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Published: June 18th 2008
Temple
These cylinders have prayers written on them, and devotees spin the cylinders to gain good karma, as if they had said the prayer themselves.We took a night bus from Delhi to McLeod Ganj. You can guess what happened next. (“He fixes the cable?”) So we got to McLeod completely exhausted. McLeod, for those that are unfamiliar, is in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains, at about 6,000 feet, and is also home to the Tibetan Government in exile. Ben and I were able to push through the grogginess and take a quick hike around the area, check out some of the beautiful mountains and enjoy not being in a noisy Indian city. Over the past week we have really been taking that sentiment to heart. The mountains and forests here have provided an excellent escape from the craziness of the cities in the Indian plains. The temperature is much cooler; and that is a
very welcome feeling. Unfortunately, two days after we arrived, the monsoon got here. So, while we (really just Ben and I) have been able to do a few short hikes, we have largely been confined to the city for fear of getting caught in a rainstorm on top of a mountain ridge. We made it out to a really scenic waterfall one day, and Daal Lake as well.
Clouds Clearing
On the hike to the waterfall we did have a bit of sun. However, both times we were completely engulfed in a cloud when reached our destination. While wet, it is pretty amazing to hike in such dense cloud cover. It isn’t like anything I have seen before.
While in the city, we have been busying ourselves in various ways. The three of us took a great Tibetan cooking course. Ben and I also spent a few mornings and afternoons taking yoga classes in the nearby city of Bagsu. (Anyone coming this way, I strongly recommend the 9 a.m. classes at Hotel High Land.) Darren, for those wondering, has spent most of his time stuffed in the room or some café studying CPA materials. We have also spent a bit of time going to the Tibetan sites, the Tibetan Buddhist temples, the Tibetan museum, etc. and discussing various topics with the numerous Tibetan monks one inevitably meets. For those that don’t know me well, I was president of Students for a Free Tibet during my first two years at the University of Michigan. So, it has been interesting seeing this community after my experiences campaigning in the U.S. I’ll go more into this at the end of this blog. I have stayed
In the clouds at Daal Lake
We hiked up to Daal Lake and were completely engulfed in the clouds. This was as much of a view as we had. out of political discussions in my blogs up to this point, but I need to go into detail on my sentiments regarding the situation in Tibet, the Chinese government, and the responsibility of individuals around the world to take action, not for one cause or another, but just to take action to help one another. So please, just this once, bear with me and please read the latter part of this blog.
Anyway, as I said, McLeod has been a fantastic respite from the heat of the plains and the noise of the Indian cities. Just to remember what that was like though, Lawless and I took a day trip to the city of Amritsar (Darren had already been there last summer). The city is five to six hours away, depending on how many roads you encounter that are washed out from the monsoon. We encounter two such blockages. It is a fairly large city on the Indian plains and is home to the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine in Sikhism. It is also 30 km away from the Pakistan - India border crossing at Atari. At 5:30 every night, thousands of people cram into bleachers, squeezing together fitting
10 people where 3 should be, and they begin the most insane display of national pride versus one’s neighbor I have ever seen. People from the crowd are given Indian flags and they begin running at the border waving the flag before returning and handing it off. This is followed by a solid hour of extremely loud Bollywood music with, of course, people dancing everywhere. The heat is incredible with the sun beating down on you and people squeezed shoulder to shoulder. Meanwhile, Pakistan’s side, which to this point has been completely empty, begins to fill up with males on one side of the bleachers and females separated on the other. It is very orderly and there is plenty of room. There is no dancing and hardly any noise. It provides a magnificent, and hilarious, contrast of cultures. Finally around 6:30 the ceremony begins. Each side has an MC that works the crowd into a fervor chanting national slogans, i.e. “Long Live India”, etc., and each side’s guards begin high step (and I mean high) marching at one another, meeting at the border, where they jeer for several seconds. Each side’s crowd goes crazy because their guard stepped higher and
looked fiercer. This continues for another forty minutes or so until they lower their flags at the same time, shake hands, and the show ends. Well, kind of. Then the crowd starts to disperse, a traffic jam ensues, and you see a different side of Indian culture. No logistical coordination, people cutting in line, constant unneeded horn honking, pushy touts selling random items, etc. Anyway, Ben and I thought this was definitely one of the most interesting things we have seen while in India (the border crossing, not the traffic jam), but we immediately retreated back to the comfort and quiet of the mountains thereafter.
