The Flight of a Karmapa (march2000)

Plan A Goes Away

Instead of safe passage, snares and traps were waiting for them. In November, India's state security service got wind of the plot to install the boy in Rumtek monastery. New Delhi planted secret agents along its "northern comers" to intercept the Tsurphu Karmapa, whose presence in Sikkim would agitate a restive independence movement. If there was a secrecy lapse, the fault probably lies with the Tai Situ camp, which had been leaking like a sieve. As early as summer, their supporters in Scotland had received hints of an escape plan. As for the Chinese authorities, they apparently did not anticipate such a bold, unapproved gambit by the Tibetan teenager. Without Beijing's supervision, a whole plan could backfire. "Sikkim is vital link in the strategy of hard-liners in the Tibetan Exile Government to establish bases along the Himalayans to put pressure on China," a senior Kagyupa monk disclosed.

checkpoint in Kodari, northeast of Kathmandu. By then, however, the Tsurphu Karmapa's vehicles were speeding west along the trans-Tibet highway. Plan A, the journey to Sikkim, was blown, so the three young monks opted for Plan B, a less-traveled path through the mountain fastness of legendary Mustang. If caught on the way to Sikkim, the youths risked only a light reprimand, since Beijing was in agreement with the journey though not its premature timing. But an escape attempt into Mustang carried grim consequences since the trail pointed to a different direction - toward the headquarters of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.

Some monks believe the Sikkim venture might have been a ploy to deceive the Tsurphu monks into accepting his escape bid and that the actual goal of the planners was Dharamsala. "After Tai Situ Rinpoche was banned by the Indian government and later kept out of Lhasa by China, his influence was greatly diminished," said a high-ranking Nyingma school lama in Kathmandu. "The escape of the Karmapa to India may have been Situ Rinpoche's way of showing muscle to both countries."

High-speed Chase

Somewhere along the way, the Tibetan youths rested several hours and made a telephone call to their contact in Nepal to set the Mustang plan into motion. After driving about 240 miles westward to Sansang, they turned onto a southeastly spur road and crossed the upper reaches of the Bramhaputra River. At that point, on New Year's Eve, they were spotted. A high-speed chase ensued, and police cars gained ground on the Landcruisers on the approach to the northwest Nepali border. Near the end of the road, the Tibetan drivers veered off the pavement, leaving the Toyotas for the Chinese police to destroy. Narrowly escaping their pursuers, the three young monks ran into the darkness and silence of the unmarked border. As revelers around the world rang in a new millennium, the boy who would be Karmapa was out of Tibet.

The trio had encountered no border guards on either side of the Nepali border. Ethnic Tibetan traders based on the Mustang side, who frequently drive mule teams to and from Tibet, explained to us that the Mustang boundary "is simply an open border. We can walk across easily bypassing the immigration and police checkpoint." They added that Mustang is also a favorite escape route for Tibetan refugees fleeing to India via Nepal.

Right inside the Nepali boundary, along the bank of the Mustang Khola river, the Tsurphu Karmapa was received by local oruides who had brought eight ponies for the journey across the northem half of Mustang, where there are no roads for motor vehicles. The young Tibetan and his escorts mounted the ponies and rode southward at an average altitude of 3,500 to 4,000 meters. Mustang, the old Kingdom of Lo, is part of the Tibetan plateau and like much of Tibet has an and and treeless lunar landscape. The pony caravan pushed ahead for two days nonstop in subzero temperatures. By morning, the Tibetan party was on the trail to Jomsom, the Mustang state capital, which is connected by a paved road to Pokhara and then India.

Evasive maneuvers

Instead of going to Jomsom, however, the pony caravan turned abruptly eastward onto a trailhead below Muhila Peak, northwest of the monastery in Muktinath. The way led up Thorang La pass, a grueling climb in arctic temperatures, even if there was less snow on the ground than in average winters. At the 5,416-meter-high summit of Thorang La, the Tsurphu Karmapa's party rode past a cairn of stones and a line of prayer flags flapping in the icy wind. On the perilous descent down the steep eastern siope, the track became too narrow for the sure-footed ponies to carry their riders. At nightfall, the Tibetans dismounted and led their ponies forward along the angled slope of the defile. They reached two mountain lodges that cater to trekkers in the spring and autumn seasons, but the buildings were closed for the winter.

