January 1998

Tibet has always cast a dangerously strong spell upon visitors from abroad. When the first major European expedition marched on Lhasa in 1904, led by Colonel Younghusband at the behest of his old friend Lord Curzon, it ended up slaughtering in just four minutes, near the village of Guru, almost seven hundred bewildered Tibetans, who had been protected mostly by paper charms bearing the Thirteenth Dalai Lama’s seal. A few days later, at Red Idol Gorge, the British killed nearly two hundred more, their own casualties amounting to just three wounded.