Samyeling, home to Delhi's Tibetan exile community

Just as National Highway No1 begins to wind its way out of New Delhi, hidden in a line of shops and shanties, lies a nondescript red gateway.

Step through it and, as if by magic, you leave the rich local Punjabi chatter, the noisy auto-rickshaws and the broad roads of the great metropolis behind. This is the entrance to Samyeling, a Tibetan settlement in New Delhi's New Aruna Nagar neighbourhood.

The lanes inside Samyeling, no more than a metre wide, are lined with Tibetan restaurants, art shops and travel agencies, while the air is filled with the delicious aromas of Tibetan food. Monks stroll by in their maroon robes, children run around and the shops are abuzz with haggling customers.

They are among Samyeling's 3,000 Tibetan residents, refugees caught in a struggle to earn a living in a foreign land.

"All of us came here, hoping to return to Tibet one day," says Tobden Tsering, 61, who has lived in the colony since it was formed in 1963. "Therefore, we never built houses with bricks and concrete until very recently."

When the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, escaped to India in 1959, around 80,000 Tibetans are estimated to have followed him.

While most settled close to the border in Dharamshala, in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, where the Dalai Lama set up his government in exile, some Tibetans headed south to the capital city of New Delhi, in search of better prospects.