Day 6
Visit of Dharamsala and stay in the Tibetan market town of McLeod Ganj. Night in the hotel.
In May 1949, the new Communist Chinese government signed a treaty extending China’s sovereignty to Tibet. That same year the Chinese People’s army marched into Lhasa, and installed a brutal regime which claimed the lives of more than 1.2 million Tibetan victims and sent countless others to labour camps. Since then, around 90% of the monasteries have been destroyed in the name of the cultural revolution and any pro-independance sentiment has been extinguished. Fearing for his life and that of the Tibetan people, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political leader of Tibet, decided to seek exile in India. This was in 1959. Since then hundreds of thousands of Tibetans have followed in his footsteps and settled in Dharamsala, Darjeeling, Kathmandu, and even the West. McLeod Ganj has become the capital of the Tibetan Government in Exile and the home of the Dalai Lama. Although Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, received the Nobel peace prize in 1989 for his efforts to find a peaceful settlement to the Tibetan issues, China continues to reject any attempt at dialogue on the Tibetan issue.