Lhamo Thondup was born on July 6, 1935 in Taktster, a small village in the Amdo region of northeast Tibet. But neither his parents — farmers who grew barley, buckwheat and potatoes — nor his three elder brothers and one elder sister (a younger sister and brother came later) were to discover his true identity until a few years later.

Then, when the little boy was 4, a party of senior Buddhist monks and officials from the distant capital of Lhasa arrived in the village searching for the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama — the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet, whose title means "ocean of wisdom." The party was led by Kewtsang Rinpoche, a respected monk who had chosen to head northeast as that was the direction in which the face of the embalmed 13th Dalai Lama (known as "the Great 13th"), who died on Dec. 17, 1933 was said to have mysteriously pointed.

Apparently, when these strangers visited the Thondup household, little Lhamo ran up to Rinpoche and grabbed the rosary belonging to the previous Dalai Lama that he was wearing around his neck, saying, "It's mine, it's mine!" The little boy also unerringly chose other items that belonged to the previous Dalai Lama from a mixed assortment of artifacts.