Seven Years in Tibet

by Heinrich Harrer

  The wives and children of the officials who had accompanied them traveled straight on to India. There was no accommodation for them in Chumbi. Many of them took the opportunity to make pilgrimages to the holy places of Buddhism in India and Nepal. Even the family of the Dalai Lama, with the exception of Lobsang Samten, had gone south and were now living in bungalows in the hill station of Kalimpong. Many of the refugees had their first sight of railways, airplanes, and motorcars when they came to India, but after the first excitement of seeing these marvels, they longed to be back in their own country, which, if backward in the devices of civilization, represented for them the firm ground of existence.

  DURING THESE DAYS I lived in Chumbi as the guest of a friend, an official. My work was at an end, and I often felt bored, but I could not bring myself to say good-bye to my friends. I felt like a spectator at a play, who foresaw the tragic denouement and was saddened by the inevitable end, but had to sit out the last act. To deaden my anxiety, I used to go daily up into the mountains, and made many sketch maps.

  I had only one official duty to perform, and that was to keep the foreign minister supplied with the news, which I got through my little radio. I learned that the Chinese had not advanced any farther and were now calling on the Tibetan government to come to Peiping and negotiate a settlement. The Dalai Lama and the government concluded that it would be good policy to accept the invitation, and a delegation with plenary powers was dispatched. As armed resistance would have been senseless, the government used the person of the Dalai Lama as a bargaining counter, for they knew that the Reds were very anxious to have him back in Tibet. Delegations drawn from all classes of the population kept arriving in Chumbi to beg the ruler to return. The whole of Tibet was sunk in depression, and I now realized to the full how closely the people and their king were bound to each other. Without the blessing of his presence, the country could never prosper.

  At last no alternative was left to the Dalai Lama but to accept the conditions of the Chinese and return to Lhasa. After long negotiations, treaty terms had been formulated in Peiping. These secured the internal administration of the country to the Dalai Lama, and guaranteed that religion would be respected and freedom of worship granted. In return for these concessions the Chinese insisted on taking over the foreign relations of Tibet and being responsible for the defense of the country. They would have the right to send as many soldiers into the country as they wished, thereby to assure the realization of any future demands they might make.

  As the governor’s house was situated in a cold and sunless valley, the Dalai Lama moved to the romantic-looking Dungkhar cloister. There he lived withdrawn from the world, attended by the monks and his own servants, and I hardly ever found an opportunity of conversing with him alone. Lobsang Samten lived in a room in the monastery, where I often visited him. We went out frequently with the Dalai Lama on his long walks. He used to visit the neighboring cloisters on foot, and everyone wondered at the speed with which he walked. Nobody could keep up with him. This was the first time he had opportunities for physical exercise, and he made full use of them. His energy, moreover, was good for the health of his staff, who had to be in training to keep pace with him. The monks gave up snuff, and the soldiers tobacco and strong drink. In spite of the general depression, the religious feasts were regularly observed, but the materials were lacking to reproduce the pomp and ceremony of the Lhasa celebrations. An agreeable interlude was provided by the visit of an Indian savant, who brought the king a genuine relic of the Buddha in a golden urn. On this occasion, I took my last and best photo of the Dalai Lama.

  The standard of life of the nobles became lower and lower the longer we stayed in the Chumbi Valley. Almost everybody went about on foot, as, with few exceptions, all the horses had been sent away. It is true they still had their servants and did not need to do anything for themselves, but they had to go without their comforts, their palatial houses, their parties, and their entertainments. They took to intrigue in a small way and found relaxation in gossiping and spreading rumors. They began to realize that the period of their supremacy had come to an end. They could no longer make any decisions for themselves and had to refer everything to the Dalai Lama. Moreover, they could not be sure that the Chinese would give them back their property when they returned, although they had promised to do so. The curtain had rung down on feudalism, and they knew it.

  I remained in the Chumbi Valley till March 1951, and then decided to go on to India. I had long realized that I would not be able to return to Lhasa, but I was still an official of the Tibetan government and had to ask for leave of absence before going away. It was at once granted. The passport delivered to me by the cabinet was valid for six months and contained a clause asking the Indian government to assist me should I return to Tibet, but I knew that I would never be able to make use of it. I was sure that in six months the Dalai Lama would be back in Lhasa, where he would be tolerated as the Incarnation of Chenrezi but never more recognized as the ruler of a free people.

  I had long been racking my brains to find a solution to my own personal problem, and after careful consideration I decided on going to India. I had been corresponding with Aufschnaiter for some time and had actually met him at Gyangtse, where he confided to me that he meant to stay in Tibet as long as possible and then to move across to India. When we parted, we had no idea that we should not see each other for years. I took his baggage with me to Kalimpong and deposited it there. After that I did not hear from him for a year. It seemed as though he had completely disappeared. All sorts of rumors went around, and many people believed he was dead. It was not until I was again in Europe that I heard he had gone to stay in our fairyland village of Kyirong and had waited there until the Chinese came. He stayed literally until the last minute and got out with even greater difficulty than I had six years before. I was very happy to get a letter from him, posted in Nepal, telling me that he was alive.

