The Guardian - London - 18 September 1995 by Leslier Plommer

IN ROOM 251 of the Trinidad Hilton, the God-King is kitted out with a clip-on mike and handling it all like the old pro he is. The first thing you learn on the road with the Dalai Lama is that people' never tire of queuing - as they are down the corridor to ask questions of the most mind-numbing daftness and profundity.

"Your Holiness, one question which has to be on the minds of all people on the continent is: what is the meaning of life?"

"Your Holiness, is the suffering of the Tibetan people not due to their own collective karma?"

"Your Holiness, would you mind having your picture taken in front of the banner of our corporate sponsor?"

Nobody is asking "why are you here", nipping round Port of Spain with police outriders in a maroon Audi that matches a Tibetan monk's robes, draping scarves on admirers, signing autographs, planting ceremonial trees, conferring blessings, laughing that deep gravelly laugh, and always beaming, beaming, beaming.

But the answer is simple enough: because no foreign invitation can be sneeeed at, even for three days in Trinidad and Tobago to kick off a meeting on Harmony And Diversity at the conference centre behind the dental school outside Port of Spain.

A minute footnote, yet the Chinese ambassador protested. The conference organisers invited him harmoniously to sod off.

Then, too, the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning, seems happy to see pretty much anyone who drops by. This has been a bumper year: the prime minister of Canada, the presidents of India and Zambia, the patriarch of Ethiopia, and Fidel Castro. Some suspect that Mr Manning whose own nipping about is done in a prime Ministerial Volvo (PM 100), imports them as a distraction from local difficulties.

This probably works, up to a point. People here like to fee Trinidad is on the map, but they have never been much in awe of state trappings. No sooner was the 1982 independence motto spat off the presses - "Together we aspire, together we achieve"than the street wags punctured it with their own motto: "Together we perspire, together we conceive."

This sort of benign insouciance is a good fit with the Dalai Lama, who seems, in his sturdy lace-up shoes and good-hearted ways, a sensible man not over-impressed by professions of piety. "People talk about dirty politics. There can also be dirty religion," he told one group of listeners.

You sometimes catch a shadow of impatience when veneration overload threatens. Ask about this and he says: "Seeking blessings from outsiders is not right Your life is on your own shoulders. Blind faith is not healthy."

But the global trek, with its worshipful hazards, must go on. Keeping it moving are the Dalai Lama's roadies, on this trip a quietly stylish all-male Tibetan retinue of six. There is the worried interpreter in a grey suit, a worried rep from New York in a grey suit, Armani Man Tibet-style in the less worried secretary from Dharamsala HQ in northern India, plus two bodyguards.

Finally, there is that Dalai Lama's batman of 30 years, the monk-in-waiting. He it is who carries the striped brolly, the orange shoulder bag containing who knows what - a change of mustard yellow socks, a packet of Kleenex? - and sometimes the tan attached case.

And then, beaming and bowing, the "Ocean Of Wisdom" jets off again. Strange life, nice man.