TRACELESS PATH

My bus from Delhi pulled into McLeod Ganj midday Saturday, into what appeared to be a scene of chaos. Dunno why, just too many people I guess. After walking around looking for a room I ended up in the same hotel as the guys from the bus. Green, Hotel Green. Initially it looked like I was going to take a room with Tony, the Oz guy, but ended up sharing with Nikkolai instead. Again, dunno why, must have been that pie I pulled down from outta the sky and turned into what I thought was a good idea.

That evening I made the hike to a place called Tushita Meditation Centre located in the woods outside McLeod Ganj and up the hill, the hilly, hilly hill. There I bumped into a couple of people who had been on the Kopan meditation course which was six months ago now, all the way over in Kathmandu. They were still in India, obviously, doing the circuit on the Buddhist scene, something which I guess I was hoping to re-connect with after saying good bye to Thomas on those streets of Bombay. As we chatted, they told me that Susan had left just a week before, which left me feeling somewhat gutted. I was to later find a note from her, telling me she could not understand why it was taking me so long to get into the hills. All the druggy delays on the trail had seen me pay the price. If hadn't spent so much time playing those opium bongos with that crazy German fucker I might well have got to see her again, my Jewish American Princess, got to see her and more besides.

The note from Susan was a sucker punch and it was followed by another when I was told that Tushita would not have any spare rooms for the next ten days. There was a meditation course going on and it was full of punters on the enlightenment path. Desolation is what I guess you might have called it, when I saw those House Full signs going up in front of me. Now what was I going to do? My whole plan regarding going up into the hills had been predicated on a cosy entry into Tushita and getting down to it, some serious meditation in a sympathetic setting, with no chance of getting those bongos out again an' mixin' up my mind. What a hack off! What a nasty little twist of fate which I could have well done without, but apart from pickin' myself up and carryin' on, what else was it that I was supposed to do? So I went back down the hill for an lonely meal in town feeling incredibly sorry for myself.

Back at Hotel Green in the restaurant I met up with Jim, another face from Kopan, Bodhgaya too, and someone who I had been quite close to. He was the Canadian guy I’d hung out with back on the meditation course when I had first got to know Susan in Kopan. Jim had fancied her as well, but the stars had shone on me back then, those lucky, lucky stars. In Bodhgaya he had been one of the stars of the show during the 10 - day meditation retreat we had done at the Thai Buddhist Temple. Full lotus, eyes focused, incessant sitting in the meditation hall, that had been Jim's game and he had played it well. It had all been in stark contrast to me, who at that point was barely clinging on. This was mainly due, it had to be said, to an erupted chest which had been caused by an ill-advised dip in the Holy Ganges back in Varanasi, when I showing off to Susan. Oh, my goodness golly, all that suddenly seemed a long time ago as I sat there with Jim and gobbled down what was at best a passable vegetable chow mien, before we arranged to meet for a beer later at the only bar in town. When I returned to my room after eating, Nik Nik Nikkolai was lying on his bed reading his traveller's guide book. Somehow, I just couldn't relax with him, so after a short while I went out again in search of Jim. I found him in his basement room in The Green where he was playing his sitar in what was a cool set up. He was bedded in, well bedded in as far as the Westerner Out in India scene was concerned. We finally made it out to The Yak where we had a couple of beers and I have to say I felt pretty pissed, it being the first time that I'd got drunk in well over a year. Needless to say, we both talked long and hard about what we'd both been doing since we'd last seen each other at the end of that retreat in Bodhgaya, there were many tales to tell, and after we were done I went back to my room and immediately crashed. Boom fuckin’ boom, head in the hills, lights out.

The next morning I slept until 8 before I went down to the restaurant for breakfast in Hotel Green. Nik had gone off early on a hike to a place called Triund, from where you got to the snow line. It was high up in other words and involved a good couple of hours strenuous walking. After eating I returned to my room but not before a short stroll outside where it was very mixable weather but already warm. Back in the room I wrote up some of my notes on the Mysore stage of my trip, pretty much continued doing this on and off through the course of the day. Bela, freak outs, Thomas, it was all there right in front of me. In between I also called a couple of times on Jim down in the basement but he wasn’t in. Nik returned from Triund in the late afternoon. There was a deadly heavy presence about him, it had to be said. Nothing threatening, but not great either if a good time was what you were after. Nevertheless, he said that he felt good after his walk, where there had been no people and where everything stood in sharp contrast to McLeod Ganj. Not very busy in other words, with room and space to breathe. We went for an evening meal together at a place called The Himalaya which was very crowded and we were all very tightly packed together. It was tense as we tried to speak to each other, I could feel Nik seizing up, so we went back to our room quite early where I lay about reading and writing for a while. All the same it was very difficult to sleep that night. I was a bit lost if truth be told, McLeod Ganj was so damn packed it was tricky with regards to getting decent accommodation, which meant for the time being I was stuck with Nik.

