ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a thick description of a pilgrimage of a group of Tibetan refugees from Ladakh across the Himalayas to Rewalsar. The account adds a new dimension to text-based works on Tibetan pilgrimage focusing on Buddhist doctrines, and it follows Toni Huber’s suggestion to rather start from actual enacted practices which often reveal a syncretistic religious and pragmatic approach. The author traces not only the pilgrims’ practices but also their outer and inner encounters, which she argues happen on three different layers of the journey: first, through geographical places and landscapes; second through tantric and other rituals practiced en route and at the holy site; and third, through remembering and re-enacting encounters linked to past worlds. Drawing on Tim Ingold’s dwelling perspective and Edward Casey’s concept of place-worlds and acts of implacement, this chapter seeks to describe how lived spaces arise from negotiations over places, people and other beings, ritual practices and biographical events constitute the pilgrimage as a journey through a multidimensional encounterscape.
