Tibet Stories

We took a long bus ride to reach a monastery back in the hills. When we arrived everyone in my group hurried in to tour the beautiful temple. I saw some villagers waiting in the shade across the courtyard, apparently waiting for my group to leave before they paid their respects. I went over and sat with them and asked them if I could take their picture (with sign language since there wasn’t an interpreter close by). At first they were shy and only one said yes. After I began showing them the results on the back of my digital camera, they all got really excited and wanted to have their picture taken, too. When I returned to the States, my neighbor lent me a book he had read as boy. It was written in 1949 about the author's trip to Tibet, a very rare occurrence for a Westerner at that time. What’s amazing is that there is a photograph remarkably similar to this one; two women, standing with a butter churn used to make yak butter tea. The churn is the same, the clothes are the same, even the faces look similar- nothing has changed in over fifty years.


	We took a long bus ride to reach a monastery back in the hills. When we arrived everyone in my group hurried in to tour the beautiful temple. I saw some villagers waiting in the shade across the courtyard, apparently waiting for my group to leave before they paid their respects. I went over and sat with them and asked them if I could take their picture (with sign language since there wasn’t an interpreter close by). At first they were shy and only one said yes. After I began showing them the results on the back of my digital camera, they all got really excited and wanted to have their picture taken, too. When I returned to the States, my neighbor lent me a book he had read as boy. It was written in 1949 about the author's trip to Tibet, a very rare occurrence for a Westerner at that time. What’s amazing is that there is a photograph remarkably similar to this one; two women, standing with a butter churn used to make yak butter tea. The churn is the same, the clothes are the same, even the faces look similar- nothing has changed in over fifty years.
	© 2005 Forest McMullin			McMullin-125.jpg