In the morning I tried to find the Tibetan library which was down the hill, but ended up in the town of Dharamsala instead, so I went to the Post Restante to see if I had got any letters. It was a hard walk back up the hill and I was sweating profusely, it most definitely being the case that I was not in great shape. Too much fuckin’ smoking on the trail. Back in McLeod Ganj I saw a couple of Tibetan monks from my bus ride up from Delhi, I smiled as I walked past them and then went into The Darjeeling for a snack where one of them soon appeared and invited me to dinner, same place, 7 in the evening. I returned to my room about mid afternoon quite tired and for some reason feeling nervous of the whole damn scene in McLeod Ganj, what with all its noise and crowds of people I just couldn’t settle. Nik returned in the late afternoon from a day at the Tibetan library, the same one which I had somehow missed. We spent a couple of hours together in the room before I went out to meet the monk in The Darjeeling. I also tried Jim a few times but he still was not in. I had a meal with the monk, talking more with him as it went on, as he told me of his plans regarding going to England, think he was hoping to make a contact of me. I departed around 8.15 when I went to the restaurant at The Green where I had a tea with Nik who was in there on his own, before going back to our room where we both sat around until we crashed out. Once again, I had a bad night's sleep but at least I decided to go on a hike to Triund the following day, something for me to do I guess.

After a breakfast of omelette, porridge, and tea I set off on my hike to Triund. It was 8 km up through the hills and the snow line 3 km further. Nik told me over breakfast that he would probably leave the next day, go to someplace further down the line which cheered me up a bit, quite a bit in fact. I thought that maybe if I got the room to myself McLeod Ganj would somehow be better. Once I got past a bunch of teahouses on my walk to Triund, I met a couple of Westerners who were already on their way down. Talk about early risers, too keen by half. It was exhilarating walking however, just sticking to the path and going on upwards. I stopped for a chai beside a Siva temple at a place called Dharmakot, and then continued on my way with just bottled water and sweet cake for sustenance. I was also able to take some photos when I stopped a couple more times, passing a hippy on the way up before I reached Triund by approximately 11 am. There I lay around for a while looking at the mountains, the shepherds and sheep, coming up the hill from different directions. I ate my cake and drank before I went up to the snowline, this was despite the thin air and my health paranoia, as if I would keel over stone dead or something. There was no one else at the top, so I took some more photos, sat around for a bit more and then walked back down.

It seemed to take me a long time to return to McLeod Ganj. By now it was very hot and I got sun burnt, because the sun was shining brightly, scorching me. I stopped again at the chai shop in Dhramakot where I ate some local bread with chopped cucumbers and drank chai. Somehow, I lost my way on the final stage and had to walk down with local boys who showed me the right path. I returned to my room, but Nik had a nasty habit of immediately locking the door from the inside and leaving his key in as soon as I left, so I had to knock to get back in. Outrageous really, but there you go, that was how it was when sharing a room with a nutter. It looked like he had been either sleeping, reading his traveller books, or doing something else, but whatever it was the same heavy atmosphere pervaded the room, something which was getting to be a bit of a drag. I just lay there on my bed recovering from my walk. After a while Nik said he was going to wait another day before going to what he had now decided would be Amritsar. Well, that was that then, I wouldn't be getting rid of him just yet.