  He is still a willing exile in the Far East, endeavoring to satisfy his insatiable thirst for exploration. There are few men alive with such a thorough knowledge of the Himalayas and the Forbidden Land as he possesses. What will he not have to tell when he returns to Europe after all these years?

  I left with a heavy heart but could not remain any longer. I felt deep anxiety about the fate of the young king. I knew that life in the Potala would be darkened by the shadow of Mao Tse-tung. Instead of peaceful prayer flags, I thought of the Red flag with its hammer and sickle and its claim to world dominion floating in the wind. Perhaps Chenrezi, the eternal God of Grace, would survive this soulless régime, as he had survived so many Chinese invasions. I could only hope that the most peaceful nation on earth would not have to suffer too much and would not be demoralized by revolutionary changes. It was almost seven years to the day since my entry into Tibet, when I found myself looking at the cairns and prayer flags of the frontier pass that led out of India. Then I had been hungry and tired, but full of joy at reaching the land I longed for. Now I had servants and horses and savings enough to tide me over in the near future. But I was prey to the deepest depression and felt none of the tingling expectation that used to possess me at the frontier of a new country. I looked back mournfully at Tibet. The giant pyramid of Chomolhari rising in the distance seemed to give me a farewell greeting.

  In front of me was Sikkim, dominated by the enormous mass of Kinchinjunga, the last of the Himalayan giants for me to see. I took my horse’s reins in my hand and walked slowly down toward the Indian plain.

  A few days later, I was in Kalimpong and once again among Europeans after many years. They looked strange to me, and I felt a stranger in their company. Reporters of many newspapers hurried to meet me, hungry for news from the Roof of the World. It took me a long time to acclimatize myself to all the bustle and paraphernalia of civilization. But I found friends who helped me over the bridge. I still could not reconcile myself to leaving India, where I felt in touch with the fate of Tibet, and kept on postponing my departure for Eur
ope.

  In the summer of that year, the Dalai Lama returned to Lhasa, and the Tibetan families who had fled to India also went back to their homes. I had the experience of seeing the Chinese Governor-General of Tibet passing through Kalimpong on the way to take up his post at Lhasa. Until the autumn of 1951, the whole of Tibet was occupied by Chinese troops, and news from that country was scanty and unclear. As I write these concluding lines, many of my fears have been realized.

  There is famine in the land, which cannot feed the armies of occupation as well as the inhabitants. I have seen in European papers photos of enormous posters bearing the picture of Mao Tse-tung stuck up at the foot of the Potala. Armored cars roll through the Holy City. The loyal ministers of the Dalai Lama already have been dismissed, and the Panchen Lama has made his entry into Lhasa with an escort of Chinese soldiers. The Chinese have been clever enough to recognize the Dalai Lama as the official head of the government, but the will of the occupying power is paramount. They have dug themselves in quite comfortably in Tibet and with their powerful organization have already built roads hundreds of miles long, which connect this once-trackless land with their own country.

  I follow all that happens in Tibet with the deepest interest, for part of my being is indissolubly linked with that dear country. Wherever I live, I shall feel homesick for Tibet. I often think I can still hear the wild cries of geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear cold moonlight. My heartfelt wish is that this book may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world.

  WHEN HE ENDED his original account, in 1952, Heinrich Harrer thought that no one would ever be able to share his experience of the rare qualities of the Tibetan people. Since 1959, however, he finds the Tibetan diaspora in India, Europe, and America proving his praises to be no exaggeration. The mayor of a little Swiss village told Harrer, “If only I could exchange all my guest workers for Tibetans.” Though news from the Roof of the World continues to sadden him, Harrer takes bittersweet comfort in the fact that his own friendship with the Dalai Lama and his family has only deepened since their flight. On the occasion of the opening of a Tibet exposition in Vienna organized by Harrer, the Dalai Lama sent him the letter on page 325.

  OFFICE OF XIPITT BUREAU DU

  GENEVA CSWITZERLAND) a-10. RUC DU PORT TEL- (022) 25 00 62

  To my friend Heinrich Harrer,

  I wish you with all my heart every success at the opening of the Tibet exposition. I am sending you on this occasion my personal representative in Europe, Thubten Phala, my sister Dschetsuen Pema, and my brother Lobsang Samten. You lived for seven years in Tibet, and during that time you became one of us. You have thence the best knowledge of our country and so are in a position to bring Tibetan art and culture to the Austrian people in as lively a way as possible.

  I include in my prayers the wish that the exposition may be a complete success.

