Pilgrims from Ladakh

Tibetan prayer flags flutter over a roof top cafe in Mc Cloud Ganj


Hundreds of pilgrims from Ladakh arrived today; small, wizened people with weatherbeaten faces, huge packs, patched sacks and dusty bags on their backs, wearing traditional clothes, the women with long plaits down their backs or wrapped around their heads. They are probably carrying their food with them, as well as tents and blankets. A Tibetan took them to a school, where they can all sleep on the floor. They have been travelling by bus for several months, round all the ancient Buddhist sites.

This morning I joined a volunteer group, providing English conversation to Tibetan refugees. The woman I spoke to walked from Lhasa to Nepal, catching the occasional bus. It took her ten days. I asked her how she lives and she told me that her parents, who are very poor illiterate farmers, send her money to buy food and pay the rent. English lessons are provided for refugees but the adults make very slow progress. None of her family had been to school, because, she said, it costs too much. So she is learning to read and write for the first time - in English. She told me that the Chinese had cut off the telephone line, so she could no longer communicate with her parents.

Later I asked one of the organisers, a young Tibetan who went to the Tibetan Chilren's Village (a huge school for Tibetan children in McCloud Ganj), how the Tibetans send money to their relative refugees in India and he told me that there is a constant traffic of people across the border between Nepal and Tibet (China) and basically they smuggle money back and forth for Tibetans in India and Tibetans in Tibet. It seems that the system works, slowly, but you have to know the right people, who in turn know