After Gurujii’s demise I entered into a long period of
Meh. I took, or was given, a job as a property manager of a 1000-acre mountain
retreat way up in the San Bernardino Mountains, east of Los Angeles. Mountain
climbing and bicycle riding to abandon, I eventually suffered a severe
dislocation of my left hip that left me increasingly debilitated and in pain
for the next 12 years. For 2 years I was not able to travel anywhere except for
occasional trips up to the Sierras. Finally, I was able to get some money
together and take a trip with a friend in 1998 back to the Himalayas, my first
time in about 7 years.
I trekked alone as the friend I
had taken to the mountains with me got his own porter and headed off alone to
the Base Camp. I piddled around and visited with Sherpa friends and eventually
made it up to about 14,000’ altitude before my hip pain became too severe and I
headed back down to Namche, Lukla and Kathmandu. The next year, September, 1999,
I was also able to go Nepal. I took a vacation leave from my manager job and
hoped to take some saleable mountain photos. The monsoon lasted longer than
normal, the mountains were miserable, cold and wet. I never even unpacked the
large panoramic camera I took with me. My hip hurt terribly and I was
noticeably limping. Although yearly three-week vacation trips to Nepal were
great, I looked forward to nothing. I felt tied down and yearned for the open-ended
multi-month trips I used to take, along with all their chaos and uncertainty.
I commissioned an astrologer in Kathmandu
to give me a reading. Surprisingly, he assured me I was in a very fortunate
space and that my life was to be immersed in much travel for the next year.
This seemed crazy as all I looked forward to was returning to my mountain cabin
and caretaking duties for the next year – if not ad infinitum. I soon
embarked on some of the most traumatic, exciting and intense travels and
adventures of my life.
I was
back at the Bearpaw Sanctuary for 10 days before having to jet off to Florida
at the insistence of my Mom's guardian as my Mom was in intensive care with
pneumonia. I spent a quiet week in Florida, visiting the hospital twice a day,
eating organic at the local Wild Oats, and sleeping peacefully at the newly
restored 70-year-old Gulfstream Hotel in Lake Worth.
We arranged my Mom's move to a hospice facility and I
arrived back at Bearpaw. A few days later I was fired and given 3 days to move
out. Allowing myself a full hour to grieve, I then immediately began packing
and moving my almost three years of accumulated stuff down to my friend David’s
basement in Laguna Beach. What was I to do with my life now? I thought about
the astrology reading and all the travel. I got a small severance and reasoned
I might as well travel back to Kathmandu. I booked a seat for the next day and
picked up my ticket in Culver City on the way to the airport. Arriving uneventfully,
I re-checked into Amar’s hotel and was soon sitting in bright sun up on the third-floor
roof garden. Hours later I received an email that my mother had died. Amar and
others questioned if I was going to return to the US. I did nothing, so, on the
next Sunday Amar suggested I go over to the Monkey Temple and light 108 butter
lamps in memory of my mother. I did that and it was quite satisfying. Clearly,
the astrologer’s reading was coming to fruition.
I hung around Kathmandu and then decided I should spend the
Millennium in Varanasi in India so I went down to Indian Airlines and booked a
ticket for the day after Christmas. The
Catch-22’s and other vagaries of international travel struck full force both
personally and collectively as I confronted attempting to get the 400 or so
miles from Kathmandu to Benares. First, was the hijacking of an Indian Airlines
plane which left Kathmandu in the early afternoon for Delhi and ended up in
Khandahar in Afghanistan.
I was at my ayurvedic
doctor Dr. Bon’s last night picking up potions and Dr. Bon said, “Oh, there’s
been a hijacking of an Indian Airlines plane.”
“Oh, my God, I’ll never
get outta here”, I thought. Sure enough, when I got back to my hotel and turned
on CNN it was true. Five thugs got through security fully armed. I called up
Indian Airlines and they offered me a ticket on Royal Nepal to Delhi, then an India
Air flight from Delhi to Varanasi, Benares, the next morning. Mulling over what
to do I realized I’d have to pay a $50 Nepali visa extension if I didn’t leave
so I blitzed on back to Amar’s Hotel and packed and was out of there in 15
minutes with my backpack on my back. I limped out to the main road from Amar’s
and took a cab over to the Indian Airlines office only to find it closed for
lunch for an hour. Angry as Hell with this Catch-22, I went directly to the
airport where the Indian Airlines people wrote me new tickets—the only catches
being that the 6 PM flight to Delhi was full and there were no seats going from
Delhi to Varanasi. So, what was to have been a quiet Xmas day hop of 55 minutes
from Kathmandu to Varanasi turned into a 24-hour travel travail. I looked at
the bright side—I was fortunate to be here at all; I had made the flights AND not
everyone is allowed to visit the Holy City of Varanasi.
I bit into a clump of fresh spices fried in butter at the
bottom of my dish of palak paneer, spinach with fresh cheese, almost making up
for the more than 24 hours of constant traveling it took in order to get here.
‘Here’ is the banks of the Ganges, almost overlooking the famous Manikarnatika
or corpse burning ghat where dead bodies are fried up like my spices, sizzling
in their own fat. I heard upon arriving that all flights have been stopped in
and out of Kathmandu. Flights remained stopped for months afterward, leading to
more adventures when I attempted to return to Kathmandu.
My photo of The Holy City, 1985
Since time immemorial
people have come here to bathe on the banks of the Mother Ganga. Long, long ago
there sprouted up in the hearts of the faithful some edifice of permanence as
evidence of their faith. And so they prayed and prayed and in Heaven God heard
these prayers and He created a city, a most Holy City. And God caused this city
to float down on a cloud and he planted it here on the banks of the river. The
Holy City has been here since then and it will remain here as long as people
think God is in one place more than any other place. Only when we ask God to
forgive us our pilgrimages, when we stop being as fish athirst in the sea, when
we look within and find God there, then God, in His mercy, will take back this
most Holy City and it will float back up to Heaven on a cloud. Carlos, photo caption.
And so, I
am once again, I think for the 6th time, in the Holy city. The old city is as
engaging as ever with its overcrowded narrow streets, slick in many places with
cow dung, Holy cow dung. Whatever dirt and decay is here I don’t see it; I
never have. The God-awful spirituality is so totally engaging. Ordinary people
in the streets who catch my eye exude joy. I’ve had several riveting stares;
one an 8-year-old girl, a 50-year-old man, others.
I had an
insight today that I wish I had had 40 years ago. The weather is super cloudy here
and it’s a bit chilly, it’s not PERFECT, like I think it should be all the
time. I had a vision of a picture perfect Vermont village in March with a cold
wet rain melting the final snow of the year creating mud and I thought, ‘My
God, for the places and the people you love, you have to take it all’. I’ve
always thought it should be perfect all the time. Always sunny on Everest, blue
skies and palm trees, always 85 degrees in Varanasi with perfect sunrises. So,
Varanasi isn’t perfect and perhaps to the degree that it isn’t it has become a
part of me.
27 Dec 99 15:10 My letter to a friend;
Dear Radiant Immortal Soul, Juliejii
The
intermediary between the worlds has alit at the Jai Shive restaurant - ‘Our
Restaurant is little and poor but our Hearts are Big for You’ - for a glass of
spice tea directly overlooking the banks of the Ganges. Somehow, they have
constructed this place on a 6-foot-wide by 70-foot-long terrace attached to the
lower part of my hotel. All the travails of getting here are quickly evaporating
in the seeming Holiness of Varanasi. Most of my desires seem to get satisfied
by my coming here.
After a
night in bedlam, I was able to secure a room at the Alka Hotel, a modest, share
bath place, with a huge terrace 50 feet above the Ganges. From the patio the
Ganges sweeps away in panorama filled with boats. I feel more inspired to keep
writing, as it seems unlikely my followers and subscribers will be able to
travel here. My best friend Michael from London is due here at the 5 star Taj
Ganges Hotel 12/29-12/30. He has the same birthday as you. Same Taurus Sun and
Scorpio Moon. We’ll see if he shows up. The heavy fog here is preventing
landings. My plane just sort of snuck through a 30 minute lifting of the
ceiling to 300 feet.
The old
part of the city here is totally alluring, spiritually; Materially it doesn’t
seem like much. Some of the streets are only 8 feet wide. There are small and
large temples everywhere and grottos filled with Shiva lingams, statues of
Ganesh and God knows what else. After moving to the Alka I meandered down to
the main ghat, Dasasamedh, meaning 10 horse. You can read about it in the
‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ in the Chapter on Babajii. I don’t know how long I
will stay here or where I will go next. Oh, yes. At the ghat I got 2 little
flower boats, banyan leaves stitched with slivers of bamboo, filled with
marigold petals and I topped with a wad of ghee infused cotton with a wick.
After suitable invocations to ‘Ganga Matajii’, I lit the wicks and floated them
off into the ever-pure but quite muddy water. The first was for Michael who in
his last E-mail to me asked me to pray for him. It was in the line right after
he said he was traveling with his Japanese girlfriend. Years ago, early 80’s,
Mike lived with me when I was in spiritual outer space; I mean more than now.
Anyway, I used to ‘fix’ stuff for him. The second boat was for my mother whose
death I found out about when I arrived in Kathmandu on 27 Nov.
Directly
across from my 6-foot-wide restaurant is a 5-foot-wide ledge on which a yogi
has erected a yellow poly tarp tent 12 feet long and I can see a bunch of
people there sitting cross-legged in front of a fire. Down the ghats toward the
main ghat is where I got these aerograms, some bananas and this fountain pen
and to which I will return after sealing this up with the glue in my luggage as
I learned long ago to never lick anything over here for fear of getting deathly
ill.
I saw some
yogis down the ghats doing my favorite thing. They have taken a huge log, 10
feet long by 2 feet in diameter, and they’ve lit a small fire just under an
edge of it. They will huddle around the thing for weeks as it slowly burns,
sleeping curled by it at night.
Regards from Benares.
