Spring Street Students in Asia
Here's why they're there ...
Fourteen students from Friday Harbor's Spring Street School are on a seven-week journey to Asia to learn, first-hand, about Asian life and culture. The students have been studying the religion, culture and history of the region for the past six months to a year. This has
prepared them for an intense process of learning through experience. The Sounder is giving them this space to share their experiences with you.
While their travels will take them through Thailand, Malaysia, and India, visiting cities like Bangkok, Calcutta, Varanasi and Agra, the students will also have extended stays in remote villages in Thailand as well as in Dharamsala, India. As part of their experience in these villages, they get involved in community service through projects in the schools and public health programs that have immediate impact in the community.
Additionally the students are conducting assessments of the villagers' assets and goals. The assessments will be used to identify ways to help the villagers in their work to improve their quality of life. Areas of student investigation will include water quality, power and communications. A team of experts in some of these disciplines is accompanying the students to support their pioneering research. The assessment project is a collaborative effort of Spring Street School, the Institute for Village Studies, The 1420 Foundation and Harvard Graduate School of Education.
On February 25 we left McLeod Ganj with our packs on our backs and the idea to climb a mountain. As the 25 of us ascended the first leg, the weather became steadily worse. We stopped at a small stand for chai and from there we headed to the Magic View Café. Around the time we arrived there the sky opened up again, but only in big fluffy white flakes. From that point on the sun never showed itself. We all made it safely to our destination, Triund.
Triund is a small lodge on the top of the first highest set of hills in the Himalayas at 2,842.26 meters, or 9,325 feet. We all dropped our packs, climbed into our sleeping bags and tried to keep warm.
The next morning all but ten of us left because of lack of preparation. This was the day I first noticed the absolute silence that floated through the air. I was sitting atop a large boulder, being silent, and it was returned to me. There was no sound of cars, people, or dogs. There was nothing...just still clean air.
The next day we all woke up around five o'clock in the morning and
prepared for the next leg of our journey. We left at 6:55 a.m. and hiked for a long time. At 10:35 a.m. we finally reached our destination, which was a small nook under a rock at around 3,440 meters (11,352 feet). We had come a long way through a lot of snow and were all cold and tired, but I still wanted to push for the pass. By the time we crawled out from under our rock bad weather was moving in around the peak above us. It would've been foolish to go any higher so we descended quickly, arriving back at camp at around one in the afternoon. Later on, David Silverberg and our guide, Manu, decided that it would be too dangerous to attempt a try at the pass the next day.
Early the next morning, several of us woke up and stepped out into the cold, crisp air to see a final Himalayan sunrise. It seemed as though it took forever for day to break over us. The sun finally peaked out from behind a distant crag and spread like a blanket across the white hilltop. We stayed at the cabin until after lunch and then hit the trail. Before we left I found myself sitting upon yet another rock, contemplating the silence that surrounded me. Again I was overwhelmed by the soundless "sound" of places so separated from man. I had always wondered what silence sounded like.
That night, after arriving back in McLeod Ganj, i was sitting in my hotel room reflecting in my journal on the past several days that will forever change my life. When I was overwhelmed not by the sound of silence, but the sound of people, dogs, cars and everything else that goes along with a city, this is what I wrote about the silence I already longed for: "As I sit here in my hotel room, it seems as though my ears are trying to create that silence once again. They seem to be trying to overrun the city noises, the voices, the cars, and the general hum of people and their inventions. They become filled with the rush of blood, the motionless motion of the human body. Ding-Dong -- a bell rings somewhere outside, someone wants into someone else's life. Invited or not, they are intruding on more than they know. Not a soul out there realizes that I am in here listening to it all, thinking about it all. In the mountains there were no people intruding, at least not incessantly as they are now. The voices traveled up there, with a certain hum that pleased the ear, came when acceptable, had only knowledge to share or had the hint that they wanted to learn. Never intrusive, never unstoppable, always kind and happy about the times. Now, unhappy they seem to be, barking and yelling from one place to the next. Young and old, kind and cruel, friends of friends, and enemies of some, all doing the same. Speaking as normal, only reaching the ears of the deaf."
"And the silence was like thunder." --Bob Dylan
--Colin Blevins
Ah, the relaxation of Dharamsala. After many days on a whirlwind tour through India we have settled down. We are finally able to let down our guard, relax and fully delve into the culture that surrounds us.
As we approached Dharmsala we passed through the very first foothills of the Himalayas, rising up from the plains like giant wrinkles in a bed sheet. As we continued northward we got our fist glimpse of a real mountain, Moon Peak towers above us at over 15,000 ft., marking only the very beginning of the larger, more extensive ranges beyond. We finally arrived in McLeod Ganj, the highest extension of the greater Dharamsala township. Once we arrived we noticed the distinction between the Hindu culture of the low-lying plains and the Buddhist Himalayan community.
It is like stepping into another world. We enter a culture much softer, quieter and patient. McLeod Ganj is one of the hundreds of Tibetan refugee communities scattered throughout India. It is the center of the Tibetan government in exile and the home of His Holiness, the XIV Dalai Lama.
McLeod Ganj seems to draw such diversity. The spectrum of people to be seen is amazing. Tibetan monks clothed in saffron robes stroll by, going about their daily business; Groups of gossiping Indian tourist emanating their smug confidence and sleazy slander walk along the roads seeing the sights; neo-hippies, dressed in "authentic" clothing freshly purchased look for something to hold onto, believing in the romance of Buddhism and the Tibetan people, trying to capture this essence and manifest it in their lives; the Tibetan refugees, living here in exile, a great hurt in their past but an air of perseverance about them; and students like me trying to absorb and observe, unsure yet receptive.
Within the beauty and the value this area and culture has to offer, there is an underlying sadness. This is a community of refugees, forced to leave their country in order to enjoy basic human rights. Many have trekked over the Himalayas in the dead of winter, trying to cross at a time when fewer Chinese border guards are posted. Many die in the effort, many arrive scared, frostbitten and battered. Some, coming without their parents, are only eight or ten years old. These people are pushed to such a desperate act of escape out of necessity.
They flee a homeland where it is illegal to speak their own language, practice their own religions or own their own businesses. They come from a home where Chinese authorities beat monks and burn monasteries, where possessing a picture of the Dalai Lama can result in a prison sentence and where freedom of religion, expression and press have been abolished. Horror stories circulate. You'll catch the end of a conversation or hear a monk relating his tale: stories of abuse, battering, unjust imprisonment and torture, exploitation, stripping of resources, polluting of land and genocide. The reality is Tibet and her people are experiencing a holocaust and total cultural annihilation.
When I think of what Tibet stands for and the basis for their philosophical thought I see an application for Reincarnation. Believing in rebirth, existence once again, the same, yet different. Tibet is experiencing this change right now on a national and cultural level. Adaptation is an essential trait for humans to survive. As I sit here and write from McLeod Ganj I realize I am sitting in an extension of Tibet, changed, metamorphosized yet resilient...the next stage in Tibet's history.
--Shawn O'Brien
