As Sundar descended from the mountains, he was forced to ford many cold, icy rivers, and he traveled through areas where barely a house was to be found. But as he moved farther down the mountains, he began to notice clusters of mud-brick houses that clung to the sides of the steep ravines or were nestled beside the fast-flowing rivers. Long, colorful prayer flags fluttered in the breeze from poles on top of the houses. Yaks seemed to wander everywhere, as did children and men and women. The Tibetans were not at all like the people of India. Their faces were broad and flat and dark. Sundar soon noted that the color of their skin was made even darker by a layer of grime. Indeed, the only purpose the Tibetan people seemed to use water for was making tea—tea that Sundar soon discovered tasted foul to him. The tea was a mixture of rancid yak butter, salt, and boiling water. Each time he was offered a cup to drink, Sundar found himself praying for the strength to gulp it down.
Finally Sundar reached the village of Poo, where he had heard that two Moravian missionaries lived and worked. It did not take him long to locate the two men, Kunick and Marx, who welcomed him with open arms into their mission house. Over the next several weeks, Kunick and Marx taught Sundar the rudiments of the Tibetan language. But it was a complicated language, and Sundar was glad when the two missionaries offered to send an interpreter named Tarnyed Ali along with him as he traveled farther into Tibet.
Sundar and Tarnyed Ali set off together into the unknown. The Moravian mission was the last Christian outpost of any sort in the country, and as the two missionaries passed through villages, no one welcomed them into his home. Instead, the two young men spent most nights sleeping out in the open. Undeterred, they prayed together and hiked on. In one village, called Kiwar, as Sundar stopped to take his customary bath in a local stream, people from the village came running out, brandishing sticks and yelling, “Get away from us! The lama says you are not men of God. No man of God would wash himself.”
Saddened by the superstition of the Buddhist lamas, who held great sway over the people, Sundar climbed out of the stream and walked away, Tarnyed Ali following behind. They were run out of the next village and the one after that as well.
Weary and now beginning to feel a little discouraged, Sundar and Tarnyed Ali found a disused hut clinging to the side of a mountain and went inside. With no windows, the hut was gloomy, and the air inside was thick with the smell of stale smoke. When Sundar touched one of the walls, he found that like in most Tibetan houses, it was covered in a layer of soot and grime. A small fireplace was in the center of the hut, and nearby sat a pile of twigs and several cakes of yak dung to burn. Tarnyed Ali set about building a fire.
The fire had just burst into life when Sundar heard a faint noise outside. As he listened, the noise got louder. Then he recognized the sound of footsteps. Perhaps the hut was not deserted after all.
The figure of a Tibetan man soon appeared in the doorway of the hut. The man seemed just as surprised to see Sundar and Tarnyed Ali as they were to see him.
“I am sorry,” Sundar said. “We thought this hut was deserted.”
“It is,” the man said. “I stop here for the night sometimes when I am passing by.”
“Then, please, join us,” Sundar said, relishing the company of the Tibetan man. Perhaps this man would be more open to hearing about Jesus Christ than his fellow countrymen seemed to be.
“I am Norbu,” the man said as he came in and plonked himself down on the ground across the fire from Sundar.
Sundar noticed that as Norbu’s eyes adjusted to the dim light inside the hut, he looked startled.
“You wear the robe of a sadhu,” he finally said.
Sundar nodded. “I am Sadhu Sundar Singh,” he said.
Norbu’s eyes lit up. “You are not the first Sadhu Singh I have encountered in these parts,” he said.
Sundar was immediately attentive. “Are you saying another Sadhu Singh has been here?” he asked, wanting to make sure he had heard the man correctly.
“Yes. And like you, he had a Sikh name, but he was not a Sikh holy man. He was a Christian holy man.”
Sundar could feel the excitement pulse through his body at this news. There was another Sadhu Singh who was also a Christian! “Please, tell me about this holy man,” Sundar invited.
“I will tell you all I know of him,” Norbu began. “His name was Kartar Singh. He was the only son of a wealthy Sikh landowner. Despite being a Sikh, Kartar could find no peace in his heart until one day someone told him about the Christian God. Finally Kartar found what he was looking for and became a Christian. His father demanded that he renounce his new faith, but Kartar refused, and his father banished him from the family.
“Alone and without food or money, Kartar began working as a laborer. Eventually he saved enough money to buy himself the saffron robes and turban of a sadhu, such as you wear.” He pointed to Sundar’s now worn robe and turban. “Tibet seemed to call to Kartar’s heart, and he set out across the mountains. Then one day he appeared here among us in these parts. The people were not kind to him. They mocked him and chased him from their villages. But there was something about the man. No matter how much the people persecuted him, he did not strike back. He simply accepted the treatment he received and moved on to the next village.”
Sundar shot Tarnyed Ali a knowing glance.