Love
Carlos
There is
heavy fog today enshrouding the river banks. And in my head also; I am sleeping
as though drugged until 10:30 in the morning despite much noise around my hotel
from, successively through the night, monkey fights, bleating goats, the
Bhagavad Gita sung over loudspeakers, and construction work on my hotel, in
this, the off season. The hotel is full now; God knows what it will be like in
the heavy February, March tourist season.
I have
rearranged my just washed clothes to a patio in direct afternoon sun so they
will dry before nighttime and the heavy fog. Not having clothespins, I have
strung orange nylon tent cord through the legs, crotches and arms of things and
then hung the whole thing over the edge some 35 feet above 3 buffaloes. God
forbid the cord should break or one of my knots get loose.
I’m
starting to get bored. I’ve spent 3 nights here so far, equal to my longest
stay in the past. The evening fog is returning; I can actually see it roll in.
My clothes have not fallen into the clutches of the buffaloes but neither are
they dry. If I could only get out of bed earlier it might be better.
“Gurujii, does
coming here make people Holy, or do the people who come here make the place
Holy?”
“Both.”
30 Dec 99 Incredibly, I have just found out that all the
orange preparations going on at Dasasamedh ghat are for the Dalai Lama! My
hotelier told me he would be here at 5:30 for New Year’s celebration. Recalling my drugged sleeping of these days I
had a sinking feeling I would have to stay up all night to make the sunrise
service. But no! It was to be 5:30 PM, thank God. The minuscule Jai Shive
restaurant has an incredible view of the whole scene. I guess I am in the right
place. I have begun to sink into the community here a bit. I have begun chats
with the disabled Swami living in the yellow polyethylene tent below the Jai
Shive. This morning I scrupulously wrote down the label information from a
tonic the swami fully encouraged me to buy for him in a kilogram quantity.
Anyway, from being a wreck 3 days ago, the swami seems up and about now. 72
years old, the swami is 6 years younger than Gurujii was when I first met him
in 1978. So, 21 years I have been immersed in this craziness.
Sitting in
the swami’s tent is incredibly comfortable. A small fire burns day and night
and throws warmth all over you as you sit with your back to the wall. The tarp
contains the heat and the whole place is cozier than anyplace I’ve been in the
past month including Dibya’s 5 star Everest Hotel in Kathmandu. It is hard for
me to keep my perspective on my participation in this play.
It is just
dusk here at the Jai Shive and looking upstream there are about 100 lighted
prayer boats floating past Dasasamedh coming this way. The line of twinkling
prayers extends for a mile over the water. Oh my God, it looks absolutely
delightful. The first boat is directly opposite and it looks like they are
putting in more a mile upstream. I’ve never seen this before.
The Belgian
woman I had been chatting with earlier and to whom I had given some of my
Nepali herbal dysentery medicine told me her problem of 2 weeks went away 10
minutes after taking the pills. It was as though the taking of the medicine was
the curative act. I told her of the Dalai Lama’s coming and she was frantic to
get a room instead of taking the midnight train to Kajuro where they have all
those erotic statues. She finally decided to take the train and she never did
thank me for the medicine, only told me how effective it was. Most single women
on the road, especially in India, are defiantly independent, usually unable to
be even graciously thankful, as it requires some let up in their defensive
guardedness.
Returning
to my hotel at 7 PM I heard an incredible concert from Dasasamedh ghat. A woman
was singing and there was much tabla music. The music lilted up the ghat to the
balcony of the hotel for a whole hour.
31 Dec 99 The
coming of the millennium appears to have little effect here on the ‘Holy City’.
There is talk of Y2K compliance but it seems more an attempt to affect the
trappings of modernity than anything else. For example, I saw a rice cooker
with a large sticker on it, ‘Y2K Compliant’. What? The coming of the new
millennium would cause it to work backwards or something? Although many
preparations are going on here for the New Year, many are more interested in
the upcoming Shiva festival at the next full moon.
Out of
boredom and somewhat in order to warm up, I took a long meander down mostly
deserted streets of the old city emerging on the Ganges upstream from the
burning ghats by the large mosque. Noting that the swami seemed to be out of
wood, I stopped by the burning ghat and negotiated for a single large mango log
whose seller exasperatedly gave it to me for 9 rupees instead of the 20 he was
demanding. To the same stares that would probably accorded an Indian with a
turban carrying a suitcase on his head in New York city, I carried the log on
my shoulder all the way down to Meer ghat, then up the few stairs to find the
swami sitting in front of a nice fire from wood someone else had brought him.
It is a
relative bitter cold and foggy day here in Varanasi. I rose and bathed early at
6 AM forcing myself to pour a couple of buckets of nice warm water over myself
while the pouring was good.
And so, at
about 5 PM the Dalai Lama and a large throng of spiritual dignitaries came to
Dasasamedh ghat. There was much bowing and touching of feet and some speeches
were given. I left after only 45 minutes as it was all in Hindi, I was cold and
wanted to go order up dinner, which takes 30 minutes or so at the Jai Shive.
The swami called me over as I was ascending the steps to
the Jai Shive so I returned to sit in front of his cheery fire after placing my
order. Soon a tea was passed to me, a very strong tea. The swami has predicted
he will only live another year or two so I immediately pulled my camera out of
my pocket and took a couple of photos of him not worrying that he, like the
other things I’ve photographed over the years disappear from my life. Sitting
in front of the swami’s fire is the most comfortable I have been this whole
trip.
Kerala Baba
Upon
returning to my hotel after dinner the manager, Raju, informed me there would
be a party at midnight with coffee and cake. Knowing my habits, he said,
“Perhaps you will be sleeping. I said, “Oh no. I will come. I will set my
alarm.”
1 Jan 00 Although 2 PM here, the New Years has just past
in Los Angeles. I received 2 E-mails. I was way too lazy to go out to Sarnath
this morning at 10:30 to hear the Dalai Lama give a talk. In fact, I didn’t
even get out of bed until then. I feel like I am entering into some blissful,
vegetative state where the only thing I’m concerned about is what to order for
dinner. This is probably what happened to the British here and why it is so
psychically painful to return to the US. Email does make a revolutionary change
though; I feel connected as there is some kind of mail daily. In the past there
was no way to receive mail unless you could anticipate where you would be 5
weeks ahead.
2 Jan 00 Thank God. My watch has correctly rolled over
from 12-31 to 1-1 as it has every year I’ve had it since finding it in the dirt
in the mountains on one of my long hikes a few days before Christmas about 5
years ago.
“Oh my God.
All these people care about is their religion!” So
said the 6’2” 220-pound German woman following me through the byway I had found
in the old city that went past the Golden Temple complex. It was about 7:30 PM
and hundreds of ordinary people were standing in the marble floored enclaves
along the street. They were chanting, singing, clanging bells, putting flowers
on images, praying, on and on, oblivious to anything else. It’s true, that IS
all they care about. It is not clear to me if not having anything material
forces people into spirituality or if the great spirituality forces out the
materiality. God knows. Anyway, here on the banks of the Ganges, there is a lot
of the one and little of the other with no vice versa about it. This morning I
got out my flashlight to see what time it was when the bells and singing and
chanting over the loud speakers actually started up. 4:18 AM. My God, it IS all
they care about.
I brought
my journal book down riverside in the afternoon sun. This morning my 18-year-old
Internet purveyor assured me I was lucky to have lived into this Millennium as
many old people like myself had expired in 1999
----- A
totally naked sadhu has just passed by with a sheaf of peacock feathers over
his shoulder as his only adornment, not even a wristwatch. About 10 people are
following the Sadhu chanting. -----
The German
girl stopped by to sit with me and we remained riverside until a dark person
came along with a few bags and dumped out a mongoose and offered to stage a
snake and mongoose fight for 50 rupees. We left for the high terraces of the
hotel in order to not encourage him. The snake was a small but very poisonous
krait, I believe.
6 January 00 13:35
It seems I have agreed to fly from Calcutta to Pt. Blair in the Andaman
Islands. After taking Karin and a Japanese couple to the taxi stand so they
could go to the airport I failed to force myself to take a rickshaw over to the
train station and buy myself a 2nd class sleeper ticket to Calcutta. Instead, I
went over to the Golden Temple complex and purchased a pink lotus flower as an
offering at the Kali and Suni temple. This is a nice little 10-foot-wide
spiritual grotto across from the main Golden Temple from which non-Hindus are
excluded. After throwing the lotus into the temple I purchased a small clay oil
lamp and placed it on the floor. Suddenly the pujari, who manages the small
temple, leapt off his settee and grabbed a lovely long marigold garland and
threw it 6 feet through the air lassoing me with the garland and the words,
“Saturday God will solve all problems.” Suni is the god of Saturday.
Immediately upon leaving, I had the thought to purchase a plane ticket for
Calcutta on the Saturday flight in order to stay a bit longer in the Holy City
and to avoid the rigors of the uncertain train ride across half of India with
cancellations, fog-induced delays and train wrecks.
Oh yes,
Karin! We retired to the upper terraces and her strange story began to unfold.
She had gone to a card reader, one Madame Horn in Germany, last November, and
her future had been revealed to her. “You will meet a man in India who is both
a photographer and an astrologer. It will be by the banks of a large river.” Anyway,
she has changed her Calcutta ticket to the 6th of January and we have Jai
Shived, templed, kibitzed and photographed all over the old city and the stone
ghats lining the riverbank for miles. I introduced Karin to Kerala Baba, the
swami in the yellow poly tent and each evening we have gone and sat with him at
his warm fire.
I have
attracted several nicknames of my own here in the city. One boy uptown calls me
‘Gulab Jaman’, after the Indian sweets. I had been eating sweets while walking
past his house and wanted to wash the sugar syrup off my hand so I held my
right hand up to the 10 year old and he ran off and got me a small pot of water
which he poured over it. He has called me ‘Gulab Jaman’ ever since. Another man
calls me ‘Powerman’ as he saw me carry the large mango log all the way down the
ghats to Baba’s. And more than a few people call me ‘Baba’, although I don’t
know why.
