It's a wet, rainy and windy Sunday here in Sydney, Australia and a perfect time for reflection.
This windy weather reminds me of my time on the Tibetan Plateau where robust, dry, icy winds whipped at prayer flags, cracked lips and turned the skin on my fingers into sandpaper. When I returned home from my trip my sister who picked me up from the airport, remarked at how wind-blown I had looked. She was right, I felt as if I had three weeks being sand-blasted. Little children in Tibet have rosy red cheeks due to the strong sun rays and an air of wind-sweptness about them.
I digress though because today I want to talk about how I changed my mind about the ethics of visiting Tibet. I had previously made a decision to never visit Tibet whilst the country remained under occupation, I felt that by visiting Tibet I was somehow supporting the occupation. I felt a level of guilt when I changed my mind and bought the ticket in 2009, in my head I said to myself that I was going because I badly wanted to see Mt Kailash, the world's most sacred mountain and that the intention of my visit would be grounded in spiritual aspirations which made it somehow okay. I liken this kind of thinking to the 'contemporary carnivore'. When meat eaters buy a steak from the supermarket the meat is packaged on a tray all wrapped in plastic, maybe with a spring of parsley for good measure, and as a 'thing' it is removed from animal it came from. I know this because when I was a meat eater many years ago, I had to psychologically remove myself from the source, otherwise I doubt I could have eaten it. My trip to Tibet had echoes of the contemporary carnivore about it, I had mentally divorced myself from the political situation there and thought I could travel the land without having to face the reality of the cow. The reality, I was to discover, was vastly different.
When travelling Tibet the signs of occupation are everywhere, in Lhasa for instance there are men stationed upon rooftops looking down onto the Bharkor area in the old part of town as people shop and go about their daily business. Troops of men march anti-clock wise around the Jokhang Temple, splitting groups of pilgrims (mostly old men and women) as they perform their daily Kora which is performed traditionally in a clock-wise direction. Or it's the endless checkpoints that Tibetan's and visitors have to go through in order to move about the permitted parts of the country, or the long, long lines of army vehicles on the roads; one day we counted at least 40 in a convoy. It's also what is not seen or heard, what cannot be said out in public, on the phone or by email. It's the soldiers stationed at Mt Kailash during Saga Dawa, or the heavy military presence at Drepung Monastery during the Yoghurt Festival this year.
I would be kidding myself if I said that my visits to the Land of Snows have not in some way, shape or form been affected by the occupation. You can't jump into water and not get wet. I jumped and got wet and it has changed the way I think about travel in Tibet, why we do it and what responsibility we have to the people of Tibet.
