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The Day I Left Tibet
I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following is from my 2008 trip to India, Nepal, and Tibet.
It is morning and the power is still out at the hotel… and presumably all over Lhasa. I’m tempted to ask if this happens every March 10.
In the morning, I was in the jeep with the driver and my tour guide, Gyantzing, on the way to the airport. Driving along Beijing Road, we saw many green military trucks and green-clad soldiers, some still wearing riot gear helmets.
Gyantzing told me that monks at Drepung Monastery (which we had wandered around earlier in the week) fought with the military, and laymen joined in. The same thing happened at the Jokhang. He also said, “Drepung is now closed to tourists.” Wow — that’s the first monastery we visited.
I had told Gyantzing about my circumambulating the Potala and how many times I circumambulated the Jokhang yesterday, and now I told him that it was around seven in the evening when I headed back to the hotel, so the protest must have started after that.
On the outskirts of Lhasa: a military convoy of at least nine trucks is coming out of…