Anyway, we are back in McLeod Ganj and plan on heading over to Manali next. Here we hope to do a few outdoor activities, however we don’t know how the monsoon will affect those. Supposedly the whitewater rafting season is best about now, but, with the intense rains, the river may have gotten too rough. If so, we will be heading up to Leh earlier than expected. It doesn’t rain that far north, and the mountains are the best, so we will just spend more time trekking, which is fine with me!
My one departure into politics
So, as I said previously, I don’t like getting into politics on my blogs. However, few people in the west pay attention to this issue, which I find a travesty. They saw "Seven Years in Tibet" but remember how Brad Pitt looked more than the issues portrayed in the movie. They have heard of H.H. Dalai Lama but know him best from Bill Murphy’s monologue in “Caddy Shack”. I can’t provide a complete history of the situation in Tibet, for that I would recommend “My Land, My People” or “Freedom in Exile”, both by H.H. Dalai Lama. (The former book is where I learned the information that follows.) To provide a history in brief though, Tibet and China have had a long history going back thousands of years. Sometimes China invaded Tibet, at others Tibet invaded China. In the early 1900’s though, Tibet had its own coinage, its own postal service, its own passports (recognized by Western governments), and several signed treaties with Western powers. It was an independent nation. However, when the communists came to power in China, they wanted to show their strength to the West. The extremely large territory of
A clear day!
This was our first day in McLeod, and it was the only one that had a substantial amount of sunshine. Tibet, a peaceful Buddhist nation with a completely disorganized, untrained army of only 6,000, proved an easy target full of natural resources. They quickly invaded under the pretense of "liberation." Since this time, 1.2 million of the 6 million (20%) Tibetans have died. The Tibetan religion has been under attack as 6,000 monasteries (95%) have been decimated. Countless ancient works of art and religious manuscripts have been destroyed. The Chinese government has also begun migration programs shipping Han Chinese into Tibet, making the Tibetan people a minority in their own nation. There are thousands of accounts of forced sterilization of Tibetan women, experimental surgeries on Tibetan prisoners, extreme torture of political prisoners, and various other forms of human rights violations. If you want a more detailed account of these, read Palden Gyatso’s “The Autobiography of a Tibetan Monk”.
In McLeod, one meets in the individuals that have lived these stories. These individuals are refugees that fled their homeland, crossing the tallest mountains in the world with insufficient clothing, very little food, hiding during the day, fighting the cold winter all night. They are forced to leave during the winter as it makes them harder for the Chinese army track
them as they attempt to halt their escape. Inevitably, many lose limbs from frostbite and many even lose their lives, freezing to death in remote mountain passes, left by the side of the road for future travelers to see as they attempt to escape the oppressive political regime. I also met a monk who was held as a political prisoner for three and a half years in a Chinese prison. He has since written a book, entitled "Hell on Earth", and now speaks at universities and parliaments around the world. The regular intense beatings, the witnessing of young children being thrown from multi-story buildings, the dislocated shoulders and broken bones from various torture techniques, the electrocution of their genitals, mouth and other body parts, the forced confessions, the show trials where they are not given legal representation or a chance to defend themselves, and the sleep deprivation and starvation in prisons completely breaks your heart. This is normally far removed, but having intimate conversations with these individuals brings their stories to life.