In any case
I have sunk back into the state of peaceableness driven out of me by the past 2
years of business with the external world. Since this morning at the Suni
temple my consciousness has been rooted in the middle of my forehead. I see
clearly that a desire to die in Varanasi in order to not have to be reborn
brings me down from a higher state of consciousness in which birth and death do
not exist. Many, 40 or 50 people a day, are dying here in the old city due to
the cold wave. School has been suspended for the next 10 days as the 10-degree C.
temperatures are too much for these dark skinned denizens, many ........
I just
looked up after a refreshing 2 1/2 hours alone and the 6’ 2” Karin is looking
down at me. Her flight to Calcutta was canceled. God’s play continues.
8 Jan 00
14:25 “What more does one need,
but a Mastercard,” said Karin, backpacks on her front and her back, as we
walked once again to the taxi stand so she could go to the airport again. This
morning we took my favorite rickshaw driver, Helicopter, over to the Sahara
Airlines office where they re-wrote Karin a ticket on Indian Airlines to
Calcutta as Sahara has canceled all their flights. After leaving her off, I
left the busy city streets and went back over to the Kali/Sani temple where I
threw a lotus blossom onto the high alter where it miraculously landed upright.
I then lit an oil lamp and placed it on the floor and then I took all the loose
rupees in my pocket and threw them on the floor too. Oblations complete, I
meandered back to my hotel and have returned with my journal to the sunny afternoon
terrace of the Jai Shive for a spice tea. I am pondering how to meet up with
Karin and Gerald, her traveling companion of many years, on the 16th in Pt.
Blair in the Andaman Islands.
22:40 Just now I
have returned from the hotel lobby where I was talking to Karin who called me
from the 5 star Intercontinental Hotel in Delhi! I should explain the travel
schemas of the past week;
1. Karin buys a ticket on 1 January on Sahara Airlines
direct to Calcutta on the 4th where she will meet Gerald.
2. Karin changes her ticket on the 3rd to the 6th so we
can spend more time together.
3. We are told the 4th January flight was canceled.
4. Karin leaves for the airport with a Japanese couple on
the 6th having been assured by Sahara the flight is going.
5. Karin returns to the hotel 2 1/2 hours later, the
flight having been canceled.
6. Sahara says they will fly Karin to Calcutta on the 8th
or give her a ticket on Indian Airlines to Calcutta via Lucknow.
7. Karin and I take an early morning rickshaw ride
through incredible detours caused by ‘last day of Ramadan’ services to Sahara
Airlines where they write her a ticket on Indian Airlines.
8. Karin leaves a 2 PM for the Indian Airlines flight,
completes the leg to Lucknow where she finds the Calcutta leg canceled and
she’s flown to Delhi and put up in the $125 per night Intercontinental.
9. Karin gets into a huge fight with the hotel and the
airline over the 470 rupee taxi fare to the hotel which each says the other is
responsible for.
10. Karin has been told to call Indian Airlines in the
early morning about a flight to Calcutta. I tell her to just show up at the
airport and they will put her on the first available flight, which happens.
9 Jan 00 Numerologically, a Mars day. On impulse, I
purchase a ticket to Calcutta this morning for the afternoon flight and am now
in the waiting room in Lucknow. Although I do not look forward to landing in
Calcutta for the first time at night never having been there before, I do have
the one emollient for travel problems, a 1 1/2” thick wad of 100 rupee notes,
about 8000 rupees total, in a granola bag with a rubber band around them, in my
pocket.
10 January 2000
17:15 - Peace has descended here at the Tourist Inn, room #9 on Sudder
Street in the heart of Calcutta. Yes, I did see Karin off in Varanasi, and,
yes, I did impulsively purchase a ticket here yesterday, arriving at 11 PM,
and, yes, as I was leaving the Tourist Inn with no one remembering a tall
German woman, a foreigner said, “Oh yes, she is in the back room with another
fellow.” The door opened to squeals after I said “Jai Shive, Jai Shive” outside
the door about 3 times.
The Tourist
Inn falls in the first category of places to stay in the Lonely Planet
guidebook, Basic. We may actually be one slight step below that as we have only
2 beds and 3 people. When I finally arose this morning, Karin had
accommodatingly rearranged herself each time she returned to bed from throwing
up all night, by switching so we were head to foot and, therefore, had plenty
of room and she wouldn’t get any vomit on me. Room, as the weather, is relative
here. I meandered into an expensive fruit market here and with the street
temperature 75 degrees or so and they had the heat on and several people
commented in my presence about the cold, 85 degree days, 50 degree nights.
Karin said she was unable to sleep due
to my and Gerald’s “snorkeling” and demonstrated her technique of pinching my
nostrils and pushing up on my chin to close my mouth. Gerald recollected being
simply jostled in bed and yelled at and vowed aloud, not for the first time in
their travels together, to get his own room, ‘next time’. For right now though
two of them are happy to be out globetrotting together again and have brought
each other special treats to be shared over the next weeks; liverwurst in cat
food sized cans, eaten with raw onions, individually wrapped slices of
pumpernickel bread, cans of mackerel. YUCK. The main comment to my pointing out
that the first two ingredients in the ‘healthy and low fat’ calves liverwurst
were pork and pork liver, from the perennially ‘wanting to lose 10 Kgs.’ Karin
were that I was a typical Jungfrau, Virgo. Hey, schweinfleisch is
schweinfleisch. YUCK.
We are to
arise at 3 AM and fly at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning for the Andaman Islands. God
knows. Karin has gone off to lecture at the local chapter of the Goethe
Foundation and Gerald has meandered off to eat, leaving me here to guard the
accommodations, basic though they may be.
12 January 2000 12:30
I suppose I shouldn’t have simply turned my underwear inside out and put
it back on again after finding the blotchy bites in my crotch and the two dark
black mites who caused them. I couldn’t help it. I had a fever and felt
terrible. The din of the street below and the bad condition of my accommodations
had worn me down. My brain kicked in and I took one of my magical herbal
dysentery tablets and went back to lying in bed where I remained until 3 AM
when we all arose for the rigors of flying to Pt. Blair in the Andaman Islands.
The plane left 5 hours late at 10:30 allowing me time to complete my recovery
in the airport lying on the cool marble floor outside the 5 star Oberei
restaurant.
At this
moment I am sitting in the shade of a palm tree at water’s edge of a very nice
1/2 mile crescent shaped beach. My intrepid companions along with the
additional German, Astrid, who we have attracted to our group while waiting at
the airport, are lounging about in the sand, and I am doing my best to restrain
myself when ‘they all’ comment on how nice it is, from saying, “Laguna Beach, Laguna Beach.” If only we could drink fresh coconut
milk right from the shell and eat short, thick tree ripened bananas for 25
rupees in Laguna Beach.
I have
sagely deputed the touring duties to my companions who are travel wise and well
read. From what I have overheard of the increasingly Germanic conversations, we
are to leave tomorrow for a secluded beach somewhere where we can find
inexpensive accommodations. This is the stuff of dreamers everywhere.
Increasingly sanguine about life, and us, it’s conduits, I fall back on
Gurujii’s truism, “There is good and bad everywhere.” I am without comment or
note, studying carefully the travel gear of my companions all of whom are
making multi-month journeys with carry-on luggage only. Shower gel, 6 to 8 foot
long pieces of cotton for use as bed covers, sarongs, shower wear, etc..
Ah, the
conundrums of India. Karin, Astrid and I walked down to the Beachfront
Restaurant, noted in the guidebook as being quite good. The waiter asked if we
would like coconuts to drink and I had the foresight to ask how much, and
Astrid was able to bargain them down to 10 rupees each, double the price up in
town. When the girls went to order the prawns, which they had thought about for
some time before we even walked over to the restaurant, they were unavailable.
While they processed their deflation at that, I found out my vegetable fried
noodles were also unavailable. Then we were told everything except toast,
butter, jam and egg and cheese sandwiches were unavailable. I refused to eat;
the girls ordered. Astrid was furious there was no jam but was told by the
waiter he had only found it out when he had gone to bring the toast. We were
told everything would be available at 3 PM when the cook returned. I extricated
myself from what I expected to be a dicey battle over the bill by giving the
waiter 10 rupees for my coconut. Sure enough, Astrid refused to pay 30 rupees
on her bill because there was no jam and produced 25 rupees and was adamant at
not paying more. The waiter said he had attempted to compensate by giving her
more butter and Astrid countered that he had given her too much butter, by far.
The waiter said he could not reduce the price as the bill, and its duplicate,
had already been made out. Undeterred, Astrid refused to pay more, the waiter
finally admitted that he had brought the coconuts from home and would,
therefore, forfeit the 5 rupees to save face, as much as possible, from these
two Germanic Caucasian women, and lastly said the water to the restaurant had
been shut off and was to be restored at 3 PM at which time the cook, who had
gone home to his village, would return. So, at last. The real explanation.
India!
The beach
here in Pt. Blair is very nice. Quiet, water is pee warm, a phrase that my
explaining to the Germans, brought much mirth. We are savoring going off this
evening to a highly regarded Chinese restaurant at 4 PM when the taxi returns
to pick us up. I told everyone to meditate on prawns and there would be prawns.
Astrid is starved as she had to spend 48 hours on the 2nd class train from Rishikesh,
near the source of the Ganges, to Calcutta with nothing to eat except peanuts
and tea hurriedly brought through the cars by occasional hawkers at major
stations. Sometimes people will even cook right on the compartment floor of the
trains bringing small kerosene stoves, pots, etc. out of their voluminous
luggages and of course, offering you, the foreigner, some—however, this didn’t
happen on Astrid’s 2 day ordeal.
14 January 2000
15:00 Things are beginning to
fade away here. I am at this very moment in the shade of a large coconut palm
oceanside at the beach. A small group of cows is nearby, a few dogs, my
intrepid German companions and among others, a few Indian women bathing in
their full saris. I am re-recollecting that for me there is no more ‘back’ and
‘away’ as there definitely is for my well-traveled German companions. One of
the consequences of that is that I am not waiting for some seemingly better
time or place to do yoga; I do it every day, finishing with a headstand on the
bed leaning against the wall.
