younger brother, who later became known as Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche. Of the 300 in the party, only 13 arrived successfully in India. The harrowing journey was forced into a major detour, due to the widespread presence of Chinese soldiers, who were trying to prevent the escape of refugees. The journey took so long that they ran out of food whilst still far from their destination. Starving and having unanimously decided not to kill animals to support themselves, they eventually had to boil leather shoes and bags to make soup to survive. Nevertheless, against all odds, they did make it. After spending time in refugee camps Akong and Trungpa Rinpoches were befriended by Freda Bedi. who would become Sister Palmo, almost certainly the first close student of European ancestry of the Karmapa lineage. She took them into her own home, then later arranged for them to help her run the Young Lamas Home School in Dalhousie, NW India. In 1963, a friend of Freda Bedi's sponsored the two to go to Oxford where Trungpa would study comparative religion at the university. As only Trungpa had a bursary, Akong worked as a hospital orderly in the Radcliffe Infirmary in order to support himself, Trungpa and Lama Chime Tulku Rinpoche (who had joined them at Oxford). Activities Akong Rinpoche's activity was on an international scale and unusually diverse, but it can be summarised as Dharma, healing (including Tibetan Medicine and psychotherapy), and charity. Dharma In 1967 he co-founded Samye Ling in Scotland with Trungpa Rinpoche. Since it was the first Buddhist monastery in the West it was named after Samye in Tibet, established by Guru Rinpoche in the eighth century. It remains one of Europe's largest Buddhist monasteries. Akong himself was reluctant to teach, instead preferring to invite Tibetan Buddhism's greatest teachers and lineage masters to Samye Ling and its many satellite centres in Europe and Africa. One of the few overseas lamas to be able to return repeatedly to his homeland from 1992 onwards, he managed to rebuild and support his monastery there, as well as to foster the resurgence of monasteries and teaching colleges of all lineages He built huge statues of Guru Rinpoche stupas, and sponsored the rebuilding of the mani wall at Simdzi,Sichuan. He also became a key figure in the collection, preservation and printing of rare Buddhist and medical texts, many of which had been on the