BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Dalai Lama's dangerous escape into India on March 31, 1959 fleeing Communist Chinese troops seizing Tibet, prompted the CIA's secret financing, training, arming, and parachute-dropping of Tibetan guerrillas into their homeland four months later.
On the 66th anniversary of that epic escape, India's Arunachal Pradesh state government, for the first time, opened a six-day public "Freedom Trail, Route of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama" trek on foot from the border into India following the original passage.
The unprecedented event may irk Beijing which began invading Tibet in 1951 and denounces the Dalai Lama as subversive.
The March 31-April 5 trek's main purpose however is to attract tourists and pilgrims to the mountainous route which showcases the Dalai Lama's historic journey and the Buddhist shrines, monoliths, stupas, and displays along the way.
Fearing execution or imprisonment, the Dalai Lama escaped from his gigantic, fortress-like Potala Palace in 1959 and began a dangerous two-week trek on horses and yaks southeast across Tibet's glacier-covered Himalayas and steep valleys to reach the Indian border.
A pair of previously inserted CIA-trained Tibetan radio operators rode with him.
"Team A accompanied the Dalai Lama on his journey to the Indian border from where they radioed CIA Langley that the Dalai Lama had arrived safely,” said Bruce Walker, the last surviving CIA case officer of those who had trained Tibetan insurgents in Colorado.
Upon arrival in India, The Dalai Lama asked for Washington's help.
"Using a hand-cranked Morse radio, Athar, a member of the U.S.-trained Tibetan resistance, sent a message to Washington asking for political asylum in India for the Dalai Lama," Patrick French reported in The Daily Telegraph in 1998.
"Four hours later, the CIA's man in New Delhi sent a wire back to Washington saying that the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had granted asylum to the Dalai Lama and his entourage," Mr. French reported.
"I get emotional because in 1959, when I escaped from Tibet, I came from this route," the Dalai Lama told The Times of India.
"I was physically very weak. Mentally, there was a lot of anxiety, hopelessness and helplessness. It was difficult.
"The local [Indian] people here and also officials extended a very, very warm welcome," said the Dalai Lama who is regarded as Tibet’s temporal and spiritual leader.
The Dalai Lama, 89, and Arunachal Pradesh officials have been planning the Freedom Trail trek for more than a year, expecting it will boost the economy of relatively isolated western Arunachal Pradesh state.
Some sites display rare artefacts linked to the 14th Dalai Lama whose name is Tenzin Gyatso.
Day one on the Freedom Trail began at the border gate where on March 31, 1959, a 24-year-old Dalai Lama and his entourage rode on horses and yaks through Khen Dze Mane mountain pass into India.
Participants can stay in towns where the Dalai Lama and his entourage slept 66 years ago, and visit newly built or restored Buddhist sites along the mountainous winding trail which parallels India's short border with eastern Bhutan.
Overnight stops and important places include Chuudangmo, Gorzam Chorten, Shakti, Lungla, and Thongleng.
"March 31st serves as a poignant reminder of the sacrifices made by the Tibetan people and the ongoing struggle for justice and freedom," said the New Delhi-based Tibet Rights Collective.
"It is a day of reflection, gratitude, and renewed determination to continue the fight for Tibet’s autonomy and the preservation of its unique cultural and spiritual heritage," the advocacy and policy research group said.
Intrigue about the Dalai Lama's fate and fears of betrayal had been swirling in Washington before he escaped.
"They [Tibetans] have hesitated to send the Dalai Lama to India for fear that the Indian government would turn him over to the Chinese," said a declassified confidential CIA document written before the Dalai Lama fled.
In 1959, tens of thousands of Tibetan refugees were fleeing Tibet on foot and horseback to reach the frontiers of Nepal and India.
Ethnic Tibetan Khampas and Ambos went to the Potala and told the Dalai Lama to flee, according to the book "Feet to the Fire" by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison.
"The Dalai Lama didn't believe them. And they told the Dalai Lama, 'The Chinese are right behind us. Right outside the city.'"
Arriving with the Dalai Lama at the China-India frontier were his assistants, relatives, government officials, and Tibetan soldiers from the Volunteer Freedom Fighters.
