Return to Gandhi Road

Released: 2020

Genre: Documentary

Duration: 90 min

Cast: Matthieu Ricard

Return to Gandhi Road tells the powerful story of Kangyur Rinpoche; a renowned Tibetan Master who, heeding the imminent danger of the 1950's Cultural Revolution, and under the instructions of the Dalai Lama, braved the dangerous journey over the Himalayan mountains to India, rescuing two tons of Buddhist texts that otherwise faced potential extinction. The journey took over three years, was undertaken on foot accompanied by his young family, and involved immense physical hardship. Once in Darjeeling he built Orgyen Kunsang Chokhorling, a Monastery at 54 Gandhi Road. It was at this address that a handful of single-minded Westerners, in search of a more meaningful life, began to arrive in the late 1960's. Their meeting, although brief (with Rinpoche's passing in 1975), eventually had an extraordinary widespread effect - directly contributing to Buddhism's spread throughout the Western world. Told through the eyes of one of those first Westerners, New Zealander Kim Hegan, as he now, more than 40 years after Rinpoche's passing and his Buddhist practice abandoned, will re-trace the journey he made to Darjeeling 46 years earlier, to tell Rinpoche's profound story, while healing the trauma that kept him away for so long.