Reddit mentions of The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk

In Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, Stephen Batchelor wrote of visiting the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, three decades before they were reduced to a pile of rocks.

"From the monk's cell, hewn out of the sandstone cliff centuries earlier, where I spent my days idly smoking a potent blend of marijuana, hashish, and tobacco, a narrow passage led to a dark inner staircase that I would illuminate by striking matches. The steep rock steps climbed to an opening that brought me out, via a narrow ledge, onto the smooth dome of the giant Buddha's head, which fell away dizzily on all sides to the ground one hundred and eighty feet below. On the ceiling of the niche above were faded fragments of painted Buddhas and bodhisattvas. I feared looking up at them for too long lest I lose my balance, slip, and plummet earthward. As my eyes became used to the fierce sunlight, I would gaze out onto the fertile valley of Bamiyan, a patchwork of fields interspersed with low, flat-roofed farmhouses, which lay stretched before me. It was the summer of 1972. This was my first encounter with the remains of a Buddhist civilization, one that had ended with Mahmud of Ghazni's conquest of Afghanistan in the eleventh century.

Like others on the hippie trail to India, I thought of myself as a traveler rather than a mere tourist, someone on an indeterminate quest rather than a journey with a prescribed beginning and end. Had I been asked what I was seeking, I doubt my answer would have been very coherent. I had no destination, either of the geographical or spiritual kind. I was simply "on the road," in that anarchic and ecstatic sense celebrated by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other role models I revered at the time.

I enjoyed nothing more than simply being on the way to somewhere else. I was quite content to peer for hours through the grimy, grease-smeared windows of a rattling bus with cooped chickens in the aisle, observing farmers bent over as they toiled in fields,women carrying babies on their backs, barefoot children playing in the dust, old men seated in the shade smoking hookahs, and all the shabby little towns and villages at which we stopped for sweet tea and unleavened bread." https://www.amazon.com/Confession-Buddhist-Atheist-Stephen-Batchelor/dp/0385527071

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While the adventures of past pilgrims are inspiring, other types of journeys are impressive as well:

Cave in the Snow: A Western Woman's Quest for Enlightenment https://www.amazon.com/Cave-Snow-Western-Womans-Enlightenment/dp/0747543895

The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Tibetan Buddhist Monk https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Two-Hands-Clapping-Education/dp/0520232607

I'd start by recommending you read Georges Dreyfus's book The Sound of Two Hands Clapping (http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Two-Hands-Clapping-Lilienthal/dp/0520232607). Dreyfus was the first westerner to earn a Geshe degree, and also has a PhD, so he does a nice job of straddling the two worlds of the monastic and the academic.

My next recommendation would be to study for a year or two at a western dharma center (such as Karme Choling in Vermont) where you can begin your education in English, rather than having to learn Tibetan first.