Searching for the Real Tibet

Vijay Crishna

A land in total transformation is not common - indeed its fairly rare - and visiting Tibet is a special experience all on its own. We had been to this ancient land and culture in September 2006, and were drawn back now in July 2007 by what continued to enrapture us and so many from around the world. Landing in Lhasa again was like returning to an old friend with its opportunity to renew old acquaintanceships — piously hoping that not too much had changed since we were last here.

We stepped out early one rainy morning to perform several 'koras' of the Tsuglakhang, or the Jokhang Temple, the spiritual core of the country. My wife, two daughters and I moved into the steady stream of the quiet devout as we circled the temple on its middle route; falling into the pilgrim's steady pace that allows examination of personal thoughts; pausing occasionally to buy fragrant juniper branches to place in the fires along the way. And the quiet chants in our ears formed a rhythmic flow, carrying our thoughts this way and that - Tibetans around us from all across the vast Plateau. Strong monks and nuns some of whom may have spent months or even years fully prostratinging here from some distant monastery, old folks with their prayer-wheels and faith standing strong in their eyes, wild-haired nomads from the highlands, families travelling together, Khampas from the eastern borders with their red woollen bands knotted in their hair and knives hanging from their belts, young folks from the cities. My thoughts wandered to those intrepid Indian explorers from 150 years ago. Code-named the Pundits, pacing through Tibet much as we were doing now - precisely counting their steps with special prayer-beads made for them across hundreds of miles, mapping Tibet for the British Raj. No Brit could have done what they did — and live to tell the tale! Their inner strength and faith to accomplish all that over years of undercover life-threatening work must have been akin in nature to that of the people walking around us today.

I thought of King Tsongtsen-Gampo in 637 AD, who built the Jokhang temple we were circling, influenced by the Buddhist faith of his wives from Nepal and China that he had won in battle — the first 'official' appearance of Buddhism in Tibet. King Gampo it was who also built the fort on Marpori, the red hill, on which the Potala palace would rise in all its splendour 950 years later.

Our koras completed, we retired nearby for a cup of tea. Elated by some sense that the heart and spirit of this fabled land still beats strongly, intact despite the ten-ible pressures that threaten to squash it today.

We went to Ganden monastery, for the special annual unveiling of their ceremonial 'thangka'. Fifty kilometres east of Lhasa, and then up a mountain-side, the road controlled efficiently by Tibetan and Chinese police to handle the large numbers of people arriving for the event. We walked up from the parking lots created on the mountain-side, mingling again with hundreds of Tibetans and tourists for this occasion that enables Tibet's people to briefly, but collectively, witness this ancient heritage and ceremony. Threateningly grey weather had delayed the start of the ceremony, but soon an anticipatory cheer rang out as the vast rolled-up cloth was can-ied out by at least 50 men, preceded by the senior monks of the monastery and the deep sound of ceremonial horns! Sturdy frames lowered from the top of the building were attached to the thangka, which then began to unroll upwards to the great joy of the vast throng. White silk scarves with money tied in them began to rain on the rising thangka, and much good-natured men-iment was directed at those whose throws landed well short and onto the heads of the crowd in front, who relayed it onto the ceremonial cloth! Finally it was up, at least 30 metres high by 20 metres wide, to a vast collective intake of breath from the throng — a moment of great joy, and greeted by prayers from all around! It was difficult to believe that hardly 25 years ago this monastery was still the pile of rubble it had been reduced to by Mao's venomous Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1969. Along with 95% of monasteries on the Plateau - whose wealth and riches had been systematically collected and taken back to Beijing to be sold - the remaining idols, bricks and mortar were destroyed. An entire population of some 500,000 monks and nuns were subjected to brutality and bestiality.

But today, collective joy and warmth submerged the ugly past, and all rejoiced. An hour later the thangka was all rolled up again, and restored to the sanctity of the innards of the monastery for another year.

Meanwhile, our gear loaded onto yaks, we lunched outside the monastery and then set off uphill on a 5-day trek to Samye, Tibet's first monastery. Here King Gampo's great-great grandson, Trhisong Detsen, had selected a site which could not be built on because of demons who prevented it! Shantarakshita, the Abbot of Nalanda from India, brought in by the King to educate his people in new ways, suggested that the King invite Acharya Padmasambhava, a very famous Buddhist tantric mystic from the Swat valley in what is northern Pakistan today. They met on the banks of the Yarlung Tsangpo, Tibet's great river, where legend has it that both waited for the other to offer obeisance! Finally, Padmasambhava raised his hand in apparent salute - when a bolt of lightning came down from the heavens and singed the king's raiment. Realising Padmasambhava' s powers, the king prostrated in front of him. Revered now in every Tibetan household as Guru Rinpoche, he conquered the demons of the place and, with the King, went onto establish Samye monastery - beginning an extraordinary saga that tumultously moved religion beyond dogma and ritual on the Plateau for over a thousand years to miraculously gentle a warlike people, making it the way they lived their everyday lives.