All of this is all hardly conceivable when I am in the United States sitting on a comfortable couch reading the accounts. However, when you see these
people, and the wounds they still bear, it sinks your heart. What hurts the most though is how little progress is made and how little people care. Okay, yeah they care in the sense that they say "That is shame. Something should be done.", they may even have shed a tear while watching “Seven Years in Tibet”, but do they take any action? Our governments may discuss human rights with the Chinese government, but has any progress been made? The brutal crack down on the Tibetan people after the March uprising clearly demonstrates this is not the case. All Westerners, particularly journalists, were forced out of Tibet to keep the Chinese reaction a secret. Communications with the outside world were cut off, and Tibet has been isolated. Hundreds of people have been arrested and killed, but little has been reported on these atrocities. And, no action has been taken. Why? The Chinese economy is too big; they are simply too attractive for foreign investment. I used to be passionate and fight for my government to take action on these issues, believing that they would listen. However, there are too many people with much more money that get the ears of
our politicians who want the status quo to stay as is. As a result, I have become more of a realist (others may say cynic and I would not likely disagree).
However, I still believe in the power of individuals and groups of individuals that are strongly motivated to force change. In another travesty, this of modern western media,
the best news story of the year was tragically underreported in the U.S. In March, Zimbabwe held an election and the government of Robert Mugabe withheld the results for over two weeks. The opposition accused the government of rigging an election they won outright. Since that time, the opposition leaders have been arrested several times, aid agencies distributing food to malnourished children have been kicked out of the country, and civilian opposition supporters have been victims of violence at the hands of the Zimbabwean military. During this dispute, Mugabe's regime was due to receive a shipment of arms from the Chinese government, presumably to be used against their own citizens. The vessel carrying the arms shipment, the An Yue Jiang, arrived at the South African port of Durban on April 16. From here it was to be shipped overland to landlocked Zimbabwe. The South African government
refused to halt the shipment, saying that it was a transaction between two sovereign nations and they would not interfere. However, the dockworkers refused. These individuals took a stand against what they knew was wrong, and, in defiance of their government, in defiance of the Chinese, they let the arms sit on the ship threatening to forcibly make them remain on the ship if replacement workers were employed. The Chinese were forced to find a different port, however, Angola and Zambia refused to unload the shipment. Eventually, the ship had to return home, its shipment still aboard. Had the dockworkers complied with their government, the consequences for the Zimbabwean people would have been grave. These individuals took a stand at a crucial moment and saved countless innocent lives.
As a realist, I understand why little progress has been made to stop the horrible human rights violations in China. While I find it abhorrent for governments to look the other way while Tibetans (and Falun Gong for that matter) are murdered and imprisoned, I understand that money is what gets politicians elected and China’s economy has a lot of that. However, as individuals in a world that is increasingly interconnected,
Line to the Golden Temple
This is the line to actually get over to the Golden Temple. It was a bit tight, so we decided to skip it. we have a responsibility, a duty, to help one another whenever those opportunities arise. While our governments may not take action, we can stand up and make a difference. With the United States recent steps backwards on
human rights (torture and imprisonment without trial in Guantanamo), the Iraq war, etc., it has been hard to be proud of my country while traveling. However, the San Francisco Olympic Torch protests definitely made me proud. While it doesn’t make a huge difference, it is a slap in the face and spit in the eye of the Chinese government to have a multistory “Free Tibet” banner suspended from the Golden Gate Bridge splashed across international news. In May, I believe in response to this international pressure, the
Chinese government invited representatives of the Dalai Lama to negotiations in Beijing. While these were largely simply for show, it was the first contact between the two sides since the protests of March and communication will be needed for any progress to be made.
I don’t foresee many western governments, in particular the U.S., growing a spine and standing up to the Chinese government. In fact, I do not see governments these days taking any stand against another unless
Rocking the Bollywood music
The hour of Bollywood dancing killed me. Unreal. it involves its own protection or the potential for profit. However, I do believe that individuals can stand up for what they believe in at crucial times and make a difference. For Tibet to gain independence, for an end to the genocide in Darfur, for indigenous people’s rights to be recognized in Chiapas, for any numerous causes, it requires people around the world to stand up and scream. So, as I get down from my soap box, please do so for someone without a voice.
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Janelle
non-member comment
CCS Love for Darren
Darren! It sounds like you've had quite the journey, thank you for including me in your blog. If you have time, I know Anil would LOVE to see you- have you stopped by or do you plan to stop by and say hi to him? I know this is a separate experience, but if you want some good (free) food and some familiar faces, you know where to go!!