My seat was number twenty-three. The characters were difficult to find, painted on the back, half scratched off. The bus was full. Three beautiful brown children were crowded into two seats - one of them mine. But the travelers at the rear of the bus - some Western, some Indian, some Tibetan - were adamant that the seat on the other side of the aisle was number twenty-three. They even made the man sitting in the seat they thought was mine give it up for me. So down I sat, without argument.

Next to me was a Tibetan monk in his maroon robes. Soft spoken and gentle, he tried to make polite conversation in English. He told me, as the night wore on, that he felt very fortunate to be sitting next to me. Another western traveler had asked him to trade seats with her so that she could be by her friends. And we did really hit it off. It was a nice connection and it seemed a little fated that way - with both of us in seats that were not our own.

The twelve hour bus ride turned into fifteen, stopping to change three flat tires along the way in the middle of the night. We had plenty of time to talk.

He was from Bodhnath Monastery in Kathmandu and had been staying for two weeks in McLeod Ganj. The long overnight journey to Delhi was to see a very high lama that was visiting India from the United States. This lama is very, very high, he explained, a holy man, considered to be the third in line behind the Dalai Lama. So I asked if I could go along with him. And Karma Tashi seems to be very pleased with the idea.

After that, he seemed to take it upon himself to take care of me and try to make me comfortable. He gave me a necklace of red string with a picture of the Dalai Lama on a medallion. In Delhi, he arranged for the taxi to the Old Tibetan Camp and found me a room in a guesthouse. And if was definitely very nice to be with someone who spoke fluent Hindi, who was wearing the maroon robes of a spiritual man and was, therefore, respected where-ever we went. I felt safe and protected.