We are
setting off tomorrow for Havelock Island on the 6 AM ferry. Havelock is a 100
square kilometer paradise about 57 kilometers from here and from Havelock it is
possible to get small boats to even more exotic and remote small islands.
Anyway, we have the wherewithal to be away for at least two weeks. We are
already quite tropicalized here in town, going every morning to a small tea and
coconut shop. The husband and wife owners pull out all their little stools for
us, shooing away any locals. They then take a machete and lop a coconut from a
long stalk sitting in the sidewalk, cut off one end of the coconut and put a
straw in the hole. They then hand coconuts to all of us, in turn, and we chat,
as over morning coffee. Once the milk has been drunk, we hand the shell, with
green husk on it, back, they split the shell into 2 or 3 sections and cut a
small tablespoon shaped piece of green husk to use as a scoop. We then scoop
out the gelatinous white pulp of the immature coconut and eat it, like the oysters
were eaten in the movie ‘Tom Jones’. A few coconuts, tea and a few bananas is
breakfast although today I bought something looking like a doughnut ball from a
sidewalk vendor and ate that too.
And this
evening we are heading off once again to the “Chinese Room”. The food is
fabulous with the Burmese owner having invented a spicy nouveau Chinese and
Asian cuisine that is superb. The simple mixed vegetables I had was the best
cooked vegetables I have ever had.
I have some
worries about malaria here so we are headed off to purchase mosquito nets upon
leaving the beach. Karin and Gerald are prophylactically taking some kind of
anti-malarial medications and Astrid, who ran into 2 German physicians doing
malaria research, is taking nothing although she has something to take if you
get malaria. So far, I have nothing but an anti-mosquito cream I purchased and
I will get a mosquito net. I hope to not have to test the anti-malarial
qualities of my magical, cure-all herbal dysentery medicine.
Today is
Gurujii’s birthday and I’m sure there is a big celebration at the ashram. I was
just not able to face to rigors and the cold of staying there for a month where
I am now recollecting a mosquito net was required every night. I remember now
being obsessed with how the occasional mosquito had gotten in and would be
carefully inspecting the large net with my flashlight in the middle of the
night. Anyway, I am here and they are there.
15 January 2000
06:47 We have embarked from Pt.
Blair to Havelock Island on what would more normally be considered a condemned
vessel, a solid but rusty Indian ferry. The Divine economy has loaded us with
several hundred people, and a variety of goods from paint to live chickens
handed over the railing upside down with their legs all banded together with
jute twine. The ship is so crowded I can find no place to do the headstand and
I looked like I was totally seasick while doing the stomach exercise.
17 January 2000
16:00 We arrived in a seaside jungle
paradise. With difficulty, we have found places to sleep, first in a loaner
tent and now in a small jungle hut set about 3 feet off the ground on pilings.
200 rupees per day for 2 persons, $2.25 each. We have all been drinking
coconuts morning noon and night and do nothing much else but swim, sleep and
plan the next meal. Astrid and Karin are in a lovely cottage @1500 rupees per
day and are attempting to get another 200 rupee hut when one becomes available.
I’m not convinced they really will be able to bring themselves to move from
their 20 foot thatched ceiling hut with full electricity and attached bathroom.
Gerald and I are, on the other hand, moving up from sleeping on the tent floor.
The food
here is fabulous but simple. Loads of fresh fruit, bananas, papayas, coconuts,
tea, coffee. The jungle is incredible with 100-foot-tall mangroves, exotic
birds, a turquoise sea and perfect weather with jungle right to the water’s
edge for shade.
Happily, no
one has died of snakebite on Havelock Island in 3 years; less happily, the
population here is only 3000. I purposely tuned out a long, late night
discussion about snakes snatching only a few lines such as, ”10 seconds after
he was bitten his friend cut off his leg at the knee with a machete otherwise,
he would have died surely.” There are several Viper Islands in the archipelago
and it could go on and on. Karin and I have a brand new mosquito net under
which we are sleeping together for the first time after 4 days of sleeping in
tents, sharing huts with others and switching around. Now Karin and I are
together and Astrid and Gerald each have their own huts.
We are
literally camping in the jungle with the sound of the waves crashing on the
beach. The birds here are fantastic. The sounds range from low, far off diesel clump
clumps through a full cacophonic gamut to nearby
shrill anal rapes. I could describe the paradise here in more detail but it
would be fruitless. Those who will come will come, and those who won’t, won’t.
Karin’s and my sarongs are hanging from the split bamboo horizontal near the
roof, allowing the idea of privacy. The large green coconut from which I drank
the milk and then filled with fresh flowers sits in front of our two mattresses
on the 2 foot wide space, a candle is burning in a clamshell with 3 inch long
toothy serrations, a sandalwood incense is burning, stuck into the coconut husk
and I am getting an incredible backrub from Karin, a 20 year student and
practitioner of all kinds of body work.
A jungley
languor has set in amongst our group. No one has the energy to even walk out
the 500 meters to the road to our favorite little family run restaurant, so I
breakfasted today at the lodge here on a banana pancake cooked over a wood
fire. Perfect. A very interesting couple from Carmel, California has fallen
into our Laguna Beach/German melange and some 3 to 6 of us can be found
together at one time or another all day long. Just today, Frank, Karin and I
have concluded a long, rambling 3 1/2 hour chat ending only when Frank went off
to put anti-itch cream on his bites which have mysteriously erupted on everyone
but myself. The origin of these bites is still unknown and much speculation is
going on that it is caused by sand fleas, bed bugs or mosquitoes. Gerald has
hypothesized that standing on my head has changed my aura in some way that the
mosquitoes become disoriented when they approach me and so they fly off to
someone else. I have attempted, in my own subtly controlling way, to suggest
that my taking B vitamins every day is what is saving me. God knows. Karin and
I are waiting until 2 PM before walking off about a kilometer through the
jungle to a lovely small cove, as the sun is too hot midday. Yesterday we also
waited until 2 PM before beaching and I was able to do some very good body
surfing, catching 100 meter rides.
I have
reminded everyone that we have only 4 more days here before we must leave for
Pt. Blair where we will attempt to change our plane tickets so we can come back
here and stay longer here or on another island. Karin also wants to go back to
Varanasi having been totally enthralled with the remembered romanticity of the
Holy City and all that happened. I suggested to Karin just now that we possibly
invite Frank and Barbara, the Carmelites, to go to Varanasi with us as they
have never been there. I have the feeling I will be seeing Frank and Barbara
again as we seem to have much in common.
22 Jan 00
15:15 Our days in Paradise are
drawing to a close. Although it is Saturday today, we are to leave here on the
ferry next Tuesday for Pt. Blair where the current plan is to change our plane
tickets so we can spend more time here in Andaman. Tentatively, we are to go
off to Haut Bay, an outlying place, and camp out seaside.
23 Jan 00 12:45
Peace has descended at the Jungle Resort as Astrid and Karin have gone
off on the ferry to Pt. Blair to rearrange all of our air tickets. I came to
the breakfast table directly from doing yoga and apparently participated in the
part of the conversation amongst the 3 Germans that was in English. After
finishing eating the two girls reminded me they were leaving in only a few
hours today for the ferry and I said, “Oh, I had no idea you were leaving
today.” “Carlos, we just told you that a half hour ago and you thought it was a
good idea!” Ah, such is the value of yoga and the headstand - bhairag,
dispassion and disinterestedness in the cares and the affairs of the world.
Gurujii’s
suggestion was to not talk at all for at least an hour after doing the
headstand but that seems impossible in the West unless I am quite alone as when
camping. Anyway, Gerald and I will have at least 2 days of peaceableness here
until the girls return on Tuesday. Although they have some business to perform
what with re-booking tickets and changing money, the ferry rides are quite
pleasant, traveling through the tropical seas at 10 knots or so. The fare – 8 1/2
rupees for the lower deck, about 20 cents, vegetable dinners at the jungle
lodge, 60 rupees, about $1.50, two person huts, 200 rupees per day, about $5.
Karin and I brought our own mosquito net and feel quite secure from any and all
creepy-crawlies. Last night there was apparently a heavy jungle rain that
everyone commented on at breakfast but I heard nothing. Karin, a Pisces and a
light sleeper, was awake for hours watching it. I never heard a thing.
Our new
schedule is to remain here in the jungle until about the ‘twoth of February’,
then embark for Pt. Blair on the ferry, fly to Calcutta, then Karin and I will
entrain for Varanasi where she will spend some 4 or 5 days before she flies off
to Delhi to catch her 3 AM, 9 Feb. flight back to Frankfurt and then go to work
on 10 Feb. And I? I have no idea. I suppose I will wend my way back to
Kathmandu, hopefully by air, although Indian Airlines has continued to suspend
all their flights to Nepal following the 24 Dec. hijacking. Otherwise, I will
be forced to take the bus, an arduous 2 day journey with an overnight in a
decrepit guest house. Thankfully, I have loads of time and no pressures to be
anywhere or do anything, which is the only real way to travel in Asia,
especially India, with its many vicissitudes, imponderables, impossibles, and
Catch-22’s.
As far as I
can see I am the only person who actually practices anything every day. Just
about everyone here in the group has probably been someplace spiritual but no
one does anything on their own. I have achieved some minor fame here by being
videotaped by an underwater film crew who spotted me as they were walking
across the sand to their dive boat. They shot a clip of me upside down,
thankfully in the correct posture, with my pomegranate colored shorts on. We
all watched that night when they replayed the DVD from the camera into the
large screen TV in the dining room.
