The first time I met him, Garpa’s engaging smile assured me that my presence was not an intrusion. He indicated a block of wood beside him for me to sit on. I asked him how long he’d been carving stones at Tashiding. He asked to see my mala, or Tibetan rosary, hanging around my neck. He proceeded to turn the wooden beads between his thumb and forefinger one by one. I thought he was praying. Then he stopped. He handed the mala back to me, careful that I put my finger between the two beads he had reached. “That many,’ he said, and continued chiselling stone. I counted the beads. Garpa had been carving stones at Tashiding for forty-five years, since he fled with the Dalai Lama when the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1959.

— A Step Away from Paradise by Thomas K. Shor, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (Page 204)