Maggie Walsh, a freelance photo-journalist with a penchant for dangerous situations, receives a tip that the Dalai Lama is dead. It is the sort of scoop which could earn her enough to pay off the mortgage, the cost of her replacement camera and even get London Electricity off her back. In McLeod Ganj, home of the Tibetan community in exile, she confirms the truth of the tip, but before she can get out with her photographs she is apprehended and while the world's media make their money Maggie is in detention. But there she gets to know a young monk, Tsering, and when he announces he is part of a group going into Tibet to follow the oracle to find the Dalai Lama's reincarnation, she persuades him to take her with them. It is the beginning of an extraordinary physical and spiritual adventure as they first locate the newly born child, and then attempt to return to McLeod Ganj without alerting the Chinese. But the occupiers of Tibet know precisely where they are and are as determined to bring Tibetan Buddhism to an end as its adherents are to continue it.