One of my
main jobs in the next two days will be to guard our huts that took 4 days to
acquire. Three Italian boys on rented motorbikes came here looking for space
and were turned away. Astrid, alone in her hut, has her ‘stuff’ spread out all
around and Karin and my hut is immediately adjacent so we should be safe. When
we arrived, there was no space but we refused to leave and after 2 hours we
were offered a 2 man tent by another camper and even at 9 PM still had no
accommodations for 2 of us until a 2nd tent materialized. The 2 girls then
moved into the cottage for 2 days, Gerald and I slept in the one good tent and
then we all inherited huts as people left.
24 Jan 00
12:40 I’ve just now recovered
from lying in the front of my hut with my head on my bag listening to the
jungle birds. Gerald and I meandered out to the road today and ate our normal
coconut, banana and pancake breakfast. My companions who, in toto, have been
everywhere have passed the following additional travel hints to me. Everywhere!
I mean Ulan Bator, Namibia, the Trans-Siberian railway, Laos, Chile, et al.
Anyway;
- mylar reflective space blanket, anti-bacterial
tincture, cortisone cream, Benedryl anti-histamine, Wet-Ones, disinfecting wet
hand towels.
With Astrid
and Karin gone it is quite quiet today. I am sitting mid-day in the huge jungle
hut that is the restaurant here at the Jungle Lodge.
There is almost nothing to do here in the jungle except
plan where to have the next meal. If we had more control over what we were to
eat we could devote more time to that, but the only real decision is whether to
have fish with your vegetables or not.
The rain of
two days ago created a perfect tropical day today with temperatures in the mid
80’s, a nice breeze, the surf pounding on the sand 200 meters away, not a cloud
in the sky and the neighboring islands clearly visible across the sound from
the perfect beach.
27 Jan 00
17:45 We have become like
survivors of a shipwreck, sitting around doing little or nothing, going from
meal to meal, somedays never leaving the lovely high ceilinged straw hut dining
room. The biggest event of the past several days has been my being attacked by
some invisible sand flies that caused 2 days of severe eruptions with
incredible itching. We are today with only 2 days left here. Although it would
seem easy to stay another month meandering from restaurant to restaurant,
eating coconuts and now, giving sage advice to newbies on whether a hut is
available, the sand flies, where to eat and where, on the 5 kilometers of
perfect beach, to swim.
I don’t
look forward to Karin and my upcoming 2 days of travel to Varanasi.
Successively, we leave here at noon Sunday for the 1 PM boat to Pt. Blair, 2
overnights then a flight to Calcutta at 8 AM, a full day hanging out in
Calcutta, then the 12 hour night train from Howrah, the busiest train station
in India, arriving in Varanasi at 10 AM. Hopefully, the spring season will have
begun in Varanasi with clear sunny mornings, red sunrises on the ghats, perfect
weather, romantic meals at the Jai Shive restaurant and in every way perfect
days and evenings. A citified mirage as enchanting as those we had before
coming here to the Jungle Lodge.
God knows
what I will do after Karin leaves Varanasi. Just this minute an Australian
couple and an American are talking about the Englishman who saw a cobra in the
corner by our hut a few days ago. Unfortunately, we have a mouse living in the
roof thatch of our hut that is the one thing that might attract a snake. God
knows. It will be nice to leave here. The humidity today is 95%, both Karin and
Barbara got stings this morning while swimming, the bugs, etc.. Jungley
malaise.
The days have dawned perfect here in the jungle. Only
today and tomorrow before leaving for the busyness and noise of civilization.
Just taking a Jeep ride to the Post Office yesterday was busy. A lovely
elephant at the jetty near the Post Office was pushing huge logs into the water
where they were being floated out and tied with vines into huge rafts. In
addition to the problems of travel in India, Karin has become quite cool toward
me, a change in mood. The conversation has turned Germanic, private.
Somewhat
strangely, it seems to me, Frank, the Carmelite, has just this morning recalled
that he is a Yalie. Perhaps I tell all too soon but it seems like a long time
to say this when we have been together every day for the past two weeks. Frank
and Barbara are leaving on the same boat as us back to Port Blair and also the
same flight back to Calcutta where Barbara needs to check her flight attendant
work schedule. Hopefully, Indian Airlines will have completed trying to punish
Nepal with their flight cancellations and I will be able to fly back to
Kathmandu from Varanasi with the ticket I have. Then, God knows.
It is too
hot to do anything here in the jungle. I’m afraid to go to the beach due to the
sand flies and their horrendous bites, I’m getting bored, Karin seems quite
cool, or kalt, as she accuses all
Virgo’s, or Jungfraus of being. I’ve written only 3 postcards from here which
the postmaster at the jetty said would not leave the island until tomorrow.
‘Tamator swoop’ on the menu tonight for dinner
29 Jan 00
15:30 Azure skies, turquoise
water, lapis seas, 6 foot waves, perfect sand shaded by 80 foot tall mangrove
trees, our last day here we wisely spent at the beach. I have paid all of our
bills, not including tonight’s dinner and the numerous accompanying teas, hot
lemons, Coca-Colas, etc.. Ah, the total? $100 US was 12 rupees short of paying
for Karin’s and my hut and 80% of the food we have had for the past 10 or 11
days. I suspect it’s perfect to leave now as we’d all like to stay longer. No wonder
the government requires special permits of 30 day maximum duration as it would
be easy to just sink in here. This island still has few inhabitants, unlike
Bali, and so it seems extremely peaceful here. The difficulty of traveling here
and the limited accommodations have so far protected the place. Were the island
mine I would do a master plan now reserving large portions as a jungle
preserve. All will be well until the ferry reaches Pt. Blair tomorrow and we
confront the din of civilization. It will be overwhelming compared to the
constant sound of surf and wild birds. The late afternoon appears to be heading
toward a perfect sunset, once again.
31 Jan 00 20:41
Packing up everything and Karin is enviously trying not to look over and see
how much - not if - room I have in my immense trekking backpack. All of my
stuff fits in it with room to spare and I haven’t even expanded the top. All of
us well traveled ones are anal about what; how little; what special little;
things we carry and how few and how special bags we have for carrying it all
in. Gerald and Karin probably hold the record as not only do they travel for
months with carry-on only but even at the end of a trip they are still
producing tins of mackerel and clean tee shirts from the bottom interstices of
their two bags.
Anyway,
early tomorrow morning we set off for the airport for the flight to Calcutta.
1 Feb 00
20:00 I am at this very moment
lying with my knees up against the ceiling of the upper bunk of a 2nd class
sleeper car bound for Varanasi, some 675 kilometers away. Our scheduled
departure time is 20:15 and we are to arrive at 10 something tomorrow morning.
In years past I was able to sleep the night through on overnight trains from
Delhi to Allahabad and Lucknow, becoming adept at using the showers and other
facilities of the immense train stations of India. I have never before been in
Howrah, the 56 track behemoth, the mother of all train stations. It was, in
fact, immensely refreshing to sit on the outside roof of the upper-class waiting
room in the gentle night breezes of the end of winter with the hum of life at
full tilt taking place 30 feet below. 200 taxi cabs lined up, tea shops and
fast food sellers of all kinds lining the streets, people going to and fro
everywhere, and luggage wallahs bemusedly approaching me and Karin then veering
away from the crazy foreigners carrying their own luggage. Karin is maybe 6’ 2”
and has backpacks slung on her front and rear. Totally imposing and obviously
independent and not only not in need of any help from anyone but ready to help
YOU if need be. German! And her gimpy companion is carrying a 3 1/2 foot high
trekking pack that sticks maybe 6” above his head and looking double its 19
kilograms as measured on the scales at the Pt. Blair airport this morning .We
are led directly to our railcar by a fellow who left his duties behind the
Information counter at the station. Amazingly, after being led through a maze
of platforms, then being guided to coach 7 by a seller of bananas on the
platform, a train pulled in and glued to the outside was a printout of about 70
names with berth numbers and, miraculously, we found our names. The man led us
directly to our berths and began to say, “Are you happy with my service.....”.
I stopped him from going any further by handing him 50 rupees and he left
immediately. At 20:16, by my watch, the train began moving. The clacks and
thumps that are to continue abated only by intervening stations have begun. Our
fellow passengers are talking in Bengali and I am happy I do not have
claustrophobia. Fair well for now dear diary.
5 Feb 00
21:15 It is difficult to
apprehend, much less write down the adventures with which I am being assaulted.
The 16 hour train ride from Calcutta ended at the huge Varanasi train station
whereupon Karin and I embarked by rickshaw to Dasasamedh, the main ghat. I
selected an older, obviously experienced rickshaw driver who demanded 20 rupees
and refused to bargain. Karin and I piled our 3 backpacks then ourselves into
the back and off we went, all 200 kg. of us. We arrived at the sanctuary of the
Alka Hotel and in the past 2 or 3 days have re-woven ourselves into the fabric
of the city.
Yesterday
as Karin and I were rickshawing our way to the Indian Airlines office we were
stopped by my old friend Ghissu, a Muslim silk weaver. Although I haven’t seen
him in 10 years I recognized him immediately. Karin and I were not able to pry
ourselves away from his shop until 7 PM after 4 hours of looking at the finest
silk on the planet. Today, after interminable mulling over, the owner of the
Jai Shive Restaurant has purchased a pressure cooker with money I gave him and
the pot was inaugurated with kitchery, a mixture of mung dhal, buckwheat,
vegetables and spices. With a few adjustments, this will be my daily meal until
I leave the city. The owner of the restaurant is effusively grateful for the
pot which seems a necessity for a 1 burner restaurant.
Many, many
other things have happened. About a million people came this morning to bathe
in the Ganges. Emmanuella, the lovely wife of a French photojournalist I met,
was chased by a naked man on the ghats. Astutely, she ran back to her hotel,
grabbed the hotel owner and her husband and went back where they found not only
the miscreant’s clothes but also his ID! The intrepid threesome, led by the
Brahmin hotelier, marched to the naked man’s home. To shorten the saga, the man
has not been seen for 2 days, they kept the clothes and his ID and have vowed
to his family that they will arrest him. Erik, the photojournalist, has, after
3 straight weeks of wrangling, gotten written police and magistrate permission
to photograph the burning ghats and corpses. In his wanderings among the
corpses he has met the Tantric sadhus who perform flesh eating of corpses,
drinking whiskey from skulls and other seeming defilements. Emmanuella, I
think, correctly categorized these doings as “they are totally alcoholique.”