In the early evening I went up to the restaurant in The Green just to get away from Nik, I felt very low and seriously wondered whether I was going to be able to stay in McLeod Ganj. There were just too many people and it did not look like I was ever going to get settled. On top of that Nik was doing my head in! By chance I got talking to the woman at the table next to mine and after a while discovered that she was staying in a place called Bir where there was a Tibetan colony. She had come to Dharamsala with two Tibetans from a family she was sponsoring and she said that she did not really like McLeod Ganj, having been a few years ago when it was all so very different, but now she said that the Tibetans weren't as nice as before. Too many people in other words. As I listened to her speak, I began to think it might be a good idea if I also went to Bir, maybe I would get to know the locals and do some meditation. After a while I asked her to write some directions as to how to get there and where a good place would be to stay. She gave me some useful information and mentioned that Sherab Ling monastery, 11 km from Bir up in the hills, was supposed to have facilities for people who wanted to meditate.

My bleak mood from not so long ago was suddenly beginning to lift. It seemed like it had been a stroke of luck for me to run into this woman. She had told me of a place which was free of other tourists, a delight to stay in, and not so far away. I thought to myself that I could go to Bir in a couple of days time, use the next day to get some money from the bank and generally prepare myself for a new scene. Bir suddenly seemed like it was going to be the answer to all my prayers! Later in the evening I went with Nik into town for a meal and found myself talking in the same complaining manner as he did, which rang of a bitter outlook on everything. Definitely time to move on then. When we returned to our room we were once again in our beds by 10 pm. I thought that the walk to Triund would have tired me out and that I would have been able to get to sleep quite easily, however I lay awake for hours and never managed to rest properly throughout the whole of the night.

Woke up feeling shit from such a bad night's sleep, so much so that I was in a very untogether frame of mind and had second thoughts about whether to go to Bir. However, I perked up after breakfast and went to catch the bus down to Dharamsala. It was a bright hot hill station summer’s day. First, I had to go to the bus station to sort out bus times. It was full of the usual mid-morning confusion with crowds of people jostling around the kiosk of the ticket seller, however I finally got the information I needed regarding buses to Bir. I then climbed up from the bus station and onto Dharamsala main street where I went to the bank to change my last traveller’s cheque, something I didn't like doing because it meant I had to carry a lot of cash with me. However, if Bir was good then there would be no place to change money if I ended staying for a while and got to the point where I needed to, if you see what I mean. Nevertheless, it made me feel uneasy about what would happen if I lost all that cash.

After the bank I went to another ticket office to get some information which Nik had asked for regarding buses to Amritsar. It really was in my interests to make sure he got the first one available! There was a man behind a desk with a fixed smile which left his face as soon as you were ready to go away. He also had a book in which you were invited to write a comment on how helpful or unhelpful the office had been. I wrote that it had been "Very helpful indeed" although I was not so sure about the sincerity of this guy who'd helped me. As if to test that I left and soon returned after I remembered that I may as well get some information on buses to Delhi, and for a split second I'm sure he had a "What the fuck do you want now?" look on his face as soon as I stepped back into his office.

I then walked to a local tea house for a bottle of Limca, and just as I was about to take my first sip the bus back to McLeod Ganj pulled up outside. I deliberated whether or not to take it and then suddenly realised I couldn't face walking back up so I downed my bottle fast and jumped on just as it was pulling away. When I got back to McLeod Ganj I went to the room and as usual Nik was there lying around reading his travellers guide books. He hardly gave me the chance to sit down on my bed before he wanted to know about his bus times. Like a good scout I told him the exact times of all the buses running to Pathankot which was the station he needed in order to change and get a bus to Amritsar. He seemed quite happy with the info and I silently prayed that he took the subtle hint which was buried in there somewhere, that it would be great if he made a move.

I was still feeling rough from my poor night's sleep so I just lay around on the bed and did a bit of writing, there was so much to catch up on with regard to what I had got up to with Thomas down south, something which was now fast receding into the distance behind me. I had also bought some aerogrammes because I had to write some letters to people back home, friends and family, the usual deal. After doing some notes I began writing one of those letters but finished after a paragraph or so, feeling quite exhausted. Nik was still in the room, lying around on his bed, not doing much. I could not stand it after an hour or so and escaped to the restaurant upstairs at The Green in order to get some food. When I walked in, I saw Jim who was sitting on his own with a Tibetan text on the table in front of him. It was good to see him, a great relief, and I immediately went over and sat down, where I poured my heart out to him after he said, "How you doin' bud?" Told him I could not settle in McLeod Ganj, the place was packed with people and it looked like it would be very difficult getting a single room etc. And I mentioned that I'd somehow ended up sharing a room with a miserable asshole who always locked the door as soon as I went out and who generally spoke negatively about everything.

