The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 2008. Iyer has known the Dalai Lama for over thirty years — attending teachings, conducting interviews, traveling with the Tibetan government-in-exile — and this book distills those decades of observation into a portrait of a mind rather than a life.
The book avoids hagiography: Iyer presents the Dalai Lama as genuinely wise but also politically frustrated, sometimes naive about geopolitics, and carrying the burden of representing an entire exiled civilization. The central question is how a man maintains equanimity while watching his homeland be systematically destroyed — how Buddhist practice actually works as a technology for living with what cannot be changed.
Iyer is also honest about his own position: a secular intellectual drawn to Buddhism’s practices without accepting its metaphysics. His Dalai Lama is neither the god-king of Tibetan tradition nor the political figurehead of the Free Tibet movement but something more interesting — a mind that has practiced attention and compassion for decades and achieved something measurably different from ordinary human consciousness.
Collecting The Open Road
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2008): Hardcover with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $15–$35
- Very good: $8–$15
Projected values (2026–2036): Modest appreciation.
The Dalai Lama’s Friend
The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (2008) draws on Iyer’s three decades of conversations with the Dalai Lama to produce an intimate, non-hagiographic portrait. Iyer accompanies the Dalai Lama on trips around the world and presents him not as a saint but as a complex, pragmatic, surprisingly funny political and spiritual leader navigating the contradictions of exile, celebrity, and religious authority. The book avoids the reverential tone of most Dalai Lama writing and is the better for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How well does Iyer know the Dalai Lama? They have been in regular conversation since the 1970s. Iyer first interviewed him for Time magazine and has maintained the relationship over decades. This access gives the book an intimacy that no other non-Tibetan writer can match.