Tibetan escape.

First, I have to get into Tibet. Thousands of Tibetans make an extraordinary journey each year, a journey to freedom. My goal as a documentary filmmaker is to capture on video this desperate crossing over the highest mountains in the world.

The Chinese have ruled the once-independent nation of Tibet since 1950, brutally repressing the Buddhist theocracy. Tibetans are second-class citizens in their own land, discouraged from practicing their religion, denied a full education, imprisoned for even mentioning the cause of Tibetan independence.

For a long time, the Chinese rulers prevented Western tourists from going to Tibet. But China's embrace of capitalism has periodically pried open the doors to some American dollars, German deutschmarks, and British pounds.

Thus I am able to enter, Sony handicam in tow. I explore around Lhasa, Tibet's ancient capital, for a couple of weeks, then head west into the Himalayan region aboard a Landcruiser.

I hop off in Tingri as the other passengers head west out of Tibet via the one road that crosses into Nepal. This is the only legal overland route across the Chinese-Nepalese border.

A remote village lying at 14,000 feet on the desolate Tingri Plains, Tingri is situated north of the magnificent Himalayas, the natural barrier that separates Tibet from Nepal.

Tingri is also one of the tensest places in this occupied land. On the forbidding landscape, a battalion of bored Chinese soldiers lives amidst a couple of hundred seething Tibetans.

Though the specter of imprisonment hangs over all Tibetans, in Tingri, the villagers dare to mutter three words in English, perhaps the only English they know: "We hate Chinese."

It's just another day in Tingri when a trivial argument leads to bloodshed. Two Chinese soldiers need a lift and wave down a truck. The two Tibetans in the truck say there's no room and apologize. The Chinese insist. The Tibetans offer them the back of the truck, atop the cargo. Not good enough. The Chinese seize the truck's crankshaft, a necessity for starting the vehicle. Some locals stand up for the drivers, and the conflict escalates.

I wander onto the dirt road and see ten or twelve Tibetan men brandishing sticks and rocks, facing off against a couple of gun-toting Chinese soldiers. I run back to my dormitory to retrieve the Sony handicam. While fumbling with a fresh tape, I hear three to five gunshots and sprint into the melee, the video camera clicked into record mode.

One Tibetan man staggers toward me clutching a stick. He has been smashed in the skull by a blunt object. Blood courses from a gash on his head, drips into his eyes and onto his chest.

In the middle of the crowd lies a Tibetan man downed by two bullets One bullet has shattered his kneecap, while the other has penetrated his left shoulder.

The next day a few of the locals, including the shot man and the one with the head injury, are taken to Shigatse, Tibet's second largest city, for "questioning." By then I'm gone.

The night after the incident a Tibetan man comes up to me. Through the imposing language barrier he desperately wants to communicate something. Eventually between my thirty words of Tibetan, his thirty words of English, and a lot of body language, he succeeds: The Chinese intend to confiscate all of my videotapes.

As a precaution in case I'm caught, I give a German woman all of my videotape footage and exposed film to smuggle out of Tibet, and I arrange to pick them up at a hotel in Kathmandu. But first I have to cross Nangpa La, a pass near Everest used as an escape route for Tibetans.

With seventy pounds of food, warm clothing, and video equipment loaded onto my old external frame pack, I stagger out of Yingri in the predawn light. I have two objectives: find a yak for hire, and videotape Tibetan refugees ho are also fleeing.

Seventy yaks pound across the icy, rocky terrain, guided by a dozen nomadic traders, their dark faces scorched by the frigid wind and high altitude sun. Red mukluks cover their feet with matching red strands of decorative twine tied into their hair. That night we sit in their yak-hide tent crowded around the yak-dung stove.

Four days later, I sit on a boulder at 17,000 feet watching the caravan disappear over a nearby ridge. I am enervated by the thin air, unable to keep up, and the nomads have left me behind.

After a couple of hours of taking stock of the situation, I set up a stone shelter. Then a miracle: Coming toward me are twenty-four refugees marching in single file. They gather nearby, staring, unsure what to make of my presence. The refugees are woefully unprepared for the rigors of the arctic-like environment. I keep warm in my down coat; the nomads had well-insulated sheepskins, but the refugees shiver under cheap ski jackets or flimsy windbreakers.

They've come from all over Tibet. Some have been on the road for months, others weeks. They speak different dialects and can't all converse with each other. Half are adolescents sent by parents too poor or too old to join them. All have one thing in common--an intense desire to be blessed by the Dalai Lama, their exiled leader.

The refugees invite me to join their group and insist on helping me portage my things. Grateful, I share my supplies. I will be the first person to videotape Tibetans crossing Nangpa La, maybe the first to tape them escaping from China.

Tseyang, a beautiful twelve-year-old girl, is always the last in line, a cruel fate because by the time she catches up to the rest of the pack, the break is over.

"I try not to be scared," she says. "I get really big blisters on my feet and they bleed a lot. But my mother said I'm very lucky. You see, they could afford only to send me. One day I hope Tibet becomes a free country. Then I can move back home."

Two dozen pairs of soiled, ripped Chinese sneakers march over the glacier. At the crest, atop Nangpa La's 19,000 feet, everybody stops and screams out, "Lha So! Lha So! Lha So!"--a Tibetan victory chant. We are standing on the imaginary line between China and Nepal. There is no border patrol, nor any official demarcation in this stark wilderness, just two dozen ecstatic refugees.