7 Feb 00 13:00 Astrid didn’t understand my meaning when I
said, “Everyone is changing rooms today,” as we gave our final ‘Namastes’ with
pressed palms to the extremely hot fire on which the body of our hotel owner
was sizzling. She had this morning given up her 750 rupee room for a nice 400
rupee double. The owner of the Jai Shive had come up to us at the breakfast
table to tell us of the death. Karin and I sensed a strange quiet as we headed
out the door this morning and the ever-present manager, Raju, was missing. It
feels as though the extraordinary has become commonplace here in India.
A few run on sentences—I was not aware that the dressing
wallah at the ‘Minor Operations Theatre’ of Heritage Hospital in Varanasi was
turning on the fan and closing the door tightly so my screams of pain would not
be heard by other waiting patients as he pressed out the pus and congealed
blood from the infected spider bite in my left foot from 3 weeks ago in Andaman
[And to run on some more] as Karin
bolted toward the door and the toilet with vomit spewing from between her
fingers pressed over her mouth.
When our cab driver said, “Hindi samjuna, ” meaning, ‘he
knows Hindi’, the woman leper immediately removed the grotesque grimace from
her face and smiled as she withdrew her disgusting arms holding a baby from in
front of my face through the open back window of my cab just as Karin and I
were to leave for the Howrah train station in Calcutta.
I had to force myself to see that God had, in fact,
answered my prayer to not defecate in my bed when I felt the warm diarrhea in
the liner of my Patagonia shorts but quickly saw that it had not leaked through
the nylon outershell to my bedcover.
It was not clear to me if the dressing attendant was
trying to improve his pronunciation or mocking me when he repeated “Shit?” or
“Fuck?” immediately after I yelled them out as he squeezed the infected bug
bite in my foot.
The elephant ever so gently lifted its hind leg and
cocked its head so as to look directly down at Karin who had fallen while
stepping on the elephant’s head 12 feet down into a pile of old cans which
produced 50 or so cuts all over her body requiring the excruciating application
of tincture of iodine to each one.
And today’s
bananas are my 9 AM phone call from Karin due to be in Frankfurt at this time.
She was instead again calling me from an 800 square foot suite in the 5 star Intercontinental
Hotel in Delhi. Her Lufthansa flight had been canceled and so she had been
relegated to this palace. She said the best thing was the very nice and large
bathroom which she was using frequently as her dysentery had returned. She also
has a 3-meter-long bed to sleep in, about 10 feet.
And my
breakfast this morning? I awakened Bolu, the cook at the Jai Shive, at 10:15 to
order the usual except that I want a bit extra to recover from my latest
dysentery attack.
“And 1 butter toast, jam, no honey.” I say.
He says, “butter toast, butter, cheese, honey.” Not
wanting to waste any time on WHY the cheese I say OK. 10 minutes later the
owner of the Jai Shive comes to my table. “You ordered toast with butter, honey
and cheese?”
“Yes, Bolu suggested it.”
“Cheese is not a good combination with this.”
“I know,” I reply, “I only want butter and honey”, not
revealing that I really wanted jam.
“OK, I will tell them.” 5 minutes later the OTHER cook
arrives at my table with my toast with honey and cheese, no butter. I try not
to think about it.
I have to
go to the CID, the Civil Investigation Department, sort of equivalent to our
FBI, for a visa extension. As I go to pay for breakfast, I tell the owner I had
porridge, coffee and toast butter honey, so the matter would be dropped and he
wouldn’t know about the cheese screw up. Bolu, however, standing dutifully
nearby, corrects me, “Toast, butter, honey, Cheese!” so I will pay the 2 rupees
extra for the cheese. The owner frowns, talks to Bolu rapidly in Hindi and
charges me only 50 rupees total instead of 50 something. I pay the 50 and leave
without leaving my normal 10 rupee, 20 cent, tip. The world re-adjusts itself
in the 30 seconds it takes me to ascend the 10 or so stairs to my hotel entrance.
12 Feb 00
Inauspiciously arising at 11:30 AM, the day has nevertheless progressed
satisfactorily. Astrid banged on my door at around 10:30 announcing her
departure for Delhi. She seems to be chasing the part of her friend Peter that
would be first consumed by the fires of cremation. I returned from the Jai
Shive only just before 1 PM and Raju notified me that Karin had called leaving
a number in Germany and that she had become very sick on the plane ride home,
had lost 11 kg of fluids and was contemplating going to the special Tropical
Disease Institute in Hamburg, 400 km. from her home and at which she has
previously been a patient. I called her and she wanly answered from her home, a
42 square meter pigeon coop she keeps in Wiesbaden.
12 Feb 00
17:55 I’ve taken to eating on the
streets here which I like to do everywhere actually to get authentic food.
Anyway, I’ve found this 6 foot wide stall restaurant that’s always mobbed with
locals who take their food across the 8 foot wide street and sit or lean on a
rock ledge. So far all I’ve eaten is idly, a steamed lentil dumpling with
sambar, a hot spicy soup, and some chutney, and a second dish - a delightfully
light cake-like thing - squashed a bit at the time of serving and covered
liberally with a sweet yogurt sauce and sprinkled with some kind of black salt.
All of this is terrifically good, very cheap at 14 rupees for both dishes,
about 32 cents. It is for reasons such as this I have so rapidly gained back my
weight from the 24 hour bout of dysentery and explains why so many Indians are
so fat.
The puja is maxing and about 300 little prayer boats are
headed down our way. Incredibly engaging. Leaves about 6 inches in diameter are
stitched with slivers of bamboo into small boats and a piece of cotton soaked
with paraffin oil is placed in the bottom with a twirled top wick that is lit.
Marigold petals fill the rest of the boat and it is set afloat where it drifts
slowly downstream. When hundreds are let loose the entire river twinkles.
14 Feb 00 13:10
The day has bloomed moderately inauspicious as I have had a slight case of
loose bowels requiring only one prayer in the night to not defecate in my bed.
This is actually a good thing as I can feel the weight, well, peel is not quite
the right word, but something, off of me. Of slight more concern is my
rickshawing over to the Foreigner’s Registration Office and then not yet having
been granted my visa extension. ‘Manana’ they say. And Dr. Sasya, the photo
editor at Pilgrims Publishers has not yet looked at my web site to access the
suitability of my photographs for postcards.
15 Feb 00
10:45 Just getting going here
today. Once again, I will, for the 5th time, rickshaw over to the foreigner’s
Registration Office and attempt to get my passport back with a 30 day visa
extension stamp on it. God knows. Just now my pot of coffee has arrived. Too
late, I have finally discovered how to get the beginnings of decent coffee
here. Order strong coffee, that is, with lots of Nescafe, and then add to that
one of Karin’s packets of powdered cappuccino mix from Germany.
‘Helicopter’, my old rickshaw driver has re-surfaced. He
must be a 7 also. He’s a flake. I haven’t seen him for 2 weeks. He said he took
‘a couple of days off’ as he didn’t feel well. That’s like me. “Oh, I took 17
years off because I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to work.”
The only
other disturbance in the back of my brain is Madame Horn, the card reader’s
prediction, from her reading from last November of 1999, that today, 15
February would be a powerful day in Karin and my relationship. I don’t think it
will be because I didn’t send her a Valentine’s Day card either. We’ll just
have to see how things unfold. I may be on the plane to Germany in as little as
10 hours from now.
17 Feb 00 11:00 Maybe I’ve been here too long. “We’ve got a
problem Houston,” was all I said as a drizzle of diarrhea ran down the back of
my leg and hit the floor right next to my Birkenstock, missing, thank God, the
clean sock I had on—I think. I took another green pill and an Imodium, went to
the latrine and rinsed out my Patagonia shorts, washed off my leg and meandered
down to the Jai Shive for breakfast.
Even people
here in India are beginning to ask me about my lifestyle and worse, are asking
if I will loan them money. One of the problems is I wore out my Docker’s
trousers from the thrift store after 2 years, 2 Himalayan treks and God knows
what else. Anyway, I had some lovely khaki trousers made up here at Karin’s
tailor and, worse perhaps, have sent clothes out to the washer man and so, have
been wearing pressed shirts. Anyway, having been here since Christmas with no
visible means of support and apparently no project I appear to be working on,
like a book or photo story, and having pressed shirts, people have begun to
conjure. I tell people here, as everywhere, that I have no money, no place to
live, no car, and no job. I then add that I am very lucky and that all the
‘Jyotish’, Indian palmists and astrologers, say I have a very good Guru, the
name for the planet Jupiter.
I gave Baba
a 100 rupee note yesterday and today bought him another kg. jar of chavnaprasa,
the powdered tonic he likes to take in his milk.
I seem to
engender this conjuring wherever I have gone and to all who are not privy to
the exact details of the low balances in my bank accounts and the large amounts
I owe on my credit cards. I guess I really do think differently. I purchased a
small book on Patanjai’s Yogic sutras, the bible of yoga, and the first sutra,
the real definition of yoga is: Yoga is the cessation of currents in the
chitta, or mind stuff.
17 Feb 00
17:17 Well my ‘job’ for today was
to check my Email and then go off to get Ganges water to bring back to the US
for Brian with whom I used to work at the Bearpaw Sanctuary. First I got 2 of
those little copper pots and took the larger one to Dasasamedh ghat then spent
the next hour trying to find the man in the minuscule home shop who soldered
tops on Ganges water jars. After taking a break from these exertions and
drinking a Pepsi, I took the smaller pot and walked all the way up to the
burning ghat. Good God. the smoke! Three bodies had just been lit off. I went
to the stone steps and filled the small pot, carried it all the way back to the
smith, 3/4 mile, then back to my hotel, satisfied at a good day’s ‘work’.
