Not your usual welcome. The duty manager at New Delhi’s Taj Palace Hotel greets me on arrival. Two sari-clad and bejeweled young ladies are alongside. One paints a small dot, Hindu style, on my forehead to help ‘concentration and clear thinking’. The other wraps a white silk shawl around me which carries symbols of the six Buddhist virtues: Charity, Uprightness, Forbearance, Dispassion, Dauntlessness, and Contemplation.