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What do you most particularly want not to happen on the coldest day in years?
And what therefore is bound to occur?
Failure of a major heating source in the middle of the night so that it is not discovered until the cold light of dawn.
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You’d think a cat would poke you. They do every other night!
I’ll not exaggerate. It wasn’t that cold.
Cold was my English boarding school, the winters of ’62 and ’63. Those mornings we woke up to find our sink frozen.
On Sundays, we were forced out on a route march along the cliffs overlooking the frozen Bristol Channel.
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A bracing walk is a fine thing when you return to a hot drink in a warm house!
My toes were so swollen with chilblains, I could not get a shoe on my foot, so I had to wear oversized boots which won me further disapproving looks from Sister.
Not that I cared, but you get tired of looking at sour faces.
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It was largely those miserable winters that made me easily persuadable that I should move to America.
When I came for the Christmas of ’63, my inspection visit I suppose, the weather was colder than I had ever then known, yet my aunt and uncle’s house was warm throughout.
Furthermore, I was greeted with welcoming smiles. I fell immediately in love with my aunt who became my best friend and with the two cocker spaniels, the first dogs I lived with.
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Additionally, as I recall, there was no plan B.
So I emigrated to the States the following August.
Leaving my parents in SE Asia, I had no idea when I might see them again. My mother’s parting words?
“Don’t lose your English accent.”
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People say I haven’t, but when in England thereafter, I was always regarded as a foreigner, so I’ve always had a sense of not really belonging anywhere.
Yet, there was one place where I did.
Curiously, I had never been there before except in my imagination…
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The minute I set foot across the border into Tibet, I was exhilarated. I had always been excited to visit any new country, but this was different.
It sounds far-fetched, but I felt I’d come home.
Maybe it was all those years of yearning to visit a place that for long had been isolated, unreachable.
Perhaps it was the books I’d read.
And because I’d thought this would be impossible.
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I loved mountains. This is Everest.
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It was, I suppose, a combination of many emotions.
But one day we visited a monastery where the monks were chanting. As I entered the room I was struck with a sense of strong familiarity.
“I’ve been here before.”
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The room was very dark and the air filled with the scent of incense. The chanting vibrated.
I felt the greatest peace in that moment.
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Gyantse
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Perhaps the familiarity came from the fact of my having visited many Buddhist temples in different parts of Asia, always gaining a degree of comfort from them.
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Jokhang
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When at the boarding school in Cambodia, I liked to go across the road in the late afternoon to the small chapel where Franciscan monks chanted evensong.
The sound vibrated and the chapel was filled with incense and the warm glow of the lowering sun.
Sera Monastery
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That, too was peace.
It is what I always yearn for.
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Jokhang
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Old imperfect photographs do not begin to portray the magnificence of Tibet.
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Jokhang
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Burning juniper outside Jokhang temple.
This was banned by the Chinese government in 2020.
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Jokhang.
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The Potala Palace, Lhasa.
Immense. Stunning.
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We were privileged to view a tiny portion of this incredible structure, the building of which commenced in 1645.
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From Wikipedia…
The building measures 400 metres (1,300 ft) east-west and 350 metres (1,150 ft) north-south, with sloping stone walls averaging 3 metres (10 ft) thick, and 5 metres (16 ft) thick at the base, and with copper poured into the foundations to help proof it against earthquakes.[6] Thirteen storeys of buildings, containing over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines and about 200,000 statues, soar 119 metres (390 ft) on top of Marpo Ri, the “Red Hill”, rising more than 300 metres (980 ft) in total above the valley floor.[7]
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Norbulingka was summer residence of the Dalai Lama from 1780 until the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama in 1959.
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It wasn’t only the mountains and the beautiful temples that so appealed to me about Tibet.
I loved the people.
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Unable to communicate verbally, we simply smiled.
And I never meet an animal without taking its photograph.
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The blackened appearance is not dirt but the soot from the wood smoke of their fires.
There were many Tibetan temple dogs.
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Tourists had not been visiting long in those days (1986) and were still something of a curiosity.
Flying out of Lhasa over those majestic peaks, tears ran down my face. I knew I would never go back. Even if I had the opportunity, I knew I wouldn’t want take it.
Things were changing rapidly and this unique and very spiritual place was being turned into a tourist attraction.
By going there, maybe I contributed to the process, demonstrating that foreigners were interested.
Tim always said we were travellers, not tourists and maybe we tried to behave better, but is there a difference?
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Why torment yourself with such thoughts?
Does my being vegetarian save a single animal?
Isn’t it the principle that matters?
Tibet mattered to me so much and does now more than ever. I desperately want the oppression to end.
“Save Tibet” is a charity I shall support to the bitter end and until that comes, I shall be carrying that place and those people in my heart.
It seems like you found ‘home’ in Tibet. I don’t think I really found that anywhere outside of London, or I would surely have moved there.
Best wishes, Pete.
Thank you, Carolyn, for writing about Tibet in a wonderfully interesting way! I understand your feeling of being home and at peace. The photos, although old still show the beauty of the mountain, the smiling people, and the animals they live with. However, the spiritual peace you found there wouldn’t be possible to maintain without an income. My dream of living in the Himalayas has to be only a daydream, as I had to work. At least you have had an experience to last in your memory forever. It also inspired your aim to help the charity devoted to Tibet.
Joanna x
There is no doubt whatsoever that tourism can and does ruin the lives and habitats of the indigenous people, although it is natural that they should wish to encourage tourists in order to enrich themselves and their country. A vicious circle, unfortunately!
Sadly I think the Tibetans reap no benefit at all from the tourism that has turned a spiritual place into a Chinese Disneyland. I have not been back to see it but that is the impression I get from afar. It is sacrilegious, in my view. An American author wrote a series of very wonderful novels about a Chinese detective who had fallen afoul of his government and was sent to Tibet. I wasn’t at all sure how I would feel about the story but it was quite wonderful. Elliot Pattison has written another series about the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, also wonderful.
Hope you have a relaxing time over Christmas and that you have a Happy, healthy, and joyful New Year.