And I have
just now agreed to be the third person in a nice new Tata sport utility which
we will take to Kathmandu, leaving Varanasi at 5 AM on the 19th, 1 1/2 days
from now. So, I’m outta here, heading, it feels, closer to ‘home’, although
that is a name only.
20 Feb 00
13:00 It is a ‘2’ day today, big
time. Well I’m back sitting in bright Nepali sun on the 2nd floor marble
terrace of Amar’s Hotel in Kathmandu. A French couple at the hotel in Varanasi
needed to travel to Kathmandu to meet her parents who are coming in from France
and had reserved a taxi for 7000 Indian rupees, about $175 US. After I saw that
the car was new and in good condition, I agreed to go also and pay 1/3. So, to
quote from the Kathmandu Post, “Wedding turns sour - A happy wedding turned
into a funeral today for 4 persons when the bus carrying them met with an
accident at Dasdhunga....a boy inadvertently rammed the bus into another
stationary bus rented by the wedding party from behind, plunging it 200 meters
below.” When we drove by, apparently
only minutes after the mishap, one body was laid out on the side of the road
covered with a red cloth and people were walking over and staring down an
embankment. 200 meters is about 600 feet. Anyway, we drove at speeds up to 70
mph on remarkably better roads than I remember from 11 years ago. 13 hours
total, 5 AM to 6 PM. My health is returning already—India is so wearing.
Following my numerology, I have demanded a ‘7’ room from Amar and so I am in 205,
a huge double. So far, I have had to replace the TV and they are calling in the
phone man to try to fix the line. I still feel weak and feverish.
22 Feb 00 So many
‘2’s!!!!! After 15 years of ‘thinking about it’ I have finally switched hotels
and have moved up to Thamel to a small Tibetan hotel where I have secured a
room with 2 beds, 2 easy chairs, a closet, and a small writing desk for Nepali
200 rupees per day, $2.94. It has a shared bath but what do I care? The solar
heater at Amar’s just didn’t put out any hot water and what warm water I got
took forever to get to my room. Anyway, I am totally happy to have moved. No
more taxis up to here, no more getting the maid to clean my bathroom and I’m
walking distance to where I want to go. I have a second-floor corner room and I
already feel much more at home seeing Tibetan prayer flags all over the hotels,
restaurants, and houses in the neighborhood. I should have changed hotels years
ago, but.....I have been staying with Amar since 1985, then and in 1989, and
1990 in the small hotel he managed, then in 1998, and 99 and this year in the
elegant little hotel he built. Anyway, I feel freer here, the staff is all
teenagers, which I like, and the place is totally immaculate.
Since
leaving India at the full moon of the 18th I’ve been totally on the move. The
full moon was incredible on my last evening in Varanasi, reflecting beautifully
off the Ganges from my vantage 75 feet above the river looking down. Then we
arrived in Kathmandu just as the moon rose over the city.
22 Feb 00
19:30 I’m waiting for Karin to
call. She has been sick since returning to Germany and today has gone into the
hospital where they are to put a small camera into her stomach. Thank God for
my little green pills.
29 Feb. 00 Ah, Leap Year
from the Kathmandu Post daily newspaper
8 killed in road mishap - 8 persons died and 10 sustained
injuries when a truck....plunged 500 meters
(1500 ft.!) down the road in Brimmed....
A 22 year old man’s plan to fly a helicopter made by
himself failed after the district Administrator issued a notice not to conduct
the flight just a few hours before he was to launch it. According to Pradip
D.C., his brother had to abandon his plan to fly his diesel powered helicopter
when a letter arrived.... stating that he needed to acquire permission from the
Nepal Civil Aviation Authority. A reader’s comment—“The country, which has not
been able to manufacture even a needle should not obstruct innovative minds.
The administration should instead search for these minds and not order them to
ask permission.”
Pregnant maid to be stoned - Dubai - An Islamic tribunal
in the United Arab Emirates has ordered a pregnant Indonesian maid to be stoned
to death for adultery. The same court in the Indian Ocean emirate of Fayairah
acquitted her Muslim Indian lover in
absentia. The man has reportedly, fled the country.
24 March 00 My
pending engagement for the day is to go over to the Tibetan town of Boudha to
have coffee with an American friend, formerly from Colorado. Carrie works half
time as a nurse at the American Embassy and has been living in Kathmandu for 12
years. She and her husband live in the entire floor of a Buddhist monastery
residence building, the upper floors of which house the Rinpoche or head monk.
I have forgotten from my very modest yogic background that the religion
business is a very good business. Going to Carrie’s is like going to a 5 star
hotel.
Much has happened in the past month since last writing.
Karin just left for Germany after spending 2 weeks in Nepal. She found a flyer
for a medical conference in Nepal in the huge stack of mail she had waiting
when she got home from India. So, she signed up for the 4th Annual Joint
German-Nepal Medical Congress and arrived here 9 March, totally obliterating my
free time.
26 March 00 I am
here on the roof of the Tibet Cottage waiting for Lisa to come over to get some
counseling from me. She’s probably the only person I’ve ever met who is so
berserkly like myself. Multi-cultural parents, early loss of a parent,
fractured and abusive but well-to-do childhood, producing, similar to myself, a
total renegade, independent and very creative loner with a strong refuge in
spirituality. Anyway, we shall see.
30 March 00 Oy Vay!
We’re still working on IT.
As part of my work with Lisa I had her write down her
ideals for a relationship and to demonstrate wrote down my own;
thin - I like thin women
someone independent, with their own life
high integrity, honest, tells the truth, not necessarily
frank, but direct. Not someone who says, “Oh, you know what so-and-so said
about you?”
sexy, alluring, intriguing, maybe foreign
very intuitive, psychic, deeply feeling, altruistic
likes to travel and goof off
13 April 2000
Nepali New Years Day. I am at this very moment luxuriating in the high
mountain sun on the outside stone patio at the Ama Dablam Lodge up on the
Everest side. I am also luxuriating in my decision to leave the Lukla airstrip
immediately after landing and walking here 30 minutes to get away from all the
trekkers and foreign riffraff. The Ama Dablam Lodge is in the little Sherpa
village of Cheplung and we walked down here to repack our luggage and to eat a
glorious breakfast in the mountain sun. ‘Our’ refers to me and Yuki, my well-traveled
Japanese companion who totally trustingly took up my suggestion that she come
for a trek with me. Yuki has quickly and very happily entered this land of the
Sherpas.
After wolfing down breakfast with Japanese discretion,
Yuki has gone off, at my suggestion, to the lovely small monastery the
Cheplungites have built right up into the rock cliff in back of the village.
Yuki is having a unique experience as few even notice the exquisite little
Tibetan red monastery and I had Pasang get the key so Yuki could see the
interior.
I am a
minor celebrity in Cheplung for having gotten a visa for my old porter Neng 2
years ago. Unlike my last trip here in September-October, things are going
perfectly. We will be in Namche for the bazaar on Saturday so we can see the
mayhem of trading. I told Yuki she could get fresh yak meat if she wanted.
Things seem normal here for good weather. Many Twin Otter flights in and out,
helicopters going back and forth, gentle breezes, clean air, Nepali music
playing in the background, and bright mountain sun.
As usual, I
was gripped with fear in the early morning, certain my flight would crash. Our
airline, Skyline, ‘lost’ a Twin Otter last Dec 25th. I never heard about it as
I was flying to India on the special flight arranged for me after the Indian
Airlines hijacking of the 24th. The flight was the usual dramatic spectacular
but uneventful with the normal bumpy uphill landing. I pulled Yuki over from
her window seat so she could see through the pilot’s windshield as we landed.
Her comment was that it was like a roller coaster ride.
When Yuki returns,
we will pack up and head on out to Phakding and my innkeeper Tsering, to whom I
will give the 10 kg. of spaghetti I bought her in Kathmandu. Peace at last
after a month of women induced busyness in Kathmandu, presuming Yuki doesn’t
act up. She seems totally happy, the surest sign being a hearty appetite. I
feel totally safe here in the land of the Sherpas certain that even were I to
arrive penniless, all would be well.
14 April 00
20:00 Rather than say ‘words cannot
describe.....’ let me describe. I am in a cheery, warm Sherpa kitchen at 12,000
feet altitude in Namche Bazaar. My Japanese trekking companion, Yuki, has
gotten our host and hostess, Ang Norbu and Lhakpa Dolma, to bring out their mah
joong set and a spirited instruction is going on with Ang teaching Lhakpa, Yuki
and their daughter-in-law how to play. Much slapping of mah joong die and
yelling is going on. The lilting sounds of Nepali music are in the background.
How I got here with these exotic companions would take 10,000 pictures and
10,000 times that the number of words.
The happy
experiences we have had together in only a day and a half are already the
things of novellas. Breakfast in the bright sun with our porter in Cheplung,
followed later by an enthused and warm welcome from Tsering at the Namaste
Lodge in Phakding. All the Sherpas and Tibetans trying to marry Yuki and me
off. Tsering put us her VIP double room in the upper corner of the lodge near
the rushing streams. Food, tea.......
Yuki and I
slogged up the infamous 800 meter Namche hill and just as I got into the
village proper, I met Lhakpa Dolma, my high spirited inn keeper from 1989 and
1990. She asked me in broken English if I had a lodge and when I said “No” she
invited me over to her house. Just then Yuki walked up and I introduced them
and Lhakpa totally lit up seeing my female companion. Lhakpa and Ang actually
gave us their bedroom in the house and moved out to sleep on the floor of the
their tea shop. Now THAT is hospitality.
18 April 00 We’ve
arrived again at Namaste Lodge after a very fast 4 hour walk down from Namche.
The time was close to the fastest I have ever made by myself. Yuki, having
acclimated very quickly, led the whole way down with a dried quarter of Tibetan
sheep meat under her arm. This was a gift for Tsering. I think Yuki
particularly likes the look of being one of the locals who are forever rushing
up and down the trails with all manner of stuff under their arms and in their
baskets. We had actually seen a Westerner on the way up with a small split
bamboo basket with 2 live chickens in it. Even Pasang our porter said he had
never seen a Westerner carrying anything like that before.
We were
able to trek all the way up to Thame, a lovely small valley at about 14,000
feet surrounded by snow covered mountains. Many yaks grazed about as we walked
in a very slight cold rain and high mountain wind. The stay in the valley was
incredible as it was a full moon and the reflection off the snow made it almost
as bright as day.
Later that night in Tsering’s kitchen, I had a
conversation with a Sherpa trekking leader, a sardar;
“So how was your trekking?”
“One of my clients died. A very strong German. He just
went too high, too fast. He was very strong and was sure he could rush.”
“You must feel terrible. Was that the first time you’ve
that has happened?”
“No, 2 years ago one died too. He was drinking tea in his
tent in the morning and just fell over dead.”
A lovely hand-made paper card and envelope
26 April 00
Dear Carlos
Hello.
Thank you for your E-mail. I have no words to express my thanks, it was so
wonderful trek.
Actually, I am enjoying to be with you every moment - and
learning a great deal associating with you.
Is your
destiny determined before you were born? Suppose our destiny is sealed book to
us. You should better resign yourself to your fate!
I am
terribly sorry for very late reply. As you know I’m hopeless to use
computer....so I answer you back by my handwriting.
With best wishes
Yuki XX
29 April 00
“You have
failed the test; you are not as smart as Frank.” Frank is Yuki’s best friend of
many years in Japan, an American expatriate and mild eccentric who is “too
smart to seduce me so he can keep me as a friend.”
1 May 00 - more and more keeps coming. Yuki and I had a
glorious day today. Breakfasting at Mike’s with Kamal, a young Nepali friend of
mine, we then went off to the plant nursery. I found Yuki didn’t really like
anything there except for a small green and white grass. We then walked in a
gentle rain over to a superb Japanese soba noodle shop that Yuki says is better
than most in Japan. We had a lovely late afternoon meal then taxied back to our
hotel in mobs of traffic. The Kathmandu Post reported the next day that 4
separate groups were protesting on this May Day and when the protesting
marchers crossed each other traffic was snarled for hours.
3 May 00 23:24
“We are Outside
- and pretty frightful it is, too. No doubt the altitude change is partly to
blame for my unfavorable reaction. I feel uncharacteristically depressed, my
head aches, I might weep if you look at me too hard and nothing interests me.
Also, I am utterly repelled by the luxury of my immediate surroundings, and by
the noise, bustle and swells of twentieth-century life. I miss Hallam, I miss
the snow-peaks, the silence, the contentment, the thin clean air, the sense of
exhilaration and energy and peace....
It must be
only a matter of time before we go back to Baltistan - perhaps for an early
autumn trek, when we can leave all jeep-tracks behind and follow small paths
over high passes. Dervla Murphy, ‘Where
the Indus is Young - Walking in Baltistan’, Flamingo Publishers, London, 1995
4 May 00 No words could possibly do justice or convey the
intensity of experience through which I have lived since the 13th of April when
Yuki and I embarked on our incredible trek. Having returned to Kathmandu, Yuki
and I took adjoining rooms using one as a luggage room and one as a ‘clean
room’. When I had first suggested to Yuki we continue sleeping in the same room
in the hotel as we had on bunks in our sleeping bags, she ruminated for only a
moment before replying, “If we are in Nepal, we are still trekking.”
Anyway, we
have progressed to happily bed hopping back and forth and going off together
for every meal inseparably. There have even been a few peaks to the peak
experience such as the day I took Yuki over to the swimming pool at the 5 star
Everest Hotel. Dibya arranged to get us in for half price, Yuki slipped into
the bathing suit I got her and it fit perfectly. When Yuki emerged from the
pool after her first swim she said, “Ah, that was my first swimming in 20
years.”
I had Dibya
take Yuki down to the Everest Beauty Parlor after swimming where Yuki’s coarse
waist length Mongol yak hair was conditioned into a lovely long waist length
natural curl. Each day after she dresses I can tell Yuki’s state by simply
seeing how she has her hair fixed. In a tight bun with a man-eating clam hair
clip and it’s a ‘watch out’ day for the big guy. Flowing unfettered lovely
black Mongol, and it’s a happy carefree day. Yuki is a gem. High strung,
nervous, brilliant, totally unconventional, especially for a Japanese. She
says, quite accurately, that the two of us are ‘International homeless.” I have
always stated it, “The world is my home.”
We have
entered a very pleasant social whirl of her friends, my friends and our friends
with phone calls for one or both of us starting at 6 AM some days.
Dear Carlos,
How are you? I hope you are happy 120% Anyway somehow
life is joy and suffering
Yuki XX
note inside a 1” by
1” card on handmade paper given me by Yuki and taped into my journal. Yuki
asked me one morning how I was feeling and, uncharacteristically depressed, I
said I was “70%.” She gave me this teeny card a few days later. Nice.
9 May 2000 Along with celebrations of the end of W.W.II,
Yuki and I have pretty much completed plans to take another trek together. Yuki
bought me a map of Nepal as a present somewhat in return for the thanka I drew
for her using colored pencils on lovely handmade Nepali paper. While gazing at
the map with my magnifier I spotted a small airport symbol way out in western
Nepal near the Indian and Tibet borders called Simikot.
I casually
mentioned this to Yuki and she was immediately interested in flying in and
trekking about. I have extended my international return to the USA until the
last possible day before my ticket expires and becomes totally worthless.
Yuki and I are slightly less inseparable as she has such
a heavy social schedule of friends and acquaintances she has made, and kept,
over these last 15 years.
I have had
an uncharacteristic blowup with my friend Lisa, who has, as far as I can tell,
ordered her servant Laxmi to tell me to not come over to her house anymore. I
got furious because Lisa asked me to get some Tylenol for her, a rare commodity
in Kathmandu, but then she refused to reimburse me the 750 rupees for the 30 tablets
as she had lost 20,000 rupees at the casino the night before and “had no
money.” Rather than confront her with my anger I became passive aggressive and
when Lisa jokingly suggested she would sell her body, I suggested, in front of
Yuki, she wouldn’t get much for it as she had scars from botched operations in
India and also on her legs where her husband used to beat her with a stick. She
went ballistic, quietly. As I sat there my lap suddenly became piled with
things, such as tee shirts, I had given Lisa in the past, including the
Tylenol. This all happened several days ago.
Today at
breakfast Yuki, ever the little Japanese diplomat, gently suggested I stop by
Lisa’s to try to patch things up. Lisa’s and my discussion quickly degenerated
from talking, to wrangling, to yelling and finally loud shouting which I won as
I could shout louder as Lisa weighs maybe 95 pounds, and I also won by getting
in the last words, “F... you!” as I slammed the door of her flat.
Unfortunately, with solid concrete and brick construction, door slamming does
not have the same building shaking effect it does in America.
For my part
I refuse to have anything more to do with Lisa until she pays me the 750 rupees
plus another 3 rupees for a vitamin C tablet I gave her.
About a week
later. After breakfast at the restaurant Yuki and I went to every day and which
was right around the corner from Lisa’s house, Yuki gently suggested that she
would go over and talk to Lisa and that I should come over in a few minutes. I
was ushered in and after another 10 minutes of yelling at each other, from
which both Yuki and Laxmi evaporated away, Lisa began crying and reminded me I
promised not to abandon her. I still made her pay me the 750 rupees, wisely not
mentioning the Vitamin C tablet, and things returned to relative, but scary,
normal with us. Both of us are pretty afraid of our anger, and I promised to
Lisa I would go out of my way to make sure something like this didn’t happen
again by telling her upfront what I expected her to pay for.
22 May 00 On the plane to Bangkok with my trekking and
travel companion Yuki in the seat next to me doing her ‘international
homeless’, extremely well-traveled, thing, which is bitching heavily to the
Thai Airlines hostess at the slowness with which they have removed the lunch
dishes. Using some of my ‘women beaten’, i.e. beaten by women, adroitness,
instead of asking Yuki why the Japanese are so intense, I asked instead why
have the Japanese have been so successful. “Are they more intelligent?” I politely
asked. Yuki denied it was better brains. She believes the Chinese and Jews are
more intelligent but the Japanese are better organized and more orderly AND
that this is the result of a colder climate of Japan and that no place warm,
“like southern California”, could produce industrious people. I pointed out on
the Thai Airlines flight magazine that Tokyo and Los Angeles were on the same
latitude. I got no memorable response. Yuki plans to come to California within
a few weeks, as far as I know.
Our stay in
Bangkok was like a dream. We were met at the airport by a young Japanese friend
of Yuki’s whom she had met in Kathmandu and we all went off in a taxi to the
Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Arriving at what Yuki says is the finest hotel in Asia,
in a gentle rain, we were led by waiters holding huge umbrellas over us, to a
30 foot long launch which took us 500 meters across the river to more waiting
umbrellas and a table under a huge riverside canopy. Yuki said she had lived at
the Mandarin in a suite for weeks at a time “back when I was rich”. We had the
expected glorious meal, I had two exotic coconutty Thai deserts and didn’t have
to say much as there was a flurry of Japanese going on across the table from
me. Following Japanese tradition, a few of which I’ve been forced to learn, I,
as the eldest, paid for dinner. Taking another launch ride, we retired to the
magnificent lobby where I was able to follow my old custom tailor’s admonition
to me from 30 years ago, “Carlos, sometimes your job is just to sit around, do
nothing and look good.” The Japanese conversation continued unabated for about
an hour, the Prince of Thailand went out from dinner and cigars to his waiting
motorcade with flashing lights etc., and the girls never even noticed.
Not wanting
to pay the minimum room charge of $380 for a double, Yuki and I went back to
the airport where I was going to sleep on the floor. Yuki, now in private,
offered to pay for a room at the airport hotel and we slept, at least a little
bit, in a double bed together for the first time. At 6:15 AM I was through
security and on my way to the first of the planes taking me to LAX.