TIBET: Long Day's Journey

"Yesterday," India's Prime Minister Nehru told an electrified Parliament, "I was thinking of informing the House of a certain development, but I hesitated to do so because I wanted it to be fully confirmed." Then, as the M.P.s broke into wild cheers, Nehru produced the news for which the whole free world had been waiting: Tibet's god-king, the 23-year-old Dalai Lama, had successfully eluded the Communists and reached India in safety.

Nehru's announcement capped one of the epic escape stories of history. On the night of March 17, under cover of darkness, Tibet's Living Buddha slipped out of the Norbulingka, his summer palace outside Lhasa, and together with his mother, two sisters and a younger brother, headed south across the most forbidding mountain country in the world to join the Khamba tribesmen who had launched Tibet's revolt against Red Chinese tyranny. For 15 days the Dalai Lama and his tiny retinue traveled by foot and by mule-back, first across the Kyi Chu River, 25 miles south of Lhasa, then on up through the 17,000-ft. Che Pass.

The Chinese did not discover the Dalai Lama's escape until he had already been gone for two days. When they did, they insisted that he had been kidnaped by the rebels and spirited out of Lhasa "under duress." To back up the charge, Peking's embassy in New Delhi released three letters the Dalai Lama was supposed to have written to the acting Chinese representative in Tibet, General Tan Kuan-san. In each letter the Dalai Lama allegedly told "Dear Comrade, Political Commissar Tan" of the plots by a "reactionary clique" to foment trouble and even to take his life.

The Clouds Lift. With the forged letters as a pretext, Red China embarked on one of the most massive man hunts ever. Detachments of the estimated 300,000 Red troops in Tibet began to drive painfully into the rugged land south of the great Tsangpo River, which still remained in the hands of the Khamba guerrillas. Supply planes roared over Lhasa; other planes dropped paratroopers to seal off the passes north of the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, which the Dalai Lama might conceivably be heading for. To stifle all word of what was going on, the Chinese surrounded the Indian consulate in Lhasa, reduced its staff to virtual prisoners.

But for all their efforts, the Chinese could not organize a search big enough to trap the Dalai Lama. Proceeding mostly at night to avoid Red spotter planes, the royal fugitive dispensed with all ritual. (Normally, any place where the Dalai Lama stays automatically becomes sacred and may not be used again as a dwelling.) Once across the Tsangpo and protected by jubilant Khamba tribesmen, he took a course unanticipated by the Chinese, headed for the Indian border town of Towang in the wild and wooded plateau region of Assam province.

Until he and his party crossed the border, a thick, unseasonable wall of cloud covered the eastern Himalayas, hampering pursuit. The next morning, in an abrupt change, which the normally cool-headed London Times suggested might be due to the mystic powers of Tibet's lamas, the clouds dramatically lifted.