But as we trekked on over the ridges we got information that for us, demons of the weather, still needed conquering! Heavy rain beyond two passes ahead had caused flash floods through small rivers we had to cross, washing away load-carrying yaks! That night we slept in our tents under a thunderous rainstonn, the darkness lit up by lightning bolts. By morning, other guides and trekkers confirmed that going on had a higher than 50% risk element as we would have to return over those passes ahead, so instead we made two marches down the valley camping out under the stars each night, and enjoying the company of our yak-herders, cook and guide. 13-year old Sonam Gyantse, commanding the lead yak, lifted the spirits of the whole group with his huge smile, irrepressible good nature, and constant helpfulness. How we wished we could somehow help educate him to be the natural-born leader he clearly was. But apparently he had already decided against school in favour of his life tending his yaks and roaming the hills! A great shame, we felt, for Tibet needs people like him in these difficult times.

Last September, when we had returned from Tibet, my daughter had been so struck by what we had seen that she began to help educating two young Tibetans - much like Sonam - in Bylakuppe, on the outskirts of Coorg, where my mother's family hails from. We had all read a lot then — learning of a country rudely thrust, mid-20th century, into a world it was completely out of gear with. Its leaders had not prepared it, and its new friends betrayed it - more than once. Then crushed horrifically, now it faces invisibility as 'The Tibet Anonymous Region of China!'

Today there is a growing realisation as io how closely everything is connected to everything else in this world, and my memories went back to growing up in Shimla, enjoying Rudyard Kipling's Kim! And what he nicknamed the Great Game provided the action through the 19th century across the steppes of Asia as Britain duelled with Russia — geopolitical moves by the East India Company to protect their fabulous Jewel in the Crown, India. And their eye-popping profiteering there! Buffering its border with little-known Tibet, calling it 'Forward Policy' — protecting by extending influence beyond. The Chinese had employed such a notion centuries before — today they call it pushing 'soft frontiers' — but British geographer Halford MacKinder called this whole area The Heartlands, the seat of world power — key to 'the geographical pivot of history' — across which Genghis Khan and his Golden Hordes had thundered, re-writing history and consolidating the countries that became Russia, India, China and Korea — that survived right into modern times in approximately the same borders fashioned by their Mongol conquerors. He taught the astonished western and eastern worlds his brilliant use of cavalry to create the last great tribal empire of world history. Now the Russians tried to emulate them, swallowing up Central Asia to swiftly reach the riches ofIndia!

Tibet, heart of these Heartlands, was the remotest of them all. Our great king-philosopher Akbar was the first to look systematically in that direction, enquiring into the sources ofIndia's great rivers. At his court in the 1580's, missionaries from a muscular new institution - the fastexpanding Society of Jesus - heard tales of Christian rituals by people in the far north. Could this be the Nestorian kingdom of Prester John, reputed lost somewhere in Asia? Jt would take years to realise that the travellers had not seen Christian rituals but Buddhist, but now these tough Jesuits set out in search! Fr Antonio de Andrade and his assistant Manuel Marques went over the Mana pass in 1624, the first Europeans to cross the Himalayan barrier, and were surprisingly allowed by the Guge king to set up a church at Tsaparang, in western Tibet. But local monks invited Ladakhis a couple of years later when de Andrade had left, who destroyed the Mission and overthrew the kingdom! Fr Ippolito Desideri, young, energetic and newly ordained, reached Lhasa on 18 March 1716. Spending the next 5 years at Sera monastery, he was the first westerner to study Tibetan culture - in Tibetan! His was the benchmark study on the subject.

We tend to think of gentle Tibetans in a hard land, but for centuries Tibetans were violent nomadic people, pillaging to the Ganges, to Afghanistan, up to Xinjiang and battling into China, sacking its capital Chang'an - the greatest city in the world then! China, for its part, claims a thousand years of ruling Tibet. Actually, they only got involved there after the non-Han Manchu dynasty got invited in, mid-17th century, to help fight off the fierce Mongol annies. Over the next 50 years they started placing soldiers in Lhasa and a representative at court — an Amban — to influence the Regents who ruled for the infant Dalai Lamas. By 1792, they were beginning to incite the Regents to assassinate some of these boys. Warren Hastings explored selling British woollens to Tibet and even to China overland from India. He sent special emissaries into Tibet - George Bogle, in 1774 met the Third Panchen Lama, staying in Tashilunpho for several months and even returning with a Tibetan wife! Bogle was followed by Capt. Samuel Turner. But the Brits were already selling Indian opium illicitly to China against the Emperor's edicts, so China was out!

