I huddled in the cold dark while the boom of guns and trucks and men yelling shook grit from the ceiling. My toque had gotten lost in the shuffle as I scrambled back, out of sight of the soldiers. I sat and shook, trying to suck some air into my fear-tight lungs. Occasionally a flake of something white would drift back from the mouth of the cave, but whether it was snow or ash from the burning monastery, I didn’t know.
I clutched my backpack to me like a squashy shield. The battered red nylon contained everything important: a laptop stuffed with 8 GB of words and images of this isolated part of the Himalayas; my meds; a thermos of the (horrible) butter tea Lekshe-la sent me off with every day; sketchbooks, and the camera I used to alternately document the newly discovered cave paintings (word of which was, no doubt, responsible for the Chinese regiment outside); and one last precious bar of chocolate.
I knew the monastery was technically part of the “Tibet Autonomous Region” but things had historically been quiet in this part of the mountains. Unlike most of the Tibetan plateau, there were no precious metals to be mined, it was too rocky for farming and the railway (with subsequent influx of Han settlers) hadn’t come this far. Even remote as we were, the nuns had worried that the discovery of ancient wall paintings would bring unwanted attention, and it had. I had been documenting feverishly trying to save what I could before thieves, tourists and/or the army ruined what had stood in silent safety through the centuries. Together with the nuns of Ganden I had been pushing to have the network of caves designated as a World Heritage Site, but 10 days ago the internet slowed to a crawl and then seemingly…stopped.
