Dharamshala - "Do you see what I see?" Flabbergasted at the sight before her, someone in Delhi confirmed from Tashi, a Tibetan civil servant here, late last night.

"Let me check." He went outside, rubbed his eyes in weariness, and gazed at the bleak, overcast sky.

"No, I don't. Not even a hint of star," he said. After heavy down pour throughout the day, the night was pitch-black.

Dhundup, however, was not alone in this unusual nocturnal foray. Excited phone calls from across India and Tibet, ringed Dharamshala out of its slumber across the night.

According to people from various parts of the country, and also from Tibet, "they sighted the reflection of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the halo of the moon."

The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama also confirmed that an awful lot of such phone calls was received in Dharamshala yesterday.

"However, I can not confirm whether they were true, as I was personally not in those places," Ku-ngo Tenpa Soepa, of the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, told Tibet.Net.

When asked if similar incidents had occurred before, Soepa said, "we have heard of such sightings from inside Tibet, but not in India, at least not that I know of."

The mysterious sightings come close on the heels of a recent spate of rumors on His Holiness being on visit to Tibet, which triggered a massive exodus of Tibetans towards the Ku-bum monastery in Amdo.

(www.tibet.net is the official website of the Central Tibetan Administration of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.)