After 1792, with the Gurkha invasion, with suspected Brit helpbeaten back, Tibet was shut to foreigners. All information dried up. This was even though the Imperial Chinese Court had trained Jesuit map-makers like Matteo Ricci since the late 16th century —Tibet was just too remote for real detail to be known, and Lhasa had rarely even been seen. Then came The Great Game, and suddenly Lhasa was every adventurer's goal! A whole host of people — all were spying for the military to fill in physical and social details of that blank white space marked Tibet on the maps! But the wild frontiers and fierce tribals defied these efforts till the Army-run Survey of India came up with the brainwave of using Indians from the Himalayan border areas for the work. These were the special group of Indian heroes that my thoughts had wandered to walking around the Jokhang. Pundit No 1, Nain Singh was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Geographic Society in 1877—the only Indian so honoured till our Himalayan Club's Harish Kapadia in 2002! Each of his three great journeys should have earned him a gold medal! They inspired novelists and generations of young adventurers. I know. I was one of them. and Tibet was top of my must see list.

Flights in from Kathmandu usually treat one to marvellous views of Makalu, Lhotse and Everest on one side — it is recommended that you insist on left-hand side seats when flying to Lhasa, and right-hand seats when flying back from there! The first thing that strikes one is usually the beautiful weather, the glorious views and the excellent highways you travel on. Now, I am a great admirer of China 's infrastructural skills so we really should have expected the great roads we saw in Tibet. And road-building was what the PLA did soon after marching into Tibet in 1950 - two major highways, the Qinghai and the Sichuan which were from scratch over 1400 hazardous kilometres. Their long 3000 km march in had clearly shown that without proper roads, annoured support was impossible. And without food supplies they caused a famine in Tibet at first. Two off-shoot roads from the Sichuan highway - to NEF A and up to Nathu la - shocked us in 1962. Today their 'Friendship Highways' enable them to project Tibet as a tourist destination for Chinese, as well as to resettle more Chinese in Tibet. And now, of course, the new $6 billion Beijing-Lhasa railway brings tourists and settlers from China onto the Plateau by the thousand. We travelled alongside it when we drove north, and it is excellently built. It will be soon extended from Lhasa to Yatung, below Nathu la in Sikkim, into Kathmandu and east from Lhasa to Nyingchi Prefecture. These impressive engineering feats will increase their strong logistical control over the Plateau. How they will control the permafrost sections of the track that could shift when climate wanns will, of course, pose the greatest challenges.

Driving into Lhasa was even more of a culture-jolt than in September last year. Its modern wide roads, large new buildings and big well-stocked department stores make it look like any large Chinese town in China. In hlct, several Tibetan towns look like Chinese towns — an effect that was as astonishing for its speed of execution as its finish in only 10 months! The fact that two-thirds of the total population of the Tibet Autonomous Region is now Chinese is almost incidental. This process of sinicisation having been taken to a major degree now, to me at least, represents a major risk that I am sure the Chinese authorities must appreciate. There are increasing numbers of Chinese tourists pouring in from all parts of China for the natural beauty and the unique cultural identity of the Tibetans. Once this identity gets completely submerged, a major charm of visiting Tibet will have been lost forever. Writing that is now firmly on the wall up there.

There are several brand-new hotels built recently in Lhasa, ranging from 3 to 5-Star — and again the emphasis appears to be on serving the needs of the new Chinese tourists who come up there in large groups. Indeed, I read somewhere that they expect to attract 3 million tourists by the end of the year, or perhaps next year. That almost rivals total tourists to India! It's only when you get to the Barkhor area around the Jokhang Plaza that you can finally feel you are in Tibet - Tibetan food, Tibetan people and Tibetan sounds. Though even here, the picture is changing, with Nepalese fast food restaurants and Chinese eating places increasing.

When one visits Ganden monastery you get your first real look at the country-side. On our last trip I was standing in the darkened, empty main meditation and prayer hall of the monks, enjoying the peace, when I got an interesting shock. Very close behind me suddenly rang out the familiar jarring tones of — what else, a mobile-phone!! I turned quickly, and in the gloom behind me saw a young monk. Struggling with his robe, he finally pulled out not one but three phones, peering at them in the semi-darkness trying to see which one was ringing. I had to smile — what a puzzling, ultra-modern dilemma in this of all places! My head buzzing with images and ideas of Tibet down the ages — and then this!! Was this the new Tibet where Tibetans, young and old, struggle to find a new identity?

