Estêvão Cacella

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Estêvão Cacella was a Portuguese Jesuit missionary. Cacella was born in Aviz in 1585, joined the Jesuits at the age of nineteen, and sailed for India in 1614 where he worked for some years in Kerala. In 1626, Father Cacella and Father Cabral, another younger Jesuit priest, travelled from Cochin to Bengal where they spent six months preparing for a journey through Bhutan, which would eventually take them to Tibet where they founded a mission in Shigatse, the seat of the Panchen Lama and of the great Tibetan monastery of Tashilhunpo. Cacella arrived in Shigatse in November 1627 and Cabral followed in January 1628. Although the Jesuits were well received and had high hopes for the success of the mission in Shigatse, it only lasted a few years. Father Cacella's poor health led to his death in 1630 in high tibetan plateau.

While in Bhutan, Father Cacella and Father Cabral met Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyel, and at the end of a stay of nearly eight months in the country, Father Cacella wrote a long letter from Cheri Monastery, to his superior in Cochin in the Malabar Coast; it was a report, (The Relacao), relating the progress of their travels. This is the sole report of real Shabdrung that remains.

Father Cacella was the first westerner to enter in Bhutan and travel through the Himalayas in winter. Also it was Cacella who, for the first time, presented to the western civilization a fictional place called Shamballa, which later inspired James Hilton novel to write his novel "Lost Horizon", with its Shangri-La.