To see the excitement of the crowd, and hear the screeching and screaming when they emerged, you would have thought Sachin Tendulkar was in town. Instead, it was half a dozen of Steve Smith's Australians, enjoying a bite to eat in a restaurant in McLeod Ganj, the village in the upper reaches of the Kangra Valley that is home to the Dalai Lama.
Word had got around they were inside and the numbers quickly built to a couple of hundred, the anticipation such that even when a few touring journalists left the same establishment just before the players, they were, briefly, mistaken for members of the Australian contingent. It was a reminder that wherever you go in this country, cricketers are kings no matter if they are Indian or not. 
Australia's first match of the World Twenty20 championship, against New Zealand, was originally scheduled to be something of a curtain-raiser in Dharamsala this week. The titanic India-Pakistan clash was meant to follow on Saturday night but has been moved to Kolkata for security reasons.
For the Australians, though, there is an obvious symbolism in starting their journey beneath the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas.
The mountain Smith's team has set itself to climb is not of the physically treacherous kind, but the path to Eden Gardens, the venue for the final, is littered with potential pitfalls.
Not least is the expected primacy of spin bowling in this tournament, and the challenges of bowling it and facing it. This was demonstrated so emphatically by the Black Caps trio of Mitchell Santner, Nathan McCullum and Ish Sodhi as India, of all teams, floundered against turn and were bowled out for 79 in Nagpur.
The Kiwis left out Trent Boult and Tim Southee to accommodate the spinners and Smith believes Australia must show the same kind of open-mindedness during the next three weeks.
Ashton Agar, having recovered from an illness during which he lost several kilos from his already slender frame, is tipped to play at the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association ground on Friday along with leg-spinner Adam Zampa. The off-spin of Glenn Maxwell is also at Australia's disposal.
That would require not picking either John Hastings or Nathan Coulter-Nile, given Smith's declaration on Thursday that all-rounder James Faulkner has been passed fit after a bout of hamstring tightness.
"We need to be flexible throughout this tournament," Smith said. "We might have been a bit guilty in the past when we've played away from home about not picking perhaps the right teams for those conditions. So here it does look like spin could play quite a big part so that's certainly an option for us.
"It might be playing one side here and in Bangalore [against Bangladesh on Monday] it might be completely different conditions and we might put out a completely different side. So I think this tournament is going to take all 15 of us if we want to get to the end and be successful."
Aside from the temptation to load up on spin, the other major selection dilemma for Australia has been an almost embarrassment of top-order riches. They have partly solved it by moving David Warner to No.4, but whether Aaron Finch or Usman Khawaja opens with Shane Watson has been a point of contention.
This World T20, the last until 2020 as it switches to a four-year cycle instead of two, is certainly not the final frontier for this Australian team. There are Test series to be won in England and India, for starters, but those are for another time.
Right now, there is an opportunity for a unique triple crown. They are one-day world champions and the recently reinstated No.1 on the Test rankings. With this title as well, there would be no argument about Australia's position at the game's summit.