Comments on: Speedy Pilgrims of Tibet http://soyansays.com/2006/10/31/speedy-pilgrims-of-tibet/ Rub your tummy and pat your head. Soyan didn't say... Wed, 07 Jan 2009 11:43:41 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: Mike E. http://soyansays.com/2006/10/31/speedy-pilgrims-of-tibet/#comment-1421 Mike E. Mon, 13 Nov 2006 20:10:47 +0000 http://soyansays.com/?p=73#comment-1421 The tolerance and genuine warmth of the Tibetan people was one of the things that really struck me during our visit there. This was especially the case while we were poking around through their temples and monasteries. Although trying to be unobtrusive as possible, it was tough not to be doing the "annoying tourist" thing: lingering around, taking pictures, generally getting in the way in some of the tighter spaces that pilgrims were trying to rush through (the faster they go, the more rounds they can make and holy sites they get to visit, which equals more karma points!). I know that if the tables were reversed, I would be seriously annoyed about the "damn tourists" getting in my way, but we received nothing but genuine warmth and friendly smiles from all the pilgrims with whom we made eye contact. Our Tibetan guide would even stop random pilgrims as they passed by to show us their distinctive regional styles of dress, and the pilgrims would just wait patiently until she stopped handling the very clothes they were wearing! The ban on photos of the Dalai Lama was one of the sadder things we encountered in Tibet. During a visit to one monastery (the one on the highway between Lhasa and the airport), a pilgrim walked up to us and asked "Picture? Picture?"--apparently one of the few English words she knew. We weren't making the connection of what she wanted until our guide said that she was hoping we had pictures of the Dalai Lama. It was sad trying to explain that we didn't have one. And even if we did, it wouldn't have been safe for us or her to give it to her, given the significant number of government spies rumored to be spread throughout the society--even in the monasteries themselves. Still, it made me wish that I could have smuggled in a whole stack of Dalai Lama photos and left them in a dark corner of some obscure monastery, to be discovered, some time later, as a "miraculous manifestation." The tolerance and genuine warmth of the Tibetan people was one of the things that really struck me during our visit there. This was especially the case while we were poking around through their temples and monasteries. Although trying to be unobtrusive as possible, it was tough not to be doing the “annoying tourist” thing: lingering around, taking pictures, generally getting in the way in some of the tighter spaces that pilgrims were trying to rush through (the faster they go, the more rounds they can make and holy sites they get to visit, which equals more karma points!). I know that if the tables were reversed, I would be seriously annoyed about the “damn tourists” getting in my way, but we received nothing but genuine warmth and friendly smiles from all the pilgrims with whom we made eye contact. Our Tibetan guide would even stop random pilgrims as they passed by to show us their distinctive regional styles of dress, and the pilgrims would just wait patiently until she stopped handling the very clothes they were wearing!

The ban on photos of the Dalai Lama was one of the sadder things we encountered in Tibet. During a visit to one monastery (the one on the highway between Lhasa and the airport), a pilgrim walked up to us and asked “Picture? Picture?”–apparently one of the few English words she knew. We weren’t making the connection of what she wanted until our guide said that she was hoping we had pictures of the Dalai Lama. It was sad trying to explain that we didn’t have one. And even if we did, it wouldn’t have been safe for us or her to give it to her, given the significant number of government spies rumored to be spread throughout the society–even in the monasteries themselves. Still, it made me wish that I could have smuggled in a whole stack of Dalai Lama photos and left them in a dark corner of some obscure monastery, to be discovered, some time later, as a “miraculous manifestation.”

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