As I looked out the third-floor window to a rooftop ashram opposite, white-clad adherents were clasping their palms together at their hearts in the universal hand mudra of devotion. A chant carried through the night, rising and falling like waves washing on a beach.

I had stayed at this hotel on my way through Kathmandu to Bhutan, five years earlier. Never would I have imagined that, all this time later, not only would I have yet to open the terma, but that goal would seem to have fallen further away than ever.

I requested Geshe-la to ask if his cousin was able to find out anything. I told him how Dalberg was able to monitor airport arrivals and track where the statue was being sent, but didn’t seem connected inside Patan. ‘Confidence is necessary,’ Geshe-la had told me when we spoke earlier. As I pressed ‘Send,’ I recollected some of the mind-training from the monastery: appearances are illusion-like—don’t be fooled. All that you perceive arises from a mind propelled by karma.

•••

A short while later, I finally got to phone the third person on my call list. Alice Weisenstein had taught introduction classes at the Buddhist center next door to where I used to live in Los Angeles. I had immediately been attracted by her physical poise, her tousled blonde hair, the clarity of her blue eyes. In time I had also discovered that, like me, she was a researcher, but in the field of neuroscience. I had been going through a tough time with my girlfriend, Isabella, a relationship that had come to an end. But I’d always sensed a closeness with Alice, and since coming to Tiger’s Nest, every few months we had exchanged letters.

At the other end, the number rang for a while before a male voice answered.

‘Michael.’ It was an Irish accent. Mature.

I paused. ‘Is this the right number for Alice?’

‘She’s at work.’

‘Okay.’

In her letters, I remembered, she’d mentioned a neighbor called Michael. Seemed he got on especially well with her son Josh, now in his teens.

‘I’ll call her there,’ I said. Not knowing exactly why. This was the only number I had for her.

Hanging up, I looked out the window to where the meeting at the ashram was coming to a close. Men and women turned to hug, placing garlands of flowers around each other’s necks. That was another aspect of basic mind-training: all sentient beings are the same in that we all wish for happiness and for connection to others, and we all wish to be free from suffering. Exhausted, I lay back on the bed, for just a moment.

•••

A sudden, shrill ringing jolted me awake. The room was stark with morning light. Disorientated for those first, conscious moments, I looked down at where I was lying fully dressed, working out where I was.

The ringing sounded again. It was coming from my phone.