By Alan Wechsler,
ALBANY, May 19 – Six years ago, Tashi Palden joined 54 refugees in Lhasa, Tibet, paid off a smuggler and headed into the wilderness. Destination: Nepal, hundreds of miles away.
The illegal trip was on foot. Palden, then 25, carried only a blanket and some food: cheese, butter, dried yak meat and tsampa, a dry wheat paste. He wore jeans, a denim jacket and light shoes. The group moved at night, sometimes coming dangerously close to Chinese Army troops. They slept in the open or in the homes of villagers. Some got frostbite.
Finally, they crossed the border into Nepal and were promptly delivered to Nepali police, who arrested them.
Palden’s path to Albany did not begin auspiciously, but it has at least gotten kinder. Today, the former monk runs the Little Moon Tibetan crafts store on Madison Avenue with his wife, Jessica Higgins Palden of Greenwich, Conn.
And the couple has bigger plans.
Palden, now 32 and a recent U.S. citizen, has joined forces with his four brothers, who live in the Tibetan province of Kham, to build a hotel there. The building, which will be finished this summer, is located in Palden’s hometown of Ratsaka, on a relatively busy road between the Chinese city of Chengdu and Lhasa, the Tibetan capital.
Palden hopes the hotel will bring money to his family here and the family he left behind.
“I want to help my parents, they are very old,” Palden said. “I want success for my family.”
A Tibetan refugee looking to establish business ties in his home country is rare, said Tendar, first secretary at the Office of Tibet in New York, a de facto consulate to Tibet’s deposed government run by the Dalai Lama in India.
“We think it’s good,” Tendar said. “We think if (refugees) do not see any risk, it’s good for them to go back and open business there. That way they can help the development of Tibet and can generate employment.”
Tibet is a rugged, high-altitude plateau, home to the highest mountain on earth. Sandwiched between India and China, Tibet is seen by many Westerners as a land of spirituality and mysticism. It’s also a place of both poverty and controversy, as Tibetans and the ruling Chinese argue over its future.
Palden’s traveling life started at 18 when he left home to join a monastery. Seven years later, he decided he wanted to go to India to study Sanskrit, the language Buddha used for his teachings. He also wanted more freedom.
After surviving the trip across the border and his two-day arrest, Palden was released to Tibetan representatives. He made his way to India, met the Dalai Lama and began to study in the ancient Buddhist city of Sarnath in early 2000. There, he met Jessica Higgins.
“I was in his Tibetan language class and he was in my English language class,” recalled Jessica Palden, a former performer for the American circus group Cirque Ingenieux. When she met Palden, she was on a Buddhist pilgrimage to the East. It took awhile for them to get to know each other.
“I just want to study,” Tashi Palden said. “Then she was teacher. We became friends.”
Jessica Palden told a different story: “I knocked on the door to give him a present from America. He said, ‘No English,’ closed the door and didn’t emerge for three days.”
Tashi Palden, whose English has improved considerably since then, left the monkhood and married Jessica. The two headed to the United States a few months later. They chose Albany because it was more affordable than New York City and the upstate area has a few Buddhist communities.
“I like it,” Tashi Palden said of Albany. “I like freedom of speech, freedom to travel.”
He is one of an estimated 4,000 Tibetans living in the United States, according to the Office of Tibet. About 130,000 Tibetan refugees live in foreign countries. China, which has ruled Tibet since 1950, estimates there are 4.9 million Tibetans in the country, which is half the size of Europe. (The Office of Tibet says there are more.)
The Paldens try to avoid the politics. Their store, located near Lark Street, sells Tibetan flags, robes, masks and other imports. It also includes art and furniture painted by Tashi Palden.
While living in America, Jessica Palden, a schoolteacher and mother of a 3-year-old girl, decided she wanted her family to live in Tibet part of each year. Tashi Palden asked his brother to buy some land there.
By the time, the Paldens visited Tibet last summer — for the first time since Tashi fled — the idea had grown. Now the family hopes to build a large hotel, catering to Tibetans, Chinese and tourists.
There is some competition, but not much. The Lonely Planet Tibet guidebook lists two hotels in the town, one with an outdoor toilet described as “an absolute horror” and another that’s said to be overpriced and noisy.
All five of the Palden brothers have contributed to the cost of the new hotel and will help manage it. The couple hopes that one day the hotel will offer guides for tourists, Western-style food and perhaps even a nightclub.
“We’re not going to get rich,” Jessica Palden said. “We just want to create a simple lifestyle.”
