Getting ready

I am only a few days away from departing for India a second time.

My first visit was in March of 2004, and it was an exciting three-week trip that included a brief meeting with H.H. the XIVth Dalai Lama, a private audience with H.H. the XVIIth Karmapa, and meditation and instruction in the caves where the Buddhist saint Padmasambhava taught before taking Buddhism to Tibet.


I will once again spend the majority of my time in Upper Dharamsala, the home of the Tibetan Goverment in Exile and a large community of Tibetan expatriates.

One of the people I will visit is my friend Rinchen Tsomo. She escaped from Tibet, which is suffering through its 47th year of brutal Chinese occupation, by crossing the Himalayan mountains on foot with 21 other people. Six of those people died on the trip, and all of them contracted frostbite. Rinchen made it to Nepal, where she found work in a rug shop in Kathmandu that sold rugs from her native region of Dege. Rinchen married a man and had a baby, but soon after that her husband disappeared (Nepal is a dangerous place.)

When I met Rinchen two years ago, she had brought her four year-old daughter Ngawang to Dharamsala to leave her at the Tibetan Children's Village orphanage because Rinchen could no longer afford to take care of her. When I learned that, I knew I had to do something, so I emailed Mrs. Hays from India, and she said we should help Rinchen move to Dharamsala to be safe and to be with her daughter. So that's what we did. For the last two years we have sent Rinchen enough money each month for her to live in Dharamsala, where she can live in safety with her daughter, who is enrolled in the Tibetan Children's School. She is supposed to be doing very well, and I am going to check on my good friends to make sure they have everything they need.

I am looking forward to seeing the beautiful Dheodar Mountains again, eating Tibetan food, and learning more about Tibetan culture and Buddhism ..