(no subject)
labrang, amdo, tibet
my mate the monk.
:)
{in his room at the monestary with his dalai lama shrine, camera phone and cd player! when we first met him he seemed friendly but withdrawn; timid almost. then after a day or two, he started telling us more about his life... how he'd be imprisoned by the chinese PLB for writing an anti-government article in a newspaper. how he'd attempted to get across the border to nepal and been imprisoned again... so many people there, their lives are so extraordinary. then there was peyma, who we met getting drunk on a hilltop outside the town. even the young peoples' devotion to the dalai lama is awe inspiring; a jolt. so many of them have tried to escape across the border and he'd succeeded, trekked without a guide across the himalayas, almost died of the cold and of starvation in the process. lived in india for a few years before coming back to tibet. it's really intoxicating... meeting people with lives so far from your own that it floors you. meeting people with this belief that holds them entirely, this astounding devotion. and it's so heartbreaking because these things that they cling to... the dalai lama coming back, the country being restored to itself. it's all so unlikely to come to pass.}