India, China and the regret of Gyalo Thondup

Gyalo Thondup, who died on February 8, 2026, at 97 at the Indian hill station Kalimpong, carried with him secrets of a vanished era — and a warning for the present one. As the elder brother of the 14th Dalai Lama and a principal architect of the Tibetan resistance, Thondup stood at the intersection of Tibet’s tragedy and Asia’s great-power rivalries.

His memoir, The Noodle Maker of Kalimpong, pulls back the curtain on a shadow war that entangled Tibet, India, China and the United States. It also offers a sobering lesson for New Delhi today.Thondup’s greatest regret, he wrote, was trusting the CIA.

He wrote, “in all my life, I have only one regret: my involvement with the CIA. Initially, I genuinely believed that the Americans wanted to help us fight for our independence. Eventually, I realized that was not true. It was misguided and wishful thinking on my part. The CIA’s goal was never independence for Tibet. In fact, I do not think that the Americans ever really even wanted to help. They just wanted to stir up trouble, using the Tibetans to create misunderstandings and discord between China and India. Eventually they were successful in that. The 1962 Sino-Indian border war was one tragic result.”

Read more