The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong: The Untold Story of My Struggle for Tibet by Gyalo Thondup

Author:Gyalo Thondup [Thondup, Gyalo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Asia, Biographies & Memoirs, Buddhism, China, History, India, Religion, Tibet
ISBN: 9781610392907
Google: jxCjAwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B06XCGLNR7
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2015-04-14T03:00:00+00:00

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SMUGGLING THE TRAINEES out of India was not so difficult. Relations between India and the United States were strained. Nehru had joined the Badung Conference in April 1955 where such diverse leaders as Egypt’s Abdul Nassar, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and President Tito of Yugoslavia joined together to declare a set of international principles based on nonalignment, neutrality, and noninterference in the others’ internal affairs. Nehru’s policy of nonalignment and neutrality in the midst of the cold war did not sit well with the United States. In June 1956, American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles publicly labeled Nehru’s policy immoral.

But America’s relations with Pakistan were good. And India’s border with East Pakistan was the Mahanandi River, just behind Bagdogra Airport near Siliguri, a three-hour drive from Kalimpong. The Pakistani government agreed to allow the United States to use one of its deserted airports as the jumping off point for the trainees. If we could get the fighters across the Mahanandi River, Pakistani soldiers and officials would pick them up on the other side to take them to the secret airport where an American transport plane would ferry them to the designated training spot.

We chose the night of March 20, 1957, when the moon would still be full, to send the first group across the border. I was to pick them up in my Ford station wagon as they were walking, spread out and in single file, along Kalimpong’s main road. Wangdu was the first to be picked up. He knew everyone in the group and could point them out to me as we drove. We laughed and joked as we made our way to Siliguri. The young men were honest and intelligent and excited about their adventure. I teased them about the crocodiles they might meet crossing the river. They were not afraid to die.

I dropped them at the Mahanandi River together with Gelong, a Hindi-speaking member of my household staff familiar with the terrain. He was to serve as their guide. The water was still low at that time of year, so the men were able to wade across the river. They walked the whole night before linking up with the Pakistani officials, the CIA operative, and Thondup Gyantsen, my brother Norbu’s assistant, who was to serve as their interpreter during the training. I was back home in Darjeeling before the sun came up. Gelong took a taxi home after leaving the group, arriving back the next day.

From Pakistan, the group was flown in an unmarked plane to the island of Saipan in the Marianas archipelago somewhere in the Western Pacific. Saipan had been the scene of many bloody battles during the Second World War, and the detritus of war was still there—from the bones of dead soldiers to unexploded bombs and all kinds of guns and artillery. For four months, ten CIA instructors trained the six resistance fighters in radio communications and Morse code, taught them how to read and draw maps, and introduced them to the fundamentals of intelligence gathering and reporting, guerrilla warfare, and a variety of weapons and explosives.

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