Ganden had been the first of the three great monasteries around Lhasa, with Drepung and Sera, destroyed by the Red Guards in their devilish frenzy to stamp out Tibet's religion between 1966 and 1969. More than 30 years before that Mao had already focussed on Tibet as the strategic land-link to Xinjiang and to fight Russia from - and his retreating Red annies, going through eastern Tibet on their legendary Long March, looted food and the local monasteries thus eliciting a violent response from the fierce, suspicious locals. But it was Mao's Cultural Revolution that destroyed over 95% of the thousands of monasteries on the Tibetan plateau. Much of their culture and assets wiped out at one go, along with the monks who were traditionally the most outspoken. Over 500,000 monks and nuns - I think of them as an entire religious generation — either killed, disbanded or forced to marry each other. Since the 70's selective rebuilding of monasteries has been undertaken, but joining monks are very carefully screened to avoid more unrest and exert better control.

It took us quite awhile to realise that whatever we were seeing — bricks, mortar, icons, everything — was all rebuilt and new. So watching that modem young monk wrestling in the dark with his worldly problems made me try and imagine what the frame of mind of young Tibetans today must be. After the devastating 50's and 60's and then the further unrest in the 80's to the more severe strictures of today, things must be depressing for young folks! School children must go through a Chinese agenda as they grow up — pretty much as happens in China - with eyes and ears everywhere in public, and their culture being trivialised. Yes, living conditions have improved so as to attract Chinese settlers, so opportunities must be better also for Tibetans - but life beyond the good roads and new urban life is as hard and grinding as ever. What did Tibetans really feel about their new modem Lhasa? Do they see the Chinese tourists pouring in on the Beijing-Lhasa Express - on top of the millions already resettled — as new opportunity? How do they feel about their loss of cultural identity? Is there more violence ahead? Many young Tibetans, especially in India where an entire generation has grown up, feel restive and impatient over His Holiness' 'Middle Way' with the Chinese. A strange sense of sorrow permeated our thoughts.

Because mistake not - this is the most extraordinary place on earth. Just 40 to 70 million years ago the Indian subcontinent crashed into and under the Asian continent. Emptying the vast prehistoric Tethys Sea there that stretched all the way to the Mediterranean — crumpling, buckling, thrusting up its ancient sea-bed sediment into earth's youngest and mightiest mountain range, the Himalaya. Scientists studying soil samples from the bottom of the Oman Sea have found that that titanic encounter changed earth's weather. In the south it created a huge depression, filling with sediment over time to become the Gangetic Plain, while the incredible compression kept pushing up what became
the Tibetan Plateau in the north — scientific calculations place it reaching its present height only about 8 million years ago, the crust under it doubly thicker than any other place on earth. Above it jet streams — narrow, fast-moving westerly rivers of wind within the general air, up to 50 knots speed and 15 kms high — move air and pressure conditions, bringing in the seasons. Chinese meteorologists have studied Plateau weather since 1950 and the eminent Prof Ye Duzhen discovered its great height splits this jet stream into two around the Plateau. They meet at the other side gathering speed going down into mainland China as the fastest jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere. This causes the onset of the Asian monsoons. The forest cover and vast grasslands of the Plateau act like a giant mirror reflecting back the sun's rays into space to maintain its temperature and pressure - thus detennining the rate at which its snow cover recedes during spring. Which is how the jet stream impacts either the strength or weakness of the monsoons. Perhaps this explains the other complex and less well understood meteorological correlation between Plateau weather and high winter sea temperatures in the North Atlantic. While global climate is impacted by several factors, the Plateau is actually one of 12 identified global-warming "tipping points" - that could initiate sudden and unpredictable changes globally. Laymen like me do not understand all the mechanics of this, but future generations will surely feel the results.

