Tibet Children’s Village

I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in a travel journal in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip.

We rode straight from St. John in the Woods to the Tibetan Children’s Village, which struck me as a place to acquire a better education than the school I attended.

We walked through a large, paved area surrounded by buildings, part of the school. The main office occupied a building at the top of a grassy slope featuring large rocks painted with curled up deer, presumably a reference to Deer Park in Sarnath. A Buddha reference. The buildings were modern variations on Himalayan architecture.

The guide, an adult male (I’m terrible with names) who had a high position working for the Village, took us to a dorm for little kids. The front room included two wooden cabinets topped with toy animals and, above that, a row of colorful thangkas. On either side wall was a door, one leading to the boys’ dorm room and the other, almost completely covered with stuffed toy animals, leading to the girls’ room. As we stood inside the boy’s dorm, the guide explained that it accommodates twenty-four kids: it includes seven bunk beds — fourteen beds — and two kids sleep on the bottom bunk. The rooms were clean and neat and I’m sure that even if it seems crowded by American…