Then I told Jim of how I had met this woman who'd told me about Bir and that I planned to go there. I was a little disappointed when Jim said to me he had already been to Bir and Sherab Ling, casually saying, "Yeah, they were nice enough places." Hardly mind blowing, so maybe they weren't so special after all. Really thought I was going to surprise him, but no, anyway I told him I was going to split tomorrow and check them out. All I wanted was a peaceful spot to do some meditation and get into my writing, if that was possible. We drank a couple of milk teas and I ordered some food and then after it had arrived Jim also decided to have some of what I had. After that Nik came into the restaurant and sat at our table. Where else could he go? I explained to Jim this was the guy I was sharing a room with and that was why he had invaded our presence, or words to that effect. As it was Nik did not stay that long which probably just as well because he made the conversation dry up. When he left, Jim and I took some more hot drinks and I broke open a pack of beedies I had bought and we smoked some. There was music playing in the The Green and it was good. Midnight Oil no less, the one and only Midnight Oil, the same group I had been into so heavily down in South India, right up until when the Walkman had packed up after it fell off my bed.

I talked with Jim again about what it was I was going to do and then I asked him if he knew any place where I could get some hash. Just do not know where it came from, that question. He told me there was a shack called the Moonlight Cafe a couple of doors along from where we already were and that it was just a front for a local dealer by the name of Johnny. Jim said he was a bit of a shady character and that it would be difficult to get a tola of hash off him for under 100 rupees, however he was the only guy in town. There had been someone else, a nice Indian lad, but he had recently got busted and would be spending the next ten years in Dharamsala jail. Ten years for selling a bit of ganja! Seemed a bit over the top, and in India as well. Oh, my sweet Lord, how the times seemed to be changin'. Nevertheless, I decided to go and try Johnny's but when I got there the place was all locked up so I went back to restaurant, back to Jim, Midnight Oil, ginger tea and beedies.

We sat around drinking tea and listening to music for another hour or so before I asked Jim if he would like to read some of my poems. I told him it would be better to go to his room to read them rather than mine, for the obvious reason that Nik would be there and that somehow, I didn't think he would understand. Not that is, unless he got the chance to tell me he thought they were a load of shit. So, we went down to Jim's place which was like a fry pit due to the weather and because it was on the basement row of The Green where the Tibetans lived. I was chronically nervous when I read some of them out to him but he was a genuinely sensitive listener and even copied a couple of them into his notebook, which I guess must have been a good sign. As a matter of fact, he did indicate to me that he thought Opium Bongos was a bit of a classic, pretty much echoing what I felt about it as well. But that aside, it was just great to read my stuff to someone, because keeping it all to yourself for too long can make you feel like you're going mad.

We were interrupted by the arrival of a young Tibetan man who was taking English lessons off Jim and I hung around whilst the class took place. In fact, I soon joined in, trying to understand his terrible English but mostly failing and so was reduced to just nodding my head in polite agreement because it was way too much effort to explain to him where he was going wrong. After a while I had to take a break, go outside, smoke a beedie and stare at the beautiful valley below, something which seemed to take quite a long time. When I returned to Jim’s the Tibetan had gone and Jim was twanging his sitar, so I lay down on his bed to have a listen.

"Hold it," he said before he got up and went outside. He was back in a minute with a nice little lump of hash in his hand. "Here," he said, "make a mix with this. I gotta go and crap."

So, I crumbled the hash over a pile of tobacco whilst Jim was taking a dump and was soon full of that deep seated excitement which comes just before you're about to start a dope smoking session.

When Jim returned, he got out his chillum and put the mix in it. "Bom Shankar!" he said as he passed it to me to light. It was a nice chillum and we both got several big tokes off it, enough to wreck us, to get us talking about meditation and what it meant to us, how it was perfectly possible to take a bit from many traditions and make it your own.

"Yeah man," Jim said, "I'm gonna miss this place, but I've gotta get out soon."

He had in fact been in McLeod Ganj for about three months, just hanging out learning to play his sitar, studying some Tibetan Buddhism and doing a bit of meditation. But he was leaving for Thailand in a couple of weeks because his visa was running out. He told me that he was going to lose his passport in Thailand and get issued with a new one which would not show that he'd been to India. Then he would be able to apply for a new Indian visa in Bangkok without having to wait the usual six months.

