I was 10 when my father paid a smuggler to take me out of Tibet

He hoped for a better life for me, but being separated from my family has been difficult.
Lobsang Gelek for RFA Investigative
2025.01.29
I was 10 when my father paid a smuggler to take me out of Tibet A page from Lobsang Gelek’s bank account passbook, which was opened with the help of the Tibetan Homes School in India before he left for college in 2013.
Tibetan Homes School

When my editor asked me to report on the secret journey Tibetans take to escape into exile, I did not think that there was much worth writing about. It is the story of almost everyone in my community. It is not news, and we are in the news business.

But as I reported the story, I could feel its power – and it reminded me of details of my own journey that I hadn’t thought about in years.

I was born in Kham, in eastern Tibet, my parents’ first born. A brother and sister followed, and the five of us lived with two cousins in a home that sat in a valley where the Salween River flows, surrounded by farm fields and mountain peaks.

My mom sold produce in a town closer to the border with China, and I remember her taking me with her to pick the fruit to sell, teaching me a little Chinese as we worked. When she sold the fruit, she would bring back Chinese toys. All the neighborhood kids would gather around to play with me and my new plastic guns and cars. I loved the attention the gifts from my mother brought me.

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Lobsang Gelek joins with and other Tibetans, whose faces were blurred by RFA over safety concerns, in Mussoorie, India, in 2007. [Provided by Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative]

When I was 9, my parents told me they were sending me to Lhasa, the Tibetan capital. My father had a small business there, and I remember the two of us watching Indian Bollywood movies together. I can still sing some songs from 90s Indian films that I learned while in Lhasa. This song takes me back to that time in my life whenever I listen to it.

I remember watching an Indian film starring the actor Govinda that featured beautiful cities, sparkling buildings and crystal blue swimming pools. One day, he asked me, “Son, would you like to visit these places in India for a short trip?” I eagerly replied, “Yes!”

I didn’t know it then, but my father had already decided to send me to India for a better life under the Dalai Lama’s guidance.

In October 2003, he paid 10,000 Chinese yuan to a Tibetan smuggler to take me. There were 42 of us, including other children about my age. The journey took almost a month, from Shigatse, west of Lhasa, to Kathmandu. Following the smuggler’s instructions, my father prepared everything I needed, including sleeping bags, snow goggles, tsampa (Tibetan food) and dried yak meat.


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To avoid Chinese authorities, we hid and slept in mountain caves during the day and walked through the darkness of the night. Sometimes, we slept in village cowsheds of villages where people had good connections with our guide.

I remember reaching Nangpa la pass, just a few kilometers away from Mt. Everest. It was so cold that our guide and the adults in the group burned shoes and clothes and whatever else they could find to boil water and keep us warm. But everyone was freezing. All we saw around us was snow and ice. Elders recited Buddhist mantras as we huddled together.

After a few days, I asked our guide to take me back to Tibet. I didn’t want to go to India; I just wanted to return to Lhasa to be with my father. I remember crying a lot.

There was a sister in our group who was from my hometown, and my father had asked her to look after me. He had instructed her on how to convince me to continue, telling her to share stories about the beautiful places in India I would see. She comforted me by saying, “We are approaching India, and soon you’ll be able to go back to Tibet.”

In fact, I was fooled by everyone. I didn’t reach India directly, but Nepal, which I didn’t even know was a country at the time. Officials from the Tibetan Reception Center came to receive us at the border. The center was already overcrowded when we arrived, with thousands of Tibetan newcomers. We didn’t have proper rooms; we had to sleep on the ground on foul-smelling blankets. I stayed there for four months.

I tried to contact my father several times through international call booths, but the calls never reached him. I missed my mom and grandmother so much, and there were times when I would cry under the blankets. Aside from my father in Lhasa, there was no way to contact the rest of my family as my hometown didn’t have phone service or electricity at that time.

To this day, I still don’t know if my father informed my mother or the rest of the family before sending me to India or about the journey I was about to undertake.

When I was in Nepal I still thought that my separation from my family was only temporary. But soon after arriving in Dharmasala I met other kids my age who shared similar stories, and I realized I was meant to grow up in India.

Some years later, I was finally able to talk to my mother, but it wasn’t actually much of a conversation. Whenever I tried to talk, she would immediately cry out “bhu,” which means “son” in Tibetan. I cried along with her, feeling the deep ache of separation.

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Lobsang Gelek and his housemates, whose faces were blurred by RFA over safety concerns, gather at Kempty Falls in Mussoorie, India, during summer vacation in 2006. [Provided by Lobsang Gelek/RFA Investigative]

I haven’t spoken to my family since then, though I occasionally get word through relatives also in exile that they are safe and healthy. I hope that sometimes they see videos I do for RFA or read articles I write and know that I am well.

Back in Nepal and India reporting for RFA last year, I felt nostalgia and emotion I did not expect after one of the people I interviewed shared a similar story of having walked in the snow with little food.

In just a few weeks, I’ll become a parent myself. As I approach fatherhood, I admit that sometimes I feel anger toward my father for his decision. But I try not to blame him because I know he did what he thought was best for me. And I think he did give me a brighter future – I would never have been here in the United States, or met my beautiful wife, who, like me, was also smuggled out of Tibet as a child, if I had stayed back.

Like all expecting parents, we’re anxious and excited for what’s to come. One thing I know for sure: I will never send my child far away from me. The pain of separation is something that lingers in your soul, until the moment you can be finally reunited. I still hope for that day.

Radio Free Asia (RFA), a news service affiliated with BenarNews, produced this report.

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