The Himalaya guards the southern rim of the plateau in one continuous sweep of2200 kms, marked by mighty Nanga Parbat in the west, to Namcha Barwa in the east. 1600 miles by 800 miles of vast plateau bound to the north by the Kunlun, Nanshan and Altyn Tagh mountain systems running into Gansu province of China. The vast Changtang highlands covering half the Plateau's surface come in from the west up to the great north-south NyainqenTangla range that marks the watershed between the catchment basin draining towards the Indian Ocean and that towards the China seas. Below this are the lower-lying outer Plateau areas along which lie the cities, and over to the east is the river gorge country where great rivers drain off the Plateau eastwards. It's a grand mountain tapestry beyond human sense of scale. If water is the ultimate renewable resource — then Tibet must be the ultimate water renewer !! Because it feeds over 1000 lakes, some of them the highest salt and freshwater lakes on earth, three of them occupying areas of over 1000 kms each. And Tibet's 'Rivers of Life' sustain entire countries and 47% of the world's population!! The Indus, Karnali, Satluj and Yarlung Tsangpo all rise within a radius of 100 miles around Tise or Mount Meru - Kailash, home to the beloved sage Milarepa, the legendary inaccessible abode of Shiva. South of it, in a circlet of peaks, lies Mapham Tso or our Manasarovar — the lake created from the Manas, the mind of Brahma — and its companion Rakshas tal. This special sacred geography controls the drainage system of much of South and Central Asia —the centre of the universe for Hindus, Jains, Buddhists and the followers of Bon, the ancient religion of Tibet.

Towards the southeast the Yarlung Tsangpo river cuts 300 degrees round and 16000 ft below the summit of Namcha Barwa, creating the most extraordinary gorge in the world - the Tsangpo Gorge - three times deeper than the Grand Canyon, tilted eight times steeper than it and with maybe 6-10 times its volume of cubic ft per second of furious waters flowing for 140 miles and emerging, more or less peacefully, as the Brahmaputra in India. Further to the east, other great rivers - the Yellow, the Yangste, Mekong and the Salween — each the main water supplier of the lands they bisect, drain off the Plateau through very deep, close-set parallel valleys. This is an area called the 'Arc of Tea Culture' where wild tea first grew thousands of years ago. Bodhi dharma probably passed this way on the ancient trade paths into Yunnan province, where one legend has it that he experienced its refreshing effects and took it into China. Tibetan merchants bartered tea for Chinese horses along paths called the Tea-Horse Trails right across the Plateau almost to India, before becoming the staple drink and trading product from China along the silk roads to Europe, and later on the spice routes across the oceans.

This land Khabachen, 'The Land of Snows', with 85% of its mass above 3000 m and 50% of it above 4500 m, covering nearly 2.2 million square kilometres — 25% of the land area of China — is literally the Mount Meru of legelld, acting like a powerful chimney between earth and sky, connecting global climate trigger points in both places!

After we completed our trek we drove out to Tsethang to visit Samye monastery. And as we drove across the desert-like conditions along the wide Tsangpo river we got a good feel for the reverence and the fear that the early Tibetans must have felt for the powerful natural forces at play in Tibet. We took a bone-shaking drive across rough pathways on an old truck up into the hills outside Samye to visit a nunnery and a monastery high up the mountainside. As we climbed higher and higher we came across some of the 108 caves that still provide meditational space to monks — just as Padmasambhava did 1300 years ago up there. No wonder Tibetans believe that natural creations like mountains, trees, rivers and so on housed heavenly beings come to earth to protect, and control nature's will. Before Buddhism landed here centuries later, these beliefs had developed into a cult of elaborate animistic and shamanistic practices aimed at living with and trying to control nature. This was the early Bon religion — not a religion in the proper sense at that point — no temples, monasteries or priests, or even some central doctrine binding it all together but at least some shared beliefs that they acted on. A later synergy of Bon with Buddhism has gone on to shape the Tibetan identity uniquely — and implanted in it a natural feel for protection of the environment. It was a great experience visiting the monks and nuns in those less accessible places, and to experience their child-like enthusiasm for their surroundings and meeting people who take the trouble to come up there.

Driving back from Tsethang into Lhasa brings you very much face to face with the religious, commercial and political focus of the entire country. As we had already experienced, people come from all around Tibet, and it's a major pleasure to sit quietly experiencing all the different peoples streaming around. Tibetan folk-tales tell of the beginnings of the Tibetan people as a result of a simian manifestation of Chenrezig mating with a rock-dwelling demoness — whose children ate barley grown in a sacred field, later evolving into the first Tibetans. Evidence of life and activity on the plateau have been dated back several thousand years, and local clans and kings ruled different areas since 700 BC. But it was king Tsongtsen Gampo who first unified Tibet and also conquered upto Nepal, India, Xinjiang and Chang'an .

