This article examines the interconnections between parts of the Indian Himalayas and Tibet in the period following the fourteenth Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959. While Buddhism served as a link between communities across newly drawn national boundaries, the networks connecting families in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Tibet were also forged by monastic patronage, colonial education, intermarriage, seasonal migration, and trade. Through a reading of colonial and postcolonial archives studied in Delhi, London, and Gangtok, as well as the private papers of Indian political leaders in the Himalayas, the article shows that, far from blazing a new trail, the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans who followed him into exile followed familiar migration routes and built on relationships forged over centuries. Archives of press and parliamentary debates from the 1950s and 1960s reveal a shared religious history and show how India saw itself as the cradle of the subcontinent's Buddhist heritage, which helped build support for the Dalai Lama and his compatriots.