Escape From the Land of Snows, Stephen Talty

The story of Dalai Lama’s escape to freedom to India from Lhasa, Tibet as a teenager. I’ve read the story before, even have maps of the exact route. Stephen brought me back to when I was in Tibet… the Monasteries I visited really hit home. Imagine being ascended to the throne as a teenager leaving your adolescence behind to lead a country that was preparing for war, with no training in politics, n leadership philosophy, no close advisers he could trust implicitly. He was alone. 10 Mar 1959 – how rumor and false reports can spread like wildfire… even back then. Discussed how one soldier, who knew he was going to die by a Chinese soldier’s bullet, decided to drown himself. In Buddhism the ideal way of death is in water, which ensures that one’s next incarnation, will be granted a “clear and lucid mind”. I also didn’t know that the CIA was airdropping planeloads of weapons into Tibet and were training Guerillas for reinsertion into the country during the war. Just two years after I’d been there the author, a Westerner, was forbidden to walk the street without a guide, while I was in Lhasa, I walked freely no encumbrances at all. He even stayed at the same hotel as me- right next door to an Army camp.