“Finally the patience of the head lama of the area ran out. He had Kartar arrested and tried for teaching a foreign religion,” Norbu went on. “Since the Buddhist faith forbids the taking of a life, Tibetans have found clever and sadistic ways around this injunction. So when Kartar was found guilty, he was taken out, stripped naked, and sewn into a wet yak skin and left in the sun. As the skin dried in the sun, it began to shrink, slowly crushing Kartar. And so you see, it was the yak skin that killed Kartar, not the Buddhists who watched his death. For three days Kartar prayed and sang to God, and each day a crowd would gather to watch him suffer. They would cheer when they heard one of his bones break from the pressure of the yak skin. On the fourth day, knowing that the end was near for him, Kartar asked that his right hand be freed so that he could write in the front of his holy book. His hand was freed, and he wrote a verse in the front of the book. As the day worn on, Kartar got weaker. Then he spoke to the crowd. ‘Are you standing by to see a Christian die? Come and look attentively, because death itself dies here. O Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit because it is Yours.’ They were the last words that Kartar Singh spoke, and he soon died.”
Norbu sat for a few moments and stared into the fire, as did Sundar, contemplating what he had just heard.
“There is more,” Norbu said after a few moments. “The personal secretary of the lama, curious about the holy book, picked it up and took it home. He thumbed through the book, eager to find what it was that had allowed Kartar Singh to face death so bravely. And then the secretary began to tell others about what he had read in the Christian holy book. More and more people wanted to know about the contents of the book, and soon some were calling themselves Christians.”
“What happened to them?” Sundar asked.
“Of course the lama was furious,” Norbu said. “The killing of Kartar Singh was supposed to have been a warning to the people against Christianity, but now it was having the opposite effect. And the lama was even more furious when he learned that it was his secretary who was spreading this new religion. He had the secretary arrested and beaten cruelly. The secretary’s mangled body was then thrown onto a garbage heap, where he was left to die. But the man did not die. He felt an unexplainable strength well up within him, and he was able to crawl away off the garbage heap. When his wounds were healed, he walked back into the town where he had been beaten and left for dead. The people were shocked and became fearful. They wondered what sort of power had given strength and healing to one they thought was dead. As a result of this incident, the man has been allowed to wander the countryside and preach in the villages unmolested by the lama or the residents.”
“That is truly an amazing story,” Sundar said. “Tell me, if you know, where is this man today? Is he nearby so I could meet him?”
“He is closer than you think, Sadhu,” replied Norbu, and then with a dramatic flourish he added, “I am that man!” With that he reached into his small bag and pulled out a worn and tattered New Testament. “This New Testament was Kartar Singh’s holy book. See, here inscribed in the front is the verse Kartar wrote before he died.”
Sundar took the New Testament and read what Kartar had written. Tears welled in his eyes as he pondered the words. He marveled at the similarity between his story and that of Kartar Singh. The story of Kartar’s faithfulness encouraged Sundar and made him even more determined to keep on preaching to the Tibetan people, even if it cost him his own life.
Following a night in the abandoned hut talking and praying with Norbu, Sundar and Tarnyed Ali trudged on. Sundar insisted on practicing the Tibetan language as often as he could, because he knew he would be back in the country many more times and wanted the freedom to talk to the people without having to rely on an interpreter.
The summer slowly faded, and the wind began to turn icy. Sundar realized that it was time for him to head back across the mountain passes before snow completely blocked his way. Sundar and Tarnyed Ali made their way back along the same route they had come, and once again Sundar was grateful for the hospitality of the two Moravian missionaries in Poo.
After saying farewell to Tarnyed Ali, his traveling partner for the summer, Sundar left Tibet behind and made his way alone along the Hindustani–Tibet road. Along the way he heard of a holy man who had taken an oath of silence. Sundar made a detour to the village where the man lived and went to see him. He was immediately impressed with the fact that this sadhu was a genuine seeker after truth. In his quest the man had not spoken a word for six years. Sundar was eager to question him, and the sadhu offered him a slate and chalk.
On the slate Sundar wrote, “Didn’t God give us a tongue so that we can speak? Why do you not use yours to worship and praise the Creator instead of remaining silent?”
The sadhu thought for a moment and then erased Sundar’s question and wrote, “You are right. I am sure God does want our praise, but my nature is so evil that I cannot hope for anything good to come out of my mouth. Therefore I have remained silent for six years. It is better that I remain silent until I receive some blessing or message that can help others.”
Sundar then told him about Jesus Christ and how His death could change any person’s heart from evil to good, but the sadhu wrote that he found the idea too simple to be true, so Sundar parted from him without a word.
A little while later Sundar stopped at the small settlement of Kotgarh, about twenty-five miles northeast of Simla. Although the settlement, located seven thousand feet up in the mountains, was nothing more than a handful of houses and some orchards and cornfields, it was set in the middle of a majestic pine forest. Sundar decided to stop and rest there for several days before continuing his journey.
On his second day in Kotgarh, Sundar met a man named Susil Rudra. Much to Sundar’s delight, Susil was also a Christian, and the two men were soon lost in deep conversation. Susil explained that his father too had been a Christian. His father had come from a Hindu background and determined to stay as faithful as he could to that tradition, except where it conflicted with Christian beliefs. Many people, both Hindu and Christians, had found this difficult to accept, but Susil’s father persisted. And now Susil followed that tradition. He explained to Sundar that he believed that the Christian church in India needed to have a distinct Indian identity rather than the English identity it had in so much of India. Sundar couldn’t agree more. He and Susil forged a camaraderie in their desire to stay true to their Indian culture while at the same time being Christians.