The kings of Nepal and China thus threatened, made marriage alliances with him — sending their daughters with Buddhist images to 'tame' this dangerous man. His Nepalese queen, Bhrikuti Devi, brought a statue of the eight year-old Buddha, the Akshobya Buddha while Wengchen Kongjo his Chinese princess gave him a beautiful golden statue of the 12 year-old Buddha called the Jowo Rinpoche, earlier gifted by the king ofMagadha to the Emperor and brought all the way from China to Tibet on a palanquin! He built special chapels, the Ramoche and the Jokhang, to house these images, both later destroyed by the zealous Red Guards. King Gampo also had the Tibetan language invented during his reign enabling the religion to spread. Another of his descendants, King Tri Repalchen, concluded a 'Perpetual Treaty' in 822 AD with the Emperor of China that is enshrined in a Jokhang monument - which is today impossible to visit because it has been sealed off in front of the Jokhang. I photographed it from the top of the temple, thinking of how anonymous this significant treaty was all those years ago with the kings of China and Tibet detailing how each recognised the other's borders and promising never to violate this faith and respect.

Sadly, such promises have so often been violated. And in March 1959, Lhasa tasted one of the most violent of such violations. This was when they had revolted thinking that the PLA meant to kidnap His Holiness during a military show. They had barricaded the Summer Palace roads to stop him going, and refused to disperse. The nervous PLA fired some shells, two of which landed in the Norbulingka gardens. His Holiness was advised by the State Oracle, from the Nechung monastery and his advisors to leave that very night. His faithful Khampa warriors had worked out a plan to get him to the Indian border, and he left disguised as a soldier. The furious PLA troops began a blood-thirsty siege of the city that ended after three days of pitched street battles that killed over 15,000 Tibetans and left the Jokhang temple shelled and desecrated. On 28 March 1959 the Tibet Government was dissolved, and the country that King Tsongtsen Gampo had stitched together over 1300 years was no more.

During the Cultural Revolution the PLA ransacked the Jokhang and desecrating it by slaughtering pigs there. Later cadres of Red Guards occupied it, and finally the PLA. It was fully restored to its present state only in the 90's.

Normal tourists like us to the Jokhang get no inkling of this terrifying modem history. Its an extraordinary place, full of people moving around in the dark interiors of the lower chapels, crowded with eager faces, alive and vital. Tibetans come from the remotest parts of Tibet enduring hardships and up to two years of travel, often fully prostrating all the way to express their faith here. It bustles with respectful life not the dead silence one gets in many other religious places, no pious shows of prayerfulness, it brims with a faith that's alive — refreshing and inspiring to experience. The Jokhang's golden roofs, its peaks and wheels oflife and gyeltsen shine in the air - spiritual beacons to the faithful.

Tibetan Buddhism is the very fabric of Tibetan identity, inspired by the teachings of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who founded the Buddhist Holy Order, the Sangha. After he had pierced ignorance to realise Nirvana, becoming the Buddha, his first sermon at Sarnath, is enshrined in the Wheel of Dhanna and the two sarnath deer that adorn the fronts of practically every Buddhist monastery in the country.

Another vital element of Tibetan identity is the Potala itself, the official winter residence of the Dalai Lamas, soaring over Lhasa with its white ramparts and dramatic burgundy red palace in the center. It breathtakingly crystallises the spirit of the city and the country in a way no other architectural creation anywhere else manages. My hope is that it should not become soon the only original reminder of the real Tibet. Because to every Tibetan this great building symbolises the abode on earth of Chenresig and their own identity.

And then of course there is the institution of Dalai Lamaship. Can you imagine being tapped to lead your nation at the age of two or three — moved away from home to spend the rest of your life being plunged from situation to situation you could not possibly ever be prepared for? To have a Regent rule for you till you are grown up, and then have the dreams and aspirations of a nation ride upon your every decision? And each Dalai Lama is one with all those before him — they really believe there is an actual and real continuity between the life of a current Dalai Lama and those who have gone before. They have notions of traditional wisdom transmitted through reincarnation lineages of masters coming directly from ancient wisdom and beliefs from India.

These are all vital factors that make up the 'Tibetan-ness' of Tibetans. It's the heart of the Chinese dilemma in turning Tibetans into Chinese — how do you bum out 'the mind's Tibet'?

And you notice all these aspects of Tibetan-ness whether one is at the magical sacred lakes like the great saltwater Namcho Tso to the north, or the freshwater Yamdrok-tso to the south, or when we drove over 400 kms to the east above the great Tsangpo gorge experiencing landscapes that so closely resembled Swiss meadows aflame with little flowers of every variety. Or even when we drove nearly 500 kms to the north of Lhasa to the vast open vistas on the eastern edge of the great Changtang highlands.

