by a man named Markash, but I'm not sure he makes any direct appearances in the entire book - I'm not going back to check, he might have been standing around in a couple of scenes.



Robert figures out what part of his food is drugged and slowly recovers his lucidity.  He escapes and regroups in the nearby village, getting help from some locals and his friend Harry.  They go back to the temple heavily armed and the cult begins a mass suicide.  Julia and Markash are killed off page, Josie is killed by Kashun, who escapes as the only survivor.

Robert goes back to drinking and world travelling and hooks up with Josie, who is alive, has all of her previously shaved hair back, and has no memory of Robert or the cult.  Robert sees Kashun in an airport, decides he doesn't care, the end.

Buggery aside, there's very little exploitative going on.  People get naked and a couple throats get slit, but it's all too British.  Very poor sense of time and distance.  I won't blame the author since it might have been out of his control, but there is no Tibet in this book.  Not even one.