Prayer Flags at Boudhanath

Prayer Flags at Boudhanath in Kathmandu. Bordering Tibet and for desperate Tibetan refugees walking distance, Nepal and more particularly Kathmandu, has become the new home for thousands of Tibetan Refugees. Even before the Tibetan Diaspora there was a Tibetan Community in Kathmandu in Boudhanath, one of the most vibrant areas for Tibetans in exile, centring on the Boudha Stupa. Since the Dalai Lama left Tibet in 1959 Tibetans have flooded out of the country, many of them walking over the Himalayas with what they could carry and have formed Tibetan communities around the world. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, the zenith of Communism, the pressures on Tibetans in Tibet became immense. Subject to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution as were many hundreds of millions of people in China proper, figures indicate that up to 6,000 Monasteries were ransacked and destroyed during the period. Many hundreds of thousands of monks and lay people were imprisoned, tortured and re-educated away from Buddhism, as was the way in China and Russia during the Communist period. Although still carefully controlled by the Chinese in Tibet, Tibetan Buddhism and Culture has flourished in the rest of the world since Tibetans started to leave Tibet in the late 1950’s and Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and communities can now be found throughout the world. Most particularly in Dharamsala in North India where the Dalai Lama lives, England, France and Spain, America, throughout the Himalayas and in Kathmandu in Nepal. Boudhanath, Kathmandu, Nepal. 8th February 1998. (Photo by Richard Manning/Getty Images)