Many Tibetans fled their homeland starting in 1959, and many came to the Mussoorie area. There is a thriving Tibetan community, cultural center, and several schools on the western end of Mussoorie. On Saturday morning we took taxis there (about an 8 mile trip) and were given a tour of the area. We saw the main school which educates children through highschool, and also a small vocational school which trains in tailoring and painting (for both areas, training is in both traditional Tibetan art and clothing and in modern/western styles). We made a brief visit to the Buddhist temple there also.
This is the junior library at the school. One of the murals is of TinTin in Tibet.
Some of the children are orphans, or their parents work elsewhere in India, or their parents are still in Tibet but they have gotten their children to India for a better life and more opportunity: these children are housed in group homes with a Tibetan couple as house-parents. There is much emphasis on retaining and transmitting Tibetan language and culture, so that this is not lost in the diaspora. The photo is of a group of these homes.
