 In New York he met the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, who recommended that he go to the Drepung Gomang Monastery in South India for proper training.While studying at the Drepung Gomang Monastery for 13 years, Erdne Ombadykow was recognized as the current reincarnation (Tulku) of Tilopa, a revered Buddhist saint.After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992, Erdne joined the Dalai Lama on his first visit to Kalmykia, a region whose once-rich Buddhist heritage was destroyed in the 1930s by the dual Soviet policies of collectivization and atheism.