  Dalai Lama

  Eleventh Month Twentieth Day

  Year of the Wooden Serpents

  (January I, I966]

  Epilogue: 1996

  It was more than half a century ago that I had the privilege to live in Tibet, at a time when it was still a happy and free land. In one of his introductions, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said I had “become one of us.” He continued: “Now, as we grow older, we remember those happy days we spent together in a happy country. A sign of genuine friendship is that it does not change, come what may. Once you get to know each other, you retain your friendship and help each other for the rest of your life. Harrer has always been such a friend to Tibet. His most important contribution to our cause was his book Seven Years in Tibet, which introduced millions of people to my country. Today, he is still active in the struggle for the Tibetan people’s freedom and rights, and we are grateful to him for it.”

  When Peter Aufschnaiter and I reached Lhasa after nearly two years of walking over mountain passes as high up as 20,000 feet, we had frostbite and blisters, and we were starved and ill. Lhasa was known as the Forbidden City, and therefore it would not have surprised us if the Tibetan government had brought us back to the border. However, the opposite happened. They took pity on us; they gave us food, new and warm clothes, a home, and work, and we became friends.

  Who on earth would have thought at that time that we would have to flee from that peaceful country on the roof of the world? However, the Chinese invaded the Land of Snow, and the Dalai Lama, with more than a hundred thousand people, had to turn to India and elsewhere in the free world for asylum. What has since happened in Tibet is hardly to be believed. More than 1.2 million Tibetans lost their lives and of about six thousand monasteries, temples, and shrines, 99 percent were either looted or totally destroyed.

  In these days when Tibetans suffer and need help, I try my best to find support for the Dalai Lama and the refugees from his land. I give fund-raising lectures and publish the old black-and-white pictures, because almost all Tibetans, whether in Tibet or as refugees elsewhere, have never seen how beautiful and happy their country once was. It makes me very proud that this book has been printed in Tibetan letters as well. What will bring still more attention to the cause of the refugees is the fact that Seven Years in Tibet will be made into a film. The producer’s intention of emphasizing the invasion, destruction, and genocide in Tibet has resulted in the Chinese putting pressure on all neighboring countries to refuse permission to film in their lands for the movie version of Seven Years in Tibet.

  The fear goes on in conformity with the solution of the human rights commission, which at the last meeting in Geneva, in April 1996, condemned all other nations but China. The producer will now shoot in other countries with ice-covered mountains, and some friends in Asia are of the opinion that this will give even more interest and attention to the movie than before.

  As for myself, I would like to inform the reader that after many decades and a number of expeditions to other remote regions of our globe, motives change as one grows older.

  However, with Asia, and Tibet in particular, it is different. For hundreds of years, it has fascinated missionaries, explorers, and traders. The lure of the East, with all its secrets, mystics, and forbidden cities—even up to the present time, of Shangrila—captivates and attracts the minds of intellectuals as well as adventurers.

  In the time between the two wars, a British colonial officer said that with the invention of the airplane the world has no secrets left. However, he said, there is one last mystery. There is a large country on the Roof of the World, where strange things happen. There are monks who have the ability to separate mind from body, shamans and oracles who make government decisions, and a God-King who lives in a skyscraper-like palace in the Forbidden City of Lhasa.

  Ever since I was a youngster, I read only geography books, and my great role model was the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, who had written fascinating books on his adventures in Tibet. When my prisoner-of-war camp in India was moved to the foot-hills of the Himalaya range, my ambition to escape naturally focused on the direction north of Tibet, which I felt must be “out of this world.”

  To make one thing clear, the British treated us exactly according to the Geneva Convention. To stay inside the barbed wire was actually quite pleasant. We had books and sporting activities, and we did not suffer from hardships, repression, or hunger. There was no reason to get away from something unbearable or dreadful. I wanted to get away to reach something, maybe even to reach that forbidden country lying beyond the highest mountains of the world.

  This book ends in spring of 1951, when I said farewell to my young friend the Dalai Lama and to my homeland Tibet. This time it was not of my own free will to get away, it was just the opposite. The last picture I took of His Holiness before crossing the border into Sikkim and India was the last picture taken of him in free Tibet. Soon afterward, it became the first Life cover in color and spread the news that Tibet had been overrun by the Chin
ese. The Dalai Lama returned with his ministers to Lhasa, in the belief that the Chinese would adhere to the promises of the seventeen-point agreement.

  In a nutshell, this is what happened: life with the conquerors went from bad to worse. In March 1959, during an uprising in Lhasa, the Dalai Lama fled by night and finally, after many weeks, reached India safely. It was exactly fifteen years after I fled from India to Tibet that the Dalai Lama fled Tibet and reached India. The Indian government very generously extended asylum to the Tibetans, and the unofficial exile government of the Dalai Lama settled on the India hill station Dharamsala.

  The great mother of His Holiness died there in 1962, and some years later his elder brother Lobsang Samten, only fifty years of age, who had been my friend in Lhasa, died in New Delhi of an infection. To lose these two family members was an extremely hard blow for His Holiness.