I answered a friend’s telephone in Tucson, Arizona in March of 1986. As the result of that conversation with a total stranger, on my birthday in May I was in Lhasa, Tibet.
Along the way, the woman with whom I’d spoken on the phone dispatched someone to meet me at a bank in San Francisco. There I was given enough cash to buy film, fly to Hong Kong and then travel to Sechuan Province, in China. In Chengdu I joined an old friend, a medical doctor and scholar, who was gathering ancient Chinese “traditional” medical texts for a foundation dedicated to preserving that knowledge. My responsibility was to spend a few weeks documenting some things he was interested in.
I had a bunch of copies of a photograph I had made of the Dalai Lama holding a maple leaf in Vermont, the previous autumn. As a stringer for The Christian Science Monitor I’d spent a week at Middlebury College, photographing His Holiness during his first visit to the United States. I tagged along respectfully as he met with American Buddhists, Religion 101 college students, second graders, and even William F. Buckley Jr. In every situation, he was impressive and fun.
Just before I left for China, I had learned that Tibet was at last open to travelers. Sometimes you get what you want.