"But I think it's better to play it by the book Jim," I said, warning him not to do anything too underhand. "You don't know what kind of shit you might be letting yourself in for. Besides, Thailand might be good, then you'll feel different about India and see that it's time to move on."

"Yeah, yeah. You never know," he replied, "but India can definitely change you and I'm so into it at the moment man."

And I could see his point, he really looked the part, settled down there in his fry pit. He had plenty of Tibetan books to read, he had his statues to meditate in front of whilst sitting full lotus and of course he had his sitar. Looking around was making me have second thoughts about going to Bir, surely it was possible for me to get a place in McLeod Ganj, do the same thing as Jim and have my own fry pit? Surely it was, no?

"Yeah," I said to Jim, "I don't know. Maybe I won't go to Bir. I mean, what is the point?"

But then the thought of hauling myself around town and looking for a room depressed me. "No, sorry. Everything full!" would doubtless be ringing in my ears if I attempted it.

"Yeah," I said to Jim, "I think I will go to Bir tomorrow. Might as well check it out."

We then sat around for a while longer smoking chillums until slowly but surely both of us slipped into the inexpressible privacy of our own stoned thoughts, indicated by us blankly, vacantly staring into space. We managed to make it out for a meal later in the evening and then we said farewell. If I liked it in Bir and ended up staying there a while, it was likely Jim and I would not see each other again. And so, away we go!

For my trip to Bir, I took the bus down from McLeod Ganj to Dharamsala at 8 am. Missed the one at 7.30 and therefore travelling with the woman from the restaurant who'd told me about it in the first place. I had bumped into her the day before when I told her I was up for it. From Dharamsala I took another bus to a place called Palampur which was no problem, I only had to wait five minutes. At Palampur I got a bus to Baijnath where I would then get another one to Bir. Now it must be stated that this last part of the journey was by far the most hassle, despite it being a mere 12 km from Bir, almost in walking distance. The problem was that in Baijnath no one at the station wanted me to get a bus, they wanted me to take a local taxi instead, which of course was much more expensive. It was, in other words, a right old stitch up. Simply kept getting completely different timings for the bus to Bir and I was also pointed to the wrong one on a few occasions. The situation after a certain point began to freak me out, especially when I was hassled by one particular driver who had snake-like features and who I eventually told to fuck off, which he did but with a really horrible sneer on his face.

After an hour or so I was still no nearer getting a bus to Bir than when I had first arrived, so I lost my cool and demanded to see the station manager. When I was pointed to his office, I walked in and told him the situation, that when asking where the bus was for Bir, no one seemed capable of giving me an honest answer. There were about six Indians in the office at the time. His reply was that the next bus to Bir was in about two hours’ time, an answer which completely exasperated me because Bir was only about 12 km away and I was sure that when the bus came, I would again be misdirected. So, I told the manager that I was not going to move from his lousy stinkin' office until the bus arrived. With that I put my rucksack down and sat cross legged on the floor feeling very upset and aware that I was probably taking things to an extreme.

For some reason it was difficult for me not to cry, like I was caught up in some unbelievably strange dream, and because I couldn't look at any of the Indians in the office who were all watching me, I just stared down at the floor. One of the men who had been giving me wrong information when I was wandering around outside, brought a chair and asked me to sit on it. I angrily pushed it away and told him I would stay on the floor. Gradually everyone left the office until there was just the inspector and myself sitting there. He was behind his desk, not really doing much apart from trying to make a telephone call every few minutes or so, apparently without success. Compared to the mad hassle of the rest of the station the room however was very peaceful. And I managed to calm myself down.

He offered me another chair saying, "Come on sir, please don't be angry now."

He said it in a very kind way and I responded by getting up and going to sit on it. Again, I felt upset and again I had to check the tears. We just sat there in silence beneath the whir of the ceiling fan. After a while a man came in and the inspector spoke to him briefly before he then disappeared, only to return a short time later with two cold cans of apple juice, one of which he gave to the inspector and the other one he gave to me. It was a nice gesture and I appreciated it.

"Drink it," the inspector said, "please drink it."

