Monks, monks, so many monks

I won’t lie. Getting to Tibet came hand in hand with my desire to see Buddhist monks up close. The red robes, the unique hats, the solemn lifestyle. It had always sounded like a fairy tale.

This is why I had forgotten how even monks are real people. It made it all the more refreshing to be reminded of just how real and human they actually are.

Our first encounter with these spiritual persons was the moment we left the train.

Groups of travelling monks arriving at the Lhasa train station.

Us, together with a dozen red robed monks got hurdled into the Tibetan passport control office only a few meters outside the train we had all just got off. Sometimes it seems almost too coincidental that all passport control centres in the entire world look and feel so alike. As if they have some secret pact that says “I will process paperwork slowly, if you process it slowly too”. It was after the long hours spent on the train, and now everyone was eager to rush into Lhasa that awaited us just beyond the wall to our left. But even with anticipation rising, and boredom settling in, I could not help but be captivated by the monks that I observed – probably not particularly discreetly - from the corner of my eye. They too were doing the same thing, looking back at us, only with a lot more skill. At the end of the day, we were alien to each other, we had each seen images of similar people on a screen and we were now comparing them to the real-life examples before us.

Friendly monks smile at us. They have with them the bare necessities: A covid mask each, a simple bag, a cell phone, sports shoes and a soft drink they just picked up.

As we waited, one of the monks squatted on the floor, his friend followed suit, and then another two friends joined as well. They were reaching out for something in their robes. I gazed, even more excited now, and with the least discreet stare possible, for them to open a prayer book or take out their praying beads. Instead…they took out their cell phones… One started scrolling through videos on TikTok, another had turned his phone to the side and was playing a game. Three slightly older monks were standing by the door fanning themselves with a booklet. They too were watching videos and were now laughing loudly. This had not been what I had expected.

Looking more closely one starts to see the more human elements. The cell phones that are indeed kept inside the folds of their robes and which occasionally their head teacher would yell at them to put away, the comfortable sport shoes chosen specifically for the long journey, and the bottles of iced tea and coke purchased on the train during the trip here. Monks on the internet. They most definitely prayed, and they were most definitely humble, but they were also not unaware. In a place ever more reliant on technology, you need the internet to do anything from booking tickets to buying a bottle of water. Technology and religion had learned to coexist. It would have been naïve to think that somehow an entire group of people had been cut off from the reality of the modern world, of our world and the world of their followers.

Monks will chant in the street begging for donations. It creates an other-worldly feeling througout Lhasa that does not go away even on busy roads and crowded market streets.

The tiny passport control centre was just the beginning. The city of Lhasa has monks to feast your eyes for days. Monks praying, singing and begging in the streets. Monk boys playing with toy guns, others playing basketball. Monks arguing and debating the cost of bread buns, and my favourite, monks who were not too shy to walk up to us and touch us, asking why we looked so strange. This group of people alone make visiting Tibet resemble visiting another planet. On this planet we all come in peace, and some select few, also come in humour.