In eight grueling days through unmarked terrain and freezing trails in mountains higher than 17,000 feet, the Karmapa and three companions trekked. Eventually, sneaking past border outposts and avoiding crowded towns, they found sanctuary in India with the Dalai Lama. Click on the numbers for details. Thorung La is the kind of place where a spitball can freeze before it hits the ground. It crowns a busy trekking circuit but usually is blocked by snow in winter.
Guidebooks warn ominously about altitude sickness, avalanches, even death.
Trekking season peters out by November. But on Jan. 1, the young monk plodded on, apparently impervious to the splendor and the peril surrounding him. In more congenial environs, revelers toasted a new millennium. But up on Thorung La, Urgyen Trinley Dorje, the boy recognized by Tibetan Buddhists as the 17th reincarnation of the esteemed Karmapa, was trekking the back-breaking path toward freedom. The news ricocheted worldwide.