Stuff

This month´s Contact Magazine came out with four of my photos from my first assignment tagged on to the story of the 50th Anniversary of the Tibetan Uprising. And two of them look crap! And attributed to Aubrey McAllister ...whoever he is. K. had two of her classic poems printed in Poetry Corner but they forgot to put her name in entirely; it just says “by”. Too bad. Lobsang, the editor said he really liked the photos from the last shoot, although they were artistic rather than journalistic. He´s right, but I´m an artist, not a journalist.

I´m now in my third week with my new Tibetan refugee student. Panden was a monk in the famous Drepung monastery in Lhasa. He got involved in the raising of a Tibetan flag by his friend. He was very quickly arrested, beaten and tortured for over eight months by the police. On his release both he and his family living in a neighbouring village were continually harassed, until he couldn´t take it any more. After paying about US$500 to a dodgy trafficker, he escaped across the border to Nepal in June 2007.

Despite fairly regular rain in the late afternoons or nights, the water situation remains temperamental. Following night time storms, the mornings show denser snow on the peaks and the snow-line temporarily drops 500 metres.

However, on occasions, it has started to get very warm during the day and it almost feels like I am in India. Actually, more so as I have an evil dose of stomach bug this week. Fortunately I kept a bunch of pills from my emergency Nepal pack.