It was one of the most important moments of his life and the Dalai Lama couldn’t see a thing. His thick glasses would be a real giveaway. He was given casual civilian clothes to replace his usual maroon robes. And then, on 17 March 1959, the leader of the Tibetan people was spirited away from Lhasa. Two weeks later he crossed into India. Over 80,000 of his compatriots followed. They travelled by night and slept in the snowy mountain passes during the day. Hundreds fell down from hunger and exhaustion. Those who survived found themselves in an unfamiliar terrain, surrounded by strange people with outlandish customs and practices.
‘I was very hungry but I remember spitting out my first mouthful of food,’ says Jampa Tenzin, 59, now settled in Darjeeling. ‘What was this stuff? In Tibet we only ate tsampa, cheese, yak’s meat, things like this. Then there were the clothes, crazy colours and styles, and the temples, the prayers, the noise. We had entered an unreal world and our senses were in shock.’
