Old Henri’s got a decent spot of eternal rest, surrounded by birds and butterflies and the distant burble of the turquoise-colored Nam Khan in Laos. Henri Mouhot lived a relatively short life, but he lived it well and wrote of it beautifully. The French naturalist and explorer, perhaps best known for his “discovery” of the Angkor ruin, is author of one of the best travelogues ever to have emerged from Southeast Asia. His Travels in Siam, Cambodia, Laos, and Annam (White Lotus Press, re-published in 2000) so poignantly describes conditions and cultures in the region that in my own book about Cambodia (140 years after his travels there) I give him special acknowledgment “for his prescient comments, many of which sadly remain true today; many of which sadly do not.” At the tender but experienced age of 35, Mouhot caught a nasty case of malaria in the middle of Laos while surrounded by friends and porters who couldn’t read his writings. His last journal entries, in October 1861, read, “Attacked by fever,” followed by, “Have pity on me, oh my God.” His grave sits on a small hillside in an idyllic spot that could hardly be more evocative of everlasting peace.
Pinterest
