The Dalai Lama fled Tibet into exile

On March 31, 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama and his entourage reached the Indian border, ending a perilous flight from his homeland. Days earlier, with Chinese forces tightening their grip on Lhasa and a national uprising collapsing, he had slipped out of his summer palace disguised as a common soldier, leaving “a few minutes before ten o’clock in the evening.”

What followed was roughly two weeks crossing the Himalayas, much of it on foot through high, treacherous terrain. India granted him political asylum.

By April 20, 1959, he had reached Mussoorie; he would settle at Dharamsala and build a Tibetan government-in-exile there.

The escape transformed a young religious leader into a global symbol of nonviolent resistance. More than six decades on, the Dalai Lama has never returned, and the cause of Tibet has remained inseparable from the story of that night-time departure and the border he crossed at the end of March.