Too Many Good-Byes

Our last day in the settlement. Too many good-byes. This is the end of my cooperation with our research assistant Thinley. It's been over a year I think. He has been fantatstic. He has a law degree from Bangalore University and now he will try and become a practising lawyer.

We had lunch at my friend Namgyal's house in "Mini-Swiss", the outsourced camp 4 village Purang. Namgyal works with agricultural development and has a whole gallery of low-tech inventions on display around his house. His parents came from southwestern Tibet in the eraly 60's. His mother had four children, two in the transit camp and two in the settlement, but all of them died at an early age. Later she had three more sons of which Namgyal is the youngest. She had made fabulous cheese and potato Momos for us. Alice ate a couple of boiled potatoes and Esbjorn had some popped rice (!).

Dorje, the so called RC-officer responsible for travel documents and registration at the Representatives Office, returned from Mysore where the settlement had been called to a meeting with the police. After they caught me in the office last week the cops went to all the guesthouses and seized their registers. It turned out that around 180 foreigners had stayed in the settlement without permit over the past six months. In addition, many tourists and visitors stay outside the settlement but go there during the day. But it's against the law to enter without a Protected Area Permit (PAP). I don't know why they are stepping up the enforcement. I don't really see anything here that needs to be protected. As permit holders we are supposed to sign out when we leave but we have decided to give it a miss.

Tonight I will walk my last Kora around Sera with Tenzin, at least for now.