“Okay,” I say. “Now a hard question. Super hard.” They giggle at the made-up word. “How has”—I take my time enunciating each word—“learning English changed your thoughts or ideas about Tibet or the Tibetan language?” They make me write it down. I underline each complex word and talk it through—hands rolling in a wheel for ‘change’, head tapped for ‘ideas’ or ‘thoughts’. They think. They know what I am saying now, that is not the problem. The problem is how do they convert all

I go to the beginners’ room at conversation class today. There are so many people there that I have to pick my way across—stepping on a monk’s knee on the way—to a group of four. They welcome me eagerly. “How old are you, teacher?” asks one. I say twenty-two. He shakes his head. “You look very young. Only eighteen.” I tell him that someone once told me I looked twelve, and they laugh. “No, not twelve, teacher,” he says seriously. “But sixteen.” He’s cut my age, neatly, by two

In here, there is a different kind of silence. In Sweden it was an absence, an emptiness being asked to be filled with your own thoughts. Here, it is the silence of noise. A mist surrounds this place, hiding the conifers from view. Sometimes, it creeps forward to engulf you. There is a constant hum (some insect I have not been able to place yet) but it is not the soft cricking of the grasshopper that you find in the wilderness of Maharashtra. No, this is persistent, rhythmic