On the way out I saw a Tibetan boy looking out towards the mountains waiting for the rest of his family to exit the palace. I pointed my finger to him and then to my camera signaling I would like his permission to photograph him. My finger quickly clicked away on the shutter as he allowed his complex emotions to arise all in a matter of a few minutes. He switched expressions of shyness to silliness, then happiness to somberness. He was cute and lively.
His family joins him and asked for their photographs to be taken. His a man wanted to use my camera to photograph. I don’t think he has used a camera before. It brought the family so much joy to use the camera and have their photographs taken. It didn’t matter that they would never see the actual photographs. So I let the man have fun with my camera. He insisted on taking a photograph of me. Trying to show him how to focus through hand signals would be too much of a fuss and would ruin the fun of the time so I preset the my SLR camera for him but he kept moving around, it will definitely result in out of focus photo.
I wanted to hand something to the boy to thank him for allowing me to photograph him. I pulled out my precious delicious apple out of my pack and handed it to him. He took it was so much joy and pride that he skipped and hopped around and showed it off to his family playfully.
This family decided to take me in as one of their own and made sure I didn’t slip and fall down the hill or get too far behind. They walked with me and watched over me. That was nice of them. We chatted the whole way. I spoke Mandarin and they spoke Tibetan, we didn’t understand each other’s language but we laughed the entire time and enjoyed each others company as if we did understand each other.
