There are fashions in worship as in all else. As the world grows smaller and more crowded, so we have fewer Christian anchorites and hermits (or other saintly sorts living down caves or up desert pillars) and fewer monastic vocations. This year, however, there have been reports of a sharp increase in the number of women choosing to become nuns in Britain. Cue inevitable news features speculating on the supposed desire of educated youngsters to retreat from the horrors of the modern world.As its title suggests, The Saffron Road reverses many widely-held assumptions about the women who decide to devote their lives to the religious search. The nuns Christine Toomey meets in this compelling mix of interviews, history and personal memoir are Buddhist and their reach stretches from the Far East