In fact when we reached Naqchu there, we were able to experience one of the famous Horse Festivals of Tibet, where young Tibetan men exhibit the prowess at various feats like sweeping handkerchiefs off the ground at full gallop, or shooting at targets with old muskets. This year, however, the local Chinese authorities decided to lay on a fullscale pageant instead of just a horse festival — including goose-stepping helmeted PLA troops, school children, traffic policemen, veterans, folk-dancers etc etc. Then, in quite a shocking move, they apparently forced monks from the local monasteries to parade in a contingent holding the Chinese flag! Personally, I could not imagine a more stupid use of power and pressure, to reduce the religion to being some small meaningless part of an overlong, boring pageant. I noticed that several foreign photographers there had a field day photographing this rather sad contingent. The crowd received it very silently.

Such deceit and betrayal marked Tibet's passage through the 20th century. First came the British. When Colonel Younghusband's Mission came in 1904, they came to teach Tibetans. They taught a lesson that began by savagely machine-gunning down over 700 Tibetans armed with swords at Guru, a village before Gyantse — a precursor to Jallianwala Baug 15 years later. Then they went behind Tibetan backs, signing with both Manchu China and the Russians in 1906 and 1907, recognising Manchu 'suzerainty' and agreeing not to interfere. So the Manchus immediately invaded, and the Brits looked the other way. It took Sun Yatsen's 1911 revolution in China overthrowing the Manchu dynasty to get these Manchu troops out of Tibet, through India (enriching Calcutta's Chinatown!). During the 37 subsequent years that Tibet ruled itself, they should have learnt from China's turmoil at that time how to protect themselves better. But sadly Tibet's noblemen and monks never felt that need, ignoring the advice of the Great 13th to be prepared against the Chinese and improve their contacts with the world!

Then came the Americans. Remember till Pearl Harbour in 1941, America didn't know Tibet from Timbuktu. Only very intrepid Americans had ever set foot there — men like William Rockhill, diplomat and adventurer who journeyed in Great Game tradition into Tibet and Mongolia, Suydam Cutting, New York businessman and sportsman who took Teddy Roosevelt's boys hunting for giant Panda and also introduced Tibetan Lhasa Apsos to America, and Joseph Rock, self taught naturalist, who lived 27 years in China studying southeast China and eastern Tibet, writing articles for National Geographic that helped inspire Hilton's Lost Horizons. Pearl Harbour pushed the US into anning Chiang Kaishek's Kuomintang against Japan and an estimated $35 billion in various Allied Aid. A poor choice, and he personally pocketed many millions from that aid — we won't discuss how much here. Unfazed, the US focussed on the bigger picture of ending the war and dealing with Gennany and Russia afterwards. A-Bombing Hiroshima in 1945 became their version of the old Brit Forward Policy — ending the War and allowing them to demobilize and withdraw from Europe with their European flank protected. Then the CIA's Man in Urumqui, his work apparently still classified top secret — Douglas. Mackiernan — proved Russia was mining uranium in Xinjiang. He personally monitored Russia's first atomic detonation in Kazakhstan in 1949, analysis of whose fallout showed America's secrets had been pilfered, balance of power had been restored and the Cold War was on.

Mao defeated Chiang, declaring the People's Republic in 1949. Mao was ready to fulfil his strategic intentions in Tibet, but the US State Department did not want to aid Tibet. The CIA knew all the thinking in China though, and acted by ordering Mackiernan into Tibet, to organise a major Tibetan action. He marched overland into Tibet with a small group, but sadly some US bureaucrat infonned the Tibetans too late of his arrival. A Tibetan militia group intercepted him within Tibet, mistakenly cutting him down in a hail of bullets. Mac was the first CIA agent to die in action, and his is the first anonymous red star on the lobby wall in Langley, Virginia. In his group was a young man, Frank Bessac, who escaped and· was escorted to Lhasa. Bessac advised the Tibetans not to trust the Chinese - Beijing, who had already found out who Mac was, now got alanned at this news and invaded Tibet in winter on 7 October 1950.

Later, the CIA did covertly train selected Khampas in Saipan and in Colorado in modem weaponry and communication skills. Very little and too late. Naturally the Tibetans felt betrayed — the US never helped them, the Brits blocked a Tibetan mission for six months in Calcutta on its way to bargain with China, further enraging the Chinese - while India negated UN resolutions on the Dalai Lama's appeals for help.

India, sadly, prevaricated on Tibet right through the 50's, signing the Panchsheel Agreement that gave away all our British era rights in Tibet — and getting nothing in return on settling border issues in the east. Then we were humiliated in the 1962 War, even though the Army had full intelligence on when key Chinese roads had been completed upto the border, as well as troop build-ups on the border. Information that had come from, among others, one of our own Himalayan Club member, Sidney Wignall, in 1954.