"High mountains. If you try to walk then…breathing difficulties, but on horse too much cold,” the Dalai Lama told CNN. “Hand and foot become frozen.”
"We must have been a sorry sight when we were welcomed by the Indian border guards," the Dalai Lama wrote.
"There were 80 of us, physically exhausted by the journey and morally overwhelmed by the ordeal," he said.
He eventually settled in northwest India's McLeod Ganj town nestled above Dharamsala amid forested Himalayan peaks and armed Indian guards, and attracted a bustling Tibetan refugee community.
"Currently, a small gate known as 'Lhasa Dwar,' the point where the Dalai Lama entered India, is marked by a 'Holy Tree' which is said to have grown from a staff dug by the Dalai Lama during his escape," The Tibetan Review reported.
"It is now worshipped as a relic marking the historic event."
Meanwhile, five years after his escape, the CIA was financing the Dalai Lama, according to a declassified formerly "Secret; Eyes Only" 1964 document.
The "Review of Tibetan Operations" memorandum, published by the State Department's Office of the Historian, said:
"Subsidy to the Dalai Lama -- $180,000" as part of the total "cost of the Tibetan Program for FY 1964."
"Black air transportation of Tibetan trainees from Colorado to India -- $185,000. Support of 2,100 Tibetan guerrillas based in Nepal -- $500,000. Expenses of covert training site in Colorado -- $400,000," in 1964.
"The Agency is supporting the establishment of Tibet Houses in Geneva and New York City. The Tibet Houses are intended to serve as unofficial representation for the Dalai Lama to maintain the concept of a separate Tibetan political identity," the January 9, 1964 State Department review said.
Currently, China and India are trying to halt occasional clashes along their border where each country claims the other is occupying territory captured during their brief 1962 war, which India under Prime Minister Nehru lost.
China claims all of northeast India's Arunachal Pradesh state -- including where the Dalai Lama's Freedom Trail routes through.
New Delhi claims Beijing occupies 15,000 square miles of India's far northwest Aksai Chin territory.
If the Freedom Trail lures enough tourists, the expected cash influx could strengthen India's border in Tawang district where the trek ends.
"Zemithang is also being developed as a Vibrant Village in Tawang district under New Delhi's Vibrant Village Program to counter China's Border Defense Villages in occupied Tibet," reported the New Delhi-based Tibetan Review.
The CIA began training Tibetans in combat and operations skills in 1957 -- two years before the Dalai Lama escaped.
"The CIA had piloted the project with a group of [Tibetan] fighters who were trained at Saipan, Northern Mariana Island," Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported.
"The first radio team to be dropped back into Tibet by Operations St. Circus took place in September, 1957, but the training grounds were moved to Camp Hale [Colorado] when it became apparent that the Tibetans were not used to the hot weather conditions of the island, and Colorado was selected because its terrain and weather conditions resembled that of Tibet," RFA reported.
The CIA trained at least 259 Tibetan insurgents in Camp Hale from 1958 to 1964, Mr. Walker said told RFA.
"The Tibetans were trained in radio operation, surveillance and combat maneuvers, parachuting at Fort Carson another military base in Colorado, intelligence collecting, clandestine exchange of written material and film, world history and geography, and small armament training with bazookas, grenades and rifles," RFA reported.
In July 1959, "the CIA began using C-130s, flying from a secret CIA base in Takhli, Thailand, to airdrop arms, ammunition, and U.S.-trained Tibetans into their occupied homeland," Newsweek reported in 1999.
Nine out of every 10 guerrillas who parachuted into Tibet were killed by Chinese or committed suicide to evade capture, the Smithsonian Institution's Air & Space Magazine reported.
The Tibetan Buddhists' CIA-backed insurgency ended in defeat against China's revolution-hardened Peoples' Liberation Army in 1972 when President Richard Nixon visited Beijing, shook hands with Chairman Mao Zedong, and improved their frosty relations.
***
Richard S. Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based American foreign correspondent reporting from Asia since 1978, and winner of Columbia University's Foreign Correspondents' Award. Excerpts from his two new nonfiction books, "Rituals. Killers. Wars. & Sex. -- Tibet, India, Nepal, Laos, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka & New York" and "Apocalyptic Tribes, Smugglers & Freaks" are available at
https://asia-correspondent.tumblr.com