So, we sat there for a while slurping the juice with straws from out of our cans. Quite soon someone else came in and spoke to the manager who then told me that the bus to Bir had arrived and he showed me exactly where it was in the station. He then apologised for all the trouble and confusion which had been caused to me and by way of return I apologised to him for losing my temper. We smiled at each other warmly and I had a real feeling of closeness towards him. Then I walked out of his office with my rucksack and caught the bus.

The getting off point for the Tibetan colony in Bir turned out to be a crossroads halfway up the hill before arriving in what was then Indian Bir. I was lucky there were some Tibetans on the bus or else I would have ended up in Indian Bir for sure. It was quite a strange feeling walking down the path to the colony, the woman with whom I had had that conversation which had led me to this, said that in comparison to Dharamasala, Bir was a delight and full of lovely Tibetans. Well, I would soon see if that was true or not. As I approached, I could make out the shapes of three Tibetan Buddhist temples, or gompas, which were clearly visible from some distance. The woman had told me to go to the middle one of these for accommodation. It was painted pinkish and was smaller than the larger white gompa which I had passed first and where she was staying, however the lama was charging her 50 rupees a day, which was quite expensive considering the location. In fact, she was standing on the balcony of her room as I approached.

"Hi," she said, "what happened to you?"

"Oh, I must have got there after 7.30".

Of course, I was referring to the departure time of the original bus from Dharamsala. I simply did not have the energy to tell her about all the hassle I'd encountered in Baijnath, I wanted to forget all that as quickly as possible. She told me again that I should try the middle monastery as far as finding a place to stay was concerned, and so I carried on walking up to it.

On arrival it looked like there was some construction going on because there was scaffold over the entrance and monks standing on it dressed in overalls and holding paint pots. When they saw me they stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I stared back at them, suddenly realising I did not know a word of their language and they probably didn't know any of mine. "Hi," I said but then trailed off into silence, not really knowing what else to say. "Er...is it possible to have a room?" Clearly no one understood what was going on and I suppose I must have looked a strange sight standing there with my rucksack. It had also turned cloudy and was just beginning to spit with rain. At last, one of the monks got down from the scaffold and beckoned me to follow him. He led me into an inner compound of the monastery which had rooms surrounding it on three sides and a temple on the other. I was taken to a big fat monk who cut quite a rough looking figure and it was not hard to imagine him in the blood-stained waistcoat of a local butcher.

"Mmmmm, Mmmmm, what do you want?" he said.

"Er, rooms. Do you have rooms?" I said, suddenly feeling like I had made a big mistake.

However, he replied "Come" and I followed him across the courtyard to one of the blocks where he opened the doors of a large room which had some rolled up carpets, paint pots and two beds in it.

"This," he said.

"OK," I replied, "fine, fine. Er, how much is it?"

"Eh?"

"How much rupees?"

This time he got the point and motioning with his fingers replied "Two and four".

"OK," I said, "twenty-four."

I mean it was hardly The Hilton, hardly even a step up from sharing a room with Nik back in The Green, but I guess as far as the metropolis of Bir was concerned, it would just have to do. And so, the big monk left me to myself, standing in a strange room in a strange monastery. I put my rucksack down and sat on the bed.

Outside the weather was deteriorating rapidly and it looked like there was going to be a big storm. Suddenly some young monks burst into my room and pointing next door said, "English! English stay there." They must have been referring to the young teachers the woman had told me about back in Dharamsala. "Oh," I said and smiled. The monks had cute faces but they were very curious as to what was in my rucksack and they were soon trying to get inside it. "Hey," I said, "no, no" when I'd judged they'd gone far enough. They backed away and began to fight with each other, at one stage one of them was getting quite roughed up by the others, almost to the point of crying. It was quite interesting to sit there and see how far they went with their boyish violence, but they eventually calmed down and I asked them to leave, locking the doors behind them.

I lay down on one of the beds and wondered what the hell I was doing there. It was already clear that there was not going to be much to do in Bir. My poor mood was compounded by the fact that outside it was now violently windy and raining hard, but I needed to go out and get some food. More pressingly I also needed to go and have a piss but I did not even know where the bogs were. "Fuckin' hell!” I said to myself. All of a sudden, I yearned to be with a group of people, any group, just sitting around and smoking some hashish. It was an intense yearning, but instead I was on my own in a monastery in a colony of Tibetans in the middle of nowhere. I felt very lonely and sad. What was I doing there? I stayed in such a desperate state of mind for a couple of hours as the storm raged outside. My bladder ached like fuck because it was so full of piss, yet I simply could not be bothered to walk back out into the courtyard and ask where the bogs were. So, I just lay there in pain.

