Monsoon season is coming to a close, and a season of festivals and weddings is fast approaching. I’m looking forward to sharing in the excitement, but first, I’m trying to make some progress on my research so I can relax a bit over the holidays.

From previous attempts to converse with locals, I have realized the challenge of gaining insight into my research topic without first establishing a relationship with my interviewees. Naturally, people are hesitant to talk to me if I approach them with no familiar context and introduce myself as a student doing research. Further, my project seems a bit odd compared to what locals have encountered from other researchers in the past. Firstly, instead of studying the present situation in Tibet, I am more interested in the present situation in exile. Secondly, my research values lay opinions over monastic scholarship. Thirdly, I am singling out the role of women.

With those challenges in mind, I am finding ways to become involved in the Tibetan community without making my research the primary focus in the beginning. I hope to make myself more visible within the Tibetan settlements in order to gradually build a context of familiarity. Then, given some time, conversations can come more naturally and in a manner that is not suspicious or threatening.

After making some new contacts last weekend, I have begun volunteering three afternoons a week at a craft home for Tibetan children with mental and physical disabilities in Sidhpur, a town about twenty minutes from my home in Dharamsala. I took a taxi Sunday afternoon for my first day of volunteer work, and upon meeting the twenty or thirty residents who live at the home, I was surprised to discover that most of them are my age or older. Since Sundays are holidays, there were no classes and few staff members when I arrived, so I was concerned about how I would get people out of the cafeteria area and encourage them to participate in games without even the slightest knowledge of Tibetan. Thankfully, some of the residents came to my aid and encouraged their friends to participate in “catch-catch,” which seems to be a version of tag, and a few other games they made up as they went along. I returned again Tuesday and led some activities using a soccer ball, trying to keep everyone engaged and active because the staff asked me to encourage physical exercise.

For my commute to the Tibetan craft home Tuesday, I decided to brave India’s public transportation system and take the bus there and back. I benefited from a great deal of friendly assistance along the way, which saved me the frustration of missing my stops and getting completely disoriented. Taking the bus is quite an adventure. I begin by walking about fifteen minutes from my home to the nearest bus stop, then spend another fifteen minutes lending every inch of my personal space bubble to fellow passengers as everyone crams onto the bus, and finally walk fifteen to twenty minutes from my stop to the craft home. It’s completely worth the effort, though, because it costs me eight rupees round trip, as opposed to 500 to 600 by taxi. In other words, I pay 18 cents per day instead of twelve to fourteen dollars.

My other new venture is a Tibetan language class taught by a nun in her home, near the Tibetan Library of Works and Archives. It begins at 8:00 every morning except Sundays, and when the weather is nice, I walk both ways to save taxi fare. I follow the road from my home to the market and then halfway up the mountain to the Tibetan government headquarters. I’m learning a few shortcuts, but any path that takes me up the mountain more quickly is inevitably twice as steep. The trek up takes about forty minutes at a steady pace, and I can usually make it back down in thirty, giving me the hour from 9:30 to 10:30 to recover and finish any last-minute preparations for the women’s group in Khaniyara. There are four other members in the class, and we all sit on cushions on the floor of the nun’s house, drink hot ginger tea, and struggle through drills of Tibetan script and pronunciation for an hour. It’s a surprisingly pleasant way to start off the day, and I’m making some connections in the community through my fellow classmates.

All in all, I’m developing a busy but enjoyable routine, a rigorous exercise regimen, and a better sense of the Tibetan community in exile. I’m hoping for as much success in the coming week!