ON THE ROOFTOP terrace of Dharamsala's Tsongkha Restaurant, Rinchen, a 21-year-old with a neat plait of jet black hair and a drop earring, is talking about his Canadian girlfriend, whom he met at a party four months ago. In three weeks they're getting married, and his girlfriend has started working on the papers to take him to Canada. 'I've never been on an aeroplane, I've never been to an airport,' he says. 'My whole life's been in the mountains with sheep and yaks.'
Unusual? Not really. At other tables sit clusters of similar-looking young men, some of them talking to western women. They are known locally as the Amdo boys, former nomads from northeastern Tibet - wiry, copper-skinned horsemen who've traded life on the grasslands for exile in the Dalai Lama's home. For many of them, though, Dharamsala is just a temporary halt in a longer journey.
The trend began in the 1990s, when a surge of western interest in Tibet coincided with a sharp increase in the number of Tibetan refugees arriving in India. Jobless and alone, young Tibetan men are increasingly finding partners among western women.
'When I came back after an absence of five years, I was shocked because it seemed to have become an industry,' says Belinda Burton, who married a Tibetan in 1996 and took him back to Australia. 'It just seems to be gathering steam, it's becoming more common.'
Relationships, which are predominantly between Tibetan men and western women, can take the form of anything from a holiday fling to marriage and a ticket out of India. One Tibetan man says he's slept with about 50 foreigners, whom he finds less inhibited than his countrywomen. Another says he wants to marry so he can migrate to the United States.
For some, it is just one stage in a decade-long loop that ultimately takes them back to Tibet, passport and dollars in hand, to be reunited with their families. The combination of an exotic culture, a good-looking people and a tragic story is a powerful one.