The Nominated Boy 
Robert Macfarlane
The Tibetan Government presently sits in exile in McLeod Ganj, a small town outside Dharamsala separated from Tibet itself by the ramparts of the Himalayas. The Dalai Lama escaped there in 1959, after a major uprising against the Chinese occupation. A microcosm of old Lhasa has formed in the town around the nucleus of the Dalai Lama: schools teach in Tibetan and English, there are various government ministries, a national library, a troupe which preserves and performs Tibetan dances and songs. Versions of the main Tibetan monasteries have been built where the monks go about their business dressed in an unlikely combination of Buddhist robes and Doc Martens. McLeod Ganj also enjoys a thriving tourist trade, fed chiefly by Westerners who have contracted what Isabel Hilton calls ‘Shangri-La Syndrome’.
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Robert Macfarlane teaches at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination won the Guardian First Book Award.
Other articles by this contributor:
Read it on the autobahn · Vanishing Victorians
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