The one scene of British involvement that wasn't political is Tibet's most famous relic of primordial chaos — Everest. Rongbuk monastery, which housed an entire generation of great Brit climbers who mounted all seven pre-1950 Everest expeditions, will soon feel the weight of Beijing's grand aspirations for the 2008 Olympics. Not only will a new 108-km asphalt road be laid here from Tingri but China has laid elaborate plans to carry the Olympic torch to Everest's summit en route Beijing from Greece. I am pretty sure that like David Brashears and Ed Viestur, who caused a 40-pound Imax camera to be taken to the summit to film their 1996 epic, the Chinese will not fail with the Olympic torch!

The world's major worry about the Tibetan plateau today should be its lack of knowledge and information as to how China conducts its activities up there. Its well known that the Plateau is a major logistical corridor for them, that may at some point in the future include not just railway lines everywhere but also pipelines coming up from Pakistan's coast at Gwadar. They have hundreds of thousands of PLA troops controlling all aspects of life as well as secret radar stations, military airfields and advanced missile bases. After all, they also shot down on January 17th an older weather satellite of theirs 537 miles up from their Songlin facility just off the Plateau, to demonstrate some of their newly developed capabilities in space. They don't seem to have been too worried about the 35000 pieces of space debris they created as a result of that shot is itself a further cause of concern.

Why these aspects should worry us deeply is that world climate is changing as a result of human activity — quite apart from natural causes. The Tibetan plateau is one of the world's greatest water providers, with its major Rivers of Life supporting 47% of the world's population. These rivers are being overused after they flow off the Plateau, as well as being over-dammed and polluted through industrial effluence to really alanning levels. On the Plateau however the changing climate is affecting the glaciers to the extent that wetlands on the plateau around the sources of the major rivers have shrunk significantly by as much as 30% in recent years. China has a major problem with both the Yellow and the Yangtze in dire straits on both quality and quantity. India's Himalayan glaciers are shrinking and temperatures rising — at least 2.2C over the last 2 decades and every other Asian country faces similar concerns. As I was sending this article to the Journal, the morning papers quoted China's state media citing the Tibet Meteorological Bureau reporting that annual temperature rises due to global wanning is far faster in Tibet than in the rest of China and the world generally. Scientists say that this will severely impact sustainability of water supplies in the region due to accelerated wanning of glaciers and decreasing snow cover. Also that Tibet's sensitive alpine environment is seen as a key barometer of the world's climate. So that's as official as you can possibly get. A spinechilling assessment !

Tashilunpho monastery, seat of the Panchen Lamas.

39. Tashilunpho monastery, seat of the Panchen Lamas. (Vijay Crishna)

Namcho Tso with Nyainqen Tangla in background.

40. Namcho Tso with Nyainqen Tangla in background. (Vijay Crishna)

Donyi Polo funerary tower of Idi Mishami.

41. Donyi Polo funerary tower of Idi Mishami.

An Idi tribal with dah and lockets.

42. An Idi tribal with dah and lockets. (Harish Kapadia)

It surely should be time for China to assemble a world team of
e) perts to monitor whether all its alarming activities around the plateau over the last 50 years — including its extensive mining activities of ir-m ore, copper, gold, and even uranium — is beginning to tip on the Plateau unacceptably, and what could be done about it. large-scale engineering activities going through previously virgin territory - roads, pipelines, airfields, fencing - with the new railways into and around the Plateau continuing to bring up the most dangerous animal in the world by the million - may be contributing dangerously to the changing climate. I cannot believe also that those in charge of the Chinese Communist Party would not be highly sensitive to the needs of their huge peasant base in China for water. As it is, the bloated bureaucracy that they have allowed to be built up to control the populace has encouraged large-scale corruption and cutting of comers in various industrial processes and products that is earning them such a bad name today.

Surely the answer is building peace stability and a chance to work answers out. To me that spells 'Bring the Dalai Lama back'. Build a healing bridge to the future, not Great Walls! Its an idea whose time has come — and its time to work on it.

On our last day in Tibet, we visited the Yoghurt festival celebrations around Lhasa and the unveiling of the Thangkas at Drepung monastery and Sera monastery and visiting the holiday atmosphere at the Norbulingka grounds. It was a wonderful day. Then in the evening we went down to the vast square in front of the Potala and were surprised to be treated to a huge fireworks display that went on in the sky for nearly an hour. While spectacular, we could only worry about the needless cost of such an extravagant display and the potential damage administered by such v!olent noise and carbon in that pristine airspace. It was a sobering end to a wonderful trip.

SUMMARY

A look at the history of Tibet, based on author's travel on the Plateau.

 

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