The children catch it, sample it quickly, and are mystified. I toss the remains of a loaf of rye bread bought in Kathmandu. So even in the midst of genocide the children of the dharma are still cheerful.”Īs we land, parents unsuccessfully discourage their children from begging. They got out of the rut of ‘me and my ancestors, my lineage, my mother, my father, my grandfather, my great-grand-father-we’re the great lineage, and other families are all sort of alien,’ which cultures that emphasize the ances- tor-worship-thing get into. Since the whole culture is so steeped in it and so many people used it to transform their tribalism and prejudices, they all developed a sense of other beings being familiar to them, like family. They gravitate to them, and it has to do with the fact that for more than a thousand years the Tibetans have lived in a constant awareness of being related to all beings. But as a whole, people usually like Tibetans.

“Not that they can’t be a pain in the neck, too, of course. “The geniality of Tibetans!” Tenzin (Robert) yells into the river wind, smiling broadly at the girls. Also on board is a local bicyclist, very proud of his black, Taiwan-made three speed. These are the best jobs in town, even if this boat is merely a barge hurtling forth and back across a five hundred yard stretch of water, water so fast-moving and clouded that the bottom is never once glimpsed at either shore.Ī cargo of yaks, loudly and roughly unloaded by nomads with red strings running through long, thick, black hair, leaves a place for two of our three jeeps. Putting their backs into steadying the arm through which the cable runs, they catch docking lines, winching these by hand against stanchions welded onto the deck.

Chatting with Tenzin (Robert Thurman) they habitually cover smiles with their hands even though their mouths are already hidden with dustmasks. They are both happy-go-lucky and efficient. The ferry is piloted and docked by handsome, hearty young Tibetan women in work clothes. As we arrive the craft is in mid-stream, returning over the milky glacial blue-green water. The double-pontooned ferry runs along a cable fixed in the crotch of two crossed timbers on either side of the Brahmaputra. Through noon we dodge in and out of sight of it and after lunch we finally cross the “Lion-mouthed River” ten miles shy of Saga, where we’ll camp for the night. We break camp by eight-thirty in the morning and head northwest across the Tingri plain, picking up the southern road to Kailash, which turns due west at the Brahmaputra. In this excerpt from Circling the Sacred Mountain: A Spiritual Adventure Through the Himalayas, the party arrives at its destination. Kailash, the sacred axis mundi of central Asian cosmology. Haunted by the famed mountain since he was a young monk, Robert Thurman leads a small group of pilgrims overland to Tibet’s Mt.

Strange story tibet mystifies