In the late afternoon, early evening there was a knock on my door, in fact it was more like a rapping. When I opened it up a group of little monks were there pointing to the next room. "English," they said excitedly, "English!". And then I saw a couple of young guys soaked to the skin trying to open the door to their room. They had obviously been out in the storm, caught in the storm more like. We greeted each other, their names were Graham and Robert and they were younger than I expected, considering they were supposed to be teachers. Graham told me they would see me later as they went into their room to get changed. I went back into mine, somehow feeling very stupid. I suppose I must have looked a weird guy to them, appearing out of nowhere to stay in the monastery without any reason, apart from the desire for some peace and quiet, which I guess should have been reason enough.

When the storm calmed down soon afterwards, I heard them go out of their room and walk off into town. I felt a bit sad that they had not asked me to join them because I wanted the warmth of some human company quite badly. On top that, I then suddenly felt shit. Somehow, I must have seemed like a lonely old man and I guess it was probably true to say that I did not really appreciate quite how unattractive I must have appeared to people when they were faced with the possibility of spending a couple of hours in my company. At a rough guess the age gap between us was at least 8 or 9 years. I waited for a while and then went off into town looking for somewhere to eat.

To call the Tibetan colony of Bir a town was of course a bit of a ridiculous exaggeration because it was nothing like, being just one street with clusters of houses leading off it. I walked up and down until I had seen all that was on offer and then chose a blue painted tea house which looked quiet. There were just a couple of Tibetans in there having bowls of noodles. I sat down on one of the benches and ordered a milk tea which soon arrived and which I was very happy to drink. It was interesting just sitting there and observing the people whilst listening to the rain hammer down on the roof. The tea house had a very peaceful atmosphere and the owner was a very nice man who wore badges of the Dalai Lama on his shirt. After a while I also ordered a bowl of noodles. When it was served to me it had meat in it, which might have been a bit of a problem since I had more or less been a full-on vegetarian for the last two years, but I was so fed up that I ate it nevertheless, and along with the Tibetan bread and hot lemon tea it was actually a very nice meal. Some Tibetan youths came in whilst I was eating but I was not paid any special attention by them, so I just assumed that it was not uncommon for travellers to end up there.

When I left the tea house I went to search for some candles because the electricity would probably be on and off throughout the night due to the adverse weather conditions. As I was standing in the street looking at one of the traders' stalls, of which there were not that many, another young English guy appeared and he came up to me.

"Hello," he said, "nice to see you. When did you get here?"

He was very friendly and I was somewhat shocked, because he talked to me in such a familiar manner it was as if we had known each other for years. He invited me for a coffee and we went back to the place I had just come from. When we'd sat down, he told me his name was Magnus, whilst I told him my name was Phil. It transpired there were five young English kids in Bir teaching English to the Tibetans for a couple of months on a scheme run for young people who had left school and were going on to university. I envied them, to be able to come out to India free of charge and gain some experience of being in Asia seemed a great opportunity. Through one thing and another I was able to ask Magnus if it was possible to buy any hash in Bir.

"Sure is," he said, "absolutely. In fact, we've been having a bit of a smoke ourselves these last few days."

Magnus was in fact an incredibly nervy person to be with because as soon as he began to talk about one thing, he would go on to another, then halfway through our coffee he jumped up out of his seat.

"Right! Got to go and buy some vegetables. Back in a sec."

When he returned it was arranged for me to go around to his place for a smoke and then to see about buying some hash. As we stepped out into the street, we bumped into a smart dressed Tibetan who evidently knew Magnus.

"Hey," he said to Magnus, "you coming tonight with those tapes?"

"Oh yeah," Magnus replied, "er let's see. Say in about an hour?"

"Yeah, my place. We can smoke there no problem. And bring that Tracy Chapman tape."

"Ah!" exclaimed Magnus, "I won't be able to bring that particular one at the moment Namgyal because someone's borrowing."

"Oh, I see, well bring some other music."

"OK, see you later then."

As the Tibetan walked off down the street Magnus turned to me.

