Strange was invited to the county government.
At the time, he had been celebrating a festival with the residents of Shambhala when the mayor of one of the villages quietly pulled him aside and mysteriously said he wanted Strange to meet someone.
Strange took a different approach from his teacher, The Ancient One. He had never put on airs or acted mysterious, nor did he possess that innate air of authority. The upside was that he could easily mingle with the villagers.
Strange had not really wanted to go, because this village mayor was always trying to introduce him to girlfriends. He had thought the man was tricking him into another blind date. It happened every year. He knew Easterners valued family and clan ties, and the man meant well, so Strange had always brushed it off.
Today was no exception. Knowing the mayor was in high spirits during the holiday and perhaps wanted to drag him off to meet some little girl again, Strange did not want to argue with him and simply followed him out.
Who would have thought that the path would lead them farther and farther away? Before long, they had reached the foot of the Himalayan Mountains.
Then came the inevitable interrogation by three different parties.
The matter of Shambhala's villagers was not so simple. It was not that they had gone uncounted for just one generation; they had vanished from all records five or six hundred years ago.
These few hundred people seemed to have appeared out of thin air. No historical materials that could be checked contained any record of this branch.
In the early days after the founding of the country, when roads and satellite technology were underdeveloped, it might have been understandable for villages deep in the mountains to be overlooked.