Dharamshala, India – Today was one of those days when you intended to do one thing but are interrupted, and then the second task becomes more fulfilling than the first.
The intended task: hike a few kilometers up to Dal Lake and write a chapter or two in my hope-to-be novel.
I hiked up the trail and passed the TCV (Tibetan Children’s Village), home to some 3,000 refugee children, some of which traversed the mountain passes themselves, no matter their young age. I intended to eat around the top, so I found a pleasant spot that appealed to me called The Tibetan Refugee Caf.
When I walked in, two young Tibetan men greeted me, “Way.”
I nodded my head and also replied, “Way.” Behind the curtain to the kitchen, the toddler peeked her head around curtain, trying to figure me out. Her mother leaned down and muttered instructions and directed her my way with a menu.
She walked over with rosy cheeks, hesitant curiosity and big blue Aleutian eyes and with a menu, pen and paper. Here, I just write my order down and turn it in to save time and mistakes in translation.
I wrote what I wanted as she patiently waited and hurried my order back. She returned immediately, this time braver, in which she just shoved me over and climbed up in the booth beside me.
The young men laughed and one of them said, “She really likes you, we are even Tibetan and still, she is scared of us.”
She gave them the best scowl a 2-year-old could. Her stare was unflinching and I smiled, but she had no time for that. She was like an eager scientist on the brink of discovery. My hairy arms drew her attention, rubbing them over and over without any sort of boredom to be coming soon.
“Your arms . they, uh … must confuse her. Tibetans have no hair on their arms like you,” one of the men said. “She must have, uh, known you in a past life. That is what Buddhists believe you know.” My beard drew stares as the classroom was being opened on my arms.
Her mother came out of the kitchen and laughed, “Is she bothering you?”
“No not at all.”
“She is very shy. I have not seen her do.”
I sat and ate and talked with the young men about politics, their schooling, MTV, Monica Lewinsky, China, Buddhism and other mentionables, while she sat their faithfully and yet still perplexed, rubbing my arm hair.
Ngawang and Lobsang continued their story of how they escaped when the Chinese occupied Tibet when they were 14, which was in 1996. They are here to take their graduating exams at the main campus of TCV. Their campus is about four hours away, but smaller and does not offer grade 11 exams.
Both were in the same escape party that fled the oppression to the refugee center in Nepal. The trip took 30 days, had over 30 children ranging from the ages of 4-19 and was led by one guide.
I asked if everyone made it.
Lobsang answered: “Yes, but it usually is not that way. Even we were very lucky, but um, we still passed the bodies of several young children. It made it hard. It scared us, but we knew that we could not look back. We said prayers for them.”
Ngawang shook his head saying, “I still remember how cold it was, but maybe I forget it now that I know how much warmer it is to have freedom. Cold is nothing, when you are looking for freedom.”
After lunch, they walked me around and showed me a quicker way back into town. The temple at the top of the school overlooked a sand field in which the kids ran and chased and played, free of barbwire, free of oppression, free of hate, only hounded and harassed by the clean blue air of these mountains.
I walked through the lot and waved and got talked into a few shots which turned out to be a game of horse, which I would have won, if not for that lucky half-courter he sank and then re-sank.
The storm brewed though, above the pine trees and mountains, and I knew
I needed to get back, so I jogged down the trail, bounding from rock to rock, when I came to a group of four young Tibetans walking home, one boy, three girls.
I nodded and smiled and went to pass one, but the boy yelled, “Excuse me, sir. Do you know about snakes?”
Their biology lesson had brought them to more and more questions that the teacher was to answer for them tomorrow, but who can wait that long to talk about fangs and pit vipers?
I stopped and walked with them to town and the rain cloud huffed and puffed but did nothing else, while the little man spit on the red cloth that lay on the ground with more disgust than I even know about.
They said goodbye and thanked me for the chocolate bars and waved shyly.
The boy ran back with his rosy cheeks, hesitant curiosity and big blue Aleutian eyes for one more question though, “So, you did not tell me. What kind of snakes does America have?

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