"That's Namgyal. Really good guy."

I told Magnus that I had a Tracy Chapman tape and he could take that if he wanted, to which he readily agreed and seemed very happy that I should have made such an offer. What he did not know was that I simply couldn't listen to it anymore because it reminded me of Susan, how I fell in love with her and was still in love with her.

So anyway, we went back to my room in the monastery to pick up some tapes. Suddenly it felt different as I stepped back inside, I was no longer lonely and what was more I was going to have a smoke of some hash, just what the doctor ordered.

"Oh, Van Morrison!" Magnus said with delight as he looked through my bundle of tapes.

"Yeah," I replied, "Astral Weeks."

"Yeah” he joked, "voted best album in 1904 or something."

Guess because he was young Magnus thought he could get away with saying that, which as it happened, he most definitely did because I really found it quite funny, despite the fact it was best album of 1968.

When we stepped back outside, the storm had started up again and it was raining quite hard. We had to walk through the back lanes to Magnus's place and it was quite a tricky route in the driving wind and rain. Graham and Robert from the room next door to mine in the monastery I was staying in were there cooking food and they did not seem particularly pleased to see me. I was beginning to think they were a pair of unfriendly bastards. There were also three others, a young woman called Emily, another English boy whose name I do not remember and a German lad called Kurt who was visiting for a couple of days. He was sitting cross legged on the floor, seemingly engrossed in listening to his Walkman but somehow his vibe did not relax me, but maybe that was because I was feeling edgy.

Magnus soon rolled a few spliffs which everyone hungrily smoked and it was quite a busy scene as people cooked their food, played about with their drugs and listened to their Walkmans which were also like drugs to them. It was evident they were all quite new to the smoking hash and they were very much caught up in the buzz of listening to music - The Doors, David Bowie - and eating lots of food before immediately smoking again. As I sat there, I felt like an old man who had done such things countless times before, which in fact I had, yet at the same time I was not capable of taking command of the situation in any way whatsoever, so I was left feeling very much an outsider, which of course was exactly what I was. I just remained sitting cross legged on the floor quite uninvolved in the conversations and soon feeling pain in my knees. It further pained me to think of the picture those kids might have been painting of me in their minds; a lonely traveller who possibly reminded them of someone they would like to forget. I sat there brooding over such thoughts until Magnus was ready to go to Namgyal's place, to which Graham and Robert were also coming along.

Eventually we were all ready to go to Namgyal's, something which had taken a bit of time because everyone was stoned, and we set off through the back lanes of Bir. On the way we tried a local dealer to see if I could buy any hash but his place was all shut up so we would have to call again later. It was still tremendously stormy, you could really feel the power of nature in those parts, winds rolling down off those massive Himalayas and punching you in the chest. It turned out to be quite a tricky walk to Namgyal's house which was over on the other side of the colony, however we managed to get there without breaking any legs and soon were sat in a lounge cum living cum sleeping room with Namgyal, his wife and their two and half year-old daughter called Dickey. Namgyal said that it would be a problem listening to music because there was no electricity, the storm had blown it all out. There were some portable speakers however which took batteries, and Graham had brought his Walkman, as if he couldn't live without it. So, we were soon listening to David Bowie and his eternally good Hunky Dory. Not having any electricity did not turn out to be a big problem then, because everyone had plenty to smoke along with the tunes, and Namgyal himself was just finishing off a half bottle of whisky. People were all soon rolling joints and the conversation centred around Namgyal's little daughter who seemed to be amazingly well developed for her age. She was already able to talk, sing, and win arguments with her mother. For my part I just sat in silence and watched the proceedings, suddenly feeling tired from the rigours of the day which for me had begun back in McLeod Ganj.

After a while we were all served hot ginger tea by Namgyal's wife which was delicious. She seemed to play a deeply subservient role throughout the evening, both to her husband Namgyal and to her daughter who was allowed to perform like a little star when in reality she was an obnoxious little stinker. No matter, Namgyal talked almost constantly and it was very hard to tell if the whisky affected him in any way whatsoever. He continued to drink, smoke and talk as if it was something he did every night of his life, which in fact was probably so. Telling me that his brother was a Rinpoche in one of the monasteries in Bir, and that his father had helped in founding the colony back in the 60's, Namgyal said that he also had many highly respected relations within the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchical structