Millenium 2000

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 siting 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. I assume that by now my ticket has been changed so that Karin and I will be flying back to Calcutta around the ‘twoth’ of February and that she will also be able to make our rail reservations in Pt. Blair for our Calcutta to Varanasi trip.

         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. I have produced my Casio travel alarm clock from the bottom of my second hand briefcase and have set it for 5 AM so I can meditate some before leaving at 6:30. I remember clearly buying this  clock in Kuala Lumpur years before when I had to arise at 4:30 for a flight and I’ve used the thing ever since.

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 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.

 

         It was less than 10 years ago that the last steam engines were taken out of service in India. The narrow gauge line from Allahabad to Varanasi, Calcutta and way beyond to Nagaland was all steam and many times a day these smoking behemoths would pass through the little village of Daragang, several hundred yards down the road from Gurujii’s ashram. The beautifully constructed Ganges railroad bridge, now 120 years old, would rumble. I can still hear the sound in my mind’s ear as a train headed in from Varanasi, overloaded with people, bicycles and milk cans roped to the outsides of the barred windows as ‘commuters’ went to and fro.

 

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.

         I keep thinking about the red-headed maniac. Could’a, should’a, would’a. It’s unfortunate as she would totally have loved India, the silks, the jewelry, the beads, everything.

‘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.

         After the conference ended Karin and I went off for a few days to two mountain towns near Kathmandu. I wandered off by myself to a downtown bus stop cafe to drink a Coke by myself and kibitz with the locals. As we all sat in the high mountain sun at a dusty intersection with busses coming and going, a group of boys about 8 years old wandered by. One of the boys was barefoot; the rest had shoes of one kind or another. Although common in years past, to be barefoot now in Nepal is a sign of a total village person, a hick. I called the barefoot boy over and the shopkeeper took out a pair of red Nepali made sandal flip flops. Although no one spoke during or after the incident I had warm fuzzies for days afterward remembering watching the boy wander off with his friends. I never saw him again.

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.