Escape from the Land of Snows Read Online Free Page B

Thirteenth. The other hadn’t.
    The bright-eyed Lhamo Thondup entered the room, crowded with strange men, and calmly walked over to Ketsing Rimpoche. The abbot greeted him and held up the two black rosaries. He asked the boy which one he wanted. Lhamo Thondup immediately pointed to the Thirteenth’s and placed it around his neck. The same thing happened with the yellow rosaries. The tension in the room, a mix of anticipation and nerves frayed over months of searching, mounted. Ketsing Rimpoche pointed to the walkingsticks. Lhamo Thondup considered, then reached for the wrong stick—it belonged to Ketsing Rimpoche himself. The members of the search party froze. One mistake would disqualify the boy. But then Lhamo Thondup gently let go of the stick and grabbed the Thirteenth’s cane, holding it up in front of him. The officials in the room let go of a collective breath. Later they would realize that the first walking stick had actually belonged to the Dalai Lama briefly before he gave it away to a monk. It was as if the boy had felt the spiritual traces of the Thirteenth, like fading fingerprints.
    They came to the drums. The lamas had purposefully matched the Thirteenth’s plain old drum with a luxurious model done up in gold, ivory, and turquoise, its ball attached with a beautifully brocaded tassel. The boy instantly grabbed the right one and turned it quickly in his hand, tapping out a rapid little beat. “Now that we had witnessed these miraculous performances,” wrote a member of the search party, “our minds were filled with deep devotion, joy, and gaiety.”
    The final step was a physical examination. There are eight marks associated with the discovery of a Dalai Lama, including curling eyebrows, wide eyes, large ears, tiger stripes on the legs, and a curling imprint resembling a conch shell on the palm. The members of the search party found three on the person of the young boy, enough to confirm their find. Some of the men in the room bowed their heads, their eyes filling with tears. In that moment, they recognized not only their old master, their beloved Thirteenth, but the spirit of Chenrizi, the
bodhisattva
of Infinite Compassion, which was with them again here in this crowded, airless room in an obscure corner of Tibet. The boy staring at them with his bold brown eyes also reassured the men that one day they too would be reincarnated into another life, that the faith they’d followed their entire lives was alive and true.

Two
TO LHASA
    n the heat of mid-July, a week after his fourth birthday, the newly christened Dalai Lama set out on his journey to Lhasa. He was attended by fifty travelers, including his older brother Lobsang (at six years old, closest to him in age), his parents, and an uncle, as well as bodyguards, the entire search party who had discovered him, and a group of Muslim merchants who had been called on to make a loan toward the $300,000 ransom demanded by the region’s governor and warlord, General Ma Pu-feng, for letting the child incarnate leave. There were also mule drivers and scouts necessary tocommand the 350 horses, mules, yaks, and camels that would carry the pilgrims’ belongings for the three and a half months it would take to reach Lhasa. It was raining lightly as the expedition set off.
    Lhamo Thondup had been elevated beyond his family’s wildest imaginings, but he was still a mischievous, generous boy who’d inherited his father’s temper. On the road, Lhamo fought ferociously with his brother Lobsang, forcing the driver to call his mother, who always found the older brother in tears and the Dalai Lama sitting in the golden litter, smiling, with a look of triumph on his face.
    As feisty as he was, the boy often became overwhelmed by the attention. When the caravan arrived at a village along the route, hundreds or thousands of Tibetans often waited, thronging the road and asking for his blessing, causing the four-year-old to break into tears.What the Dalai Lama especially