Why didn't his party take the easier route through Jomsom, as was erroneously reported by The New York Times ?

The Tsurphu Karmapa took this evasive maneuver because Jomson is the location of the Nepali Government Headquarters in Mustang, where the Nepali police were waiting to apprehend them for deportation to Tibet.

The Nepali government keeps a sharp eye on Jomsom, the strategic road junction in Mustang Jomsom served as the main base for CIA-armed Tibetan Khampa guerrillas from the 1950s until the mid-1970s. When President Richard Nixon withdrew support for the Tibetan guerrillas after his 1973 visit to China, the Royal Nepal Army fought pitched battles with the Tibetan guerrillas, who had been robbing the villagers and raping the local women in Mustang. Since then, there has been a superficially friendly yet uneasy relationship between the Nepali authorities and Tibetan exiles. The area is so politically sensitive that foreign tour groups must apply far in advance for permission to enter Mustang and pay a fee of USS700 for each trekker.

Annapurna

After Thorang La pass, the Tsurphu Karmapa's party descended toward villacres terraced into mountain slopes, where the local people eke out an existence by herding Dal sheep and yaks. Beyond this sparsely inhabited strip lies awesome Annapurna, at 8,091 meters the secondhighest peak in the Himalayas. Why were the Tibetans moving toward such an impassable barrier of glaciers and snowy crags ? How did the teenage lama succeed in crossing the vast Annapurna Range ?

The Tsurphu Karmapa's entourage reached the village of Manang Pedi, altitude 3,535 meters, at late night on January 2. The Buddhist village is a stronghold of the Nyingma (Red Hat) sect. Less than an hour down the trail, in the village of Braga, is a 900-year-old Kagyupa sect monastery, where the Tsurphu Karmapa's entourage could have easily found shelter from the extreme cold. The guides claimed that they were allowed no time for rest, although their timeline suggests an unexplained-for gap in the early hours of January 3.

Long after sunrise, at about 11a.m., the Tibetans and their guides spotted a snowflake fluttering against of the rock face of Annapurna. A helicopter, painted blue and alpine white, was approaching from the southeast in a wide arc around sacred Fishtail Peak.

It was the first of two such flights, each a roundtrip of about an hour. Perhaps the Ecuriel high-altitude helicopter touched down on the frozen lake near Manang Pedi, or on the rocky field below the Braga monastery or maybe further along at the tiny airstrip in Ongre. The pony guides did not disclose the exact rendezvous point, only saying it was in the creneral Manang Pedi area, just outside the boundaries of forbidding Mustang.

A small reception party clambered out of the helicopter to greet the Tsurphu Karmapa. The teenager's traveling companions informed the local pony guides that they were flying to Kathmandu. In fact, this news reached Kathmandu, where local journalists searched in vain for the Tibetan teenager on Jan. 3. If the Tsurphu Karmapa still harbored hopes of transiting to Sikkim via the Nepali capital, he was overruled by his handlers. Or maybe Kathmandu was a fake destination, one of many deceptions to throw the Nepali police and the press off the trail. With its human cargo safety aboard, the helicopter blades whirled like a prayer wheel, levitating the Tsurphu Karmapa toward the Annapurna range and the actual destination, Pokhara.

Missing Flight Records

In late January, our Nepali-Hong Kong investigative team traveled to the popular lakeside resort about a five-hour drive east of Kathmandu. On the southern side of the Annapurna range, Pokhara is dominated by the sight of sacred Machhapuchhre (Fishtail), a 6,993-meter snow-capped summit which many trekkers say is the world's most beautiful mountain. At Pokhara Airport, a control-tower officer showed us the helicopter flight records for January 3. A hand-written report showed that Fishtail Air was the only local service to dispatch helicopter flights on that day. The air-control officer explained, "There was no other helicopter flight recorded except for Fishtail company. On the 3rd of January, our record shows that Fishtail sent two helicopter flights out from this airport. They claimed that one flight was for sightseeing and the other for rescue purposes."

The first flight departed at about I I a.m. and returned to Pokhara Airport at noon; the second at 12:45 p.m. and returned an hour later.

To follow