Electronic Source: Overlooking Tibet

After browsing some of the blogs Kangpa follows from his blog about his experiences in Dharamsala, I found another blog I am interested in following.  It is called "Overlooking Tibet: Ways outsiders dismiss and disempower Tibet and Tibetans...from outsiders trying not to."  With a title like that, I was very curious to see what this blog had to say.

I cannot find any information about the author, but form his blog posts I can gather bits and pieces.  The author has been to Tibet several times, even during politically sensitive periods, and speaks Tibetan.  Based on my less than perfect experience learning Tibet myself, I think that is great.

This seems to be a fairly new blog and is not posted on very regularly, but the things that are posted are very useful.  One article, "Restless Endangerment," in particular I thought was useful as a new field facilitator taking a group of seven other students to India for the first time.  Of course, it is not Tibet, but I think some of the basic safety precautions mentioned here can be very applicable.

The authors advice?  Register with your countries embassy (going to do that, Ashley said that I register with Delhi), and also to not distribute anything widely  or not put yourself in the middle of a crowd.

I did not really understand the first safety tip, but the author explains that a lot of people want to distribute pictures of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the people in Tibet, but in large groups of Tibetans there is usually at least one spy among them.  It would be a bad move for a tourist to facilitate this by distributing these images inside of Tibet.  I have never even heard of this being a problem, but this is really serious.  The author ends the article saying that "as a tourist, we can go home after your few weeks in Tibet are up.  After we are no longer watching, how many people will go to jail?"

Another great thing about this blog is that the most recent comments are posted along the side (I have not yet seen that feature, and am considering putting it into my own blog), and there are other links to follow.  The chase for more great electronic sources never ends!  I am excited to be a new follower to this blog.  Though the posts might be few and far between, they are interesting and and well thought out.  I think a lot of what the author talks about with cultural sensitivity goes hand in hand with field study goals.