The Dalai Lama's nephew has finished a 900-mile walk across America to protest what he calls Chinese suppression of Tibetans.
After the four-week trek from Indiana to New York, Jigme Norbu's feet were full of painful blisters and were missing nails and the feeling in one toe.
Capping his "Walk for Tibet," Norbu led a noon rally Saturday in front of the Chinese consulate on Manhattan's West Side.
He started his walk in Indianapolis on March 10, marking the 50th anniversary of a failed Tibetan rebellion against Chinese rule that resulted in the exile of the Dalai Lama over the Himalayas into India.
Step by step, Norbu covered about 30 miles a day on roads and small highways, passing through Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. In the big cities, he led rallies, speaking about Tibetans' struggles.
"When I walked, I thought of my people — how they're suffering, what they've been through," said Norbu, a 43-year-old New York native who works in real estate in Bloomington, Ind.
Norbu is the son of the Dalai Lama's late brother, Taktser Rinpoche, a high lama who was abbot of a monastery when the Chinese invaded and became, in effect, a prisoner of their army. The brothers fled into exile following the 1959 uprising.
Rinpoche, who died in September at 86, was a professor of Tibetan studies at Indiana University in Bloomington while serving as the Dalai Lama's U.S. representative.
His birth name was Thupten Jigme Norbu, and, at 3, he was recognized as the reincarnation of Taktser Rinpoche. (The first name means "roaring tiger," taken from his and the Dalai Lama's native village, and Rinpoche means "precious one," a title given to spiritual masters.)
The walk was a son's tribute to a father who also had walked all over the United States starting in the 1990s "for all the Tibetans who suffered and died," Norbu said.
"He was a big inspiration," the son said. "He fought almost his whole life."

Dossier Tibet