Despite the solemnity of the moment, young monks couldn’t help but whip out their mobile phones to take photos of their spiritual leader. An estimated 200,000 Buddhists gathered in Bodh Gaya for two weeks this month to see the Dalai Lama conduct the ritual, known as the Kalachakra Initiation, with chanting, praying and meditating at a vast teaching ground near the ancient Mahabodhi temple, next to a descendant of the famed tree.

I had come to write a story about the Tibetans who braved jail and censure by the Chinese government to attend the ritual, one of the most important in Tibetan Buddhism. More than 7,000 Tibetan pilgrims who had come had already been forced back to China without seeing the Dalai Lama, which for many is a lifelong dream. About 300 dared to come anyway.

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At a small reception camp, I met several young men who had made the risky journey over the Chinese border through Nepal and into India, most of them by hiring illegal guides who smuggled them out through back roads. One even hid in a large box. They were dressed in fashionable puffy jackets and furiously Wechatted on their mobile phones as I interviewed them. They all said they wanted to stay in India.

“We face so much suppression at home,” one of them said. “We can’t even hang a photo of the Dalai Lama in our house.”

None of them knew what their fates would be if they returned to China, as the Chinese had been confiscating passports, jailing and interrogating other pilgrims who had returned. I went back to see them the following night, and they asked me to stay for dinner, a vegetarian soup called thukpa made of tofu and thick noodles that was delicious in the way only soup cooked over an open fire on a winter evening can be.

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During the two-week event, devotees awoke each morning around 5 a.m. for morning prayer, then paused for simple vegetarian lunches before teachings from the lamas in the afternoons. During breaks, monks sprinted through the crowd serving butter tea made of tea leaves, yak butter and salt. There was no alcohol of course, and even if you wanted a frosty Kingfisher beer, you were out of luck, as the state outlawed liquor last year. It was so crowded that attendees spent a lot of time waiting in long lines for the bathroom, to get into the teaching ground or to see the mandala monks constructed with colorful sand, meant to represent the impermanence of life.

They wore face masks to protect themselves from dust, germs and India’s foul air. I had left mine behind in Delhi, and missed it when a police truck barreled past me and I was swept up in a cloud of mosquito spray. For some reason, the mosquitoes were still thick in the air, despite temperatures plummeting at night to 40 degrees.

Over three days, I met Buddhists from all over the world — India, China and Australia. There was even a chubby-cheeked tiny lama, only 8 years old, who was the reincarnation of a famous teacher who had been a close friend of the Dalai Lama during his time on Earth, he told me.

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Also Richard Gere. Gere, a devout Buddhist and a friend of the Dalai Lama’s for decades, came to India to participate in the teaching without a typical movie star entourage and stayed nearby at a modest retreat center.

We chatted briefly about keeping faith in troubled times.