On a cold wintry morning at the fag end of the last millennium, the 14-year-old claimant as the seventeenth reincarnation of the Karmapa, Ugyen Trinley Dorje, left the 'land where the mind sees further than the mountains can reach' to cross the borders of the roof of the world, and land in McLeodganj, the capital of Tibetans-in-exile in Himachal Pradesh.