“I was so excited I burst into tears,” Cheogyal said of seeing the large portrait, which is banned from being displayed within China, at a center for new Tibetan refugees in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, earlier this year. “Then I felt that I had reached a safe place, that I was free.”
This was the first time the 25-year-old had left China – his first stop in a journey that’s made him one of just a small number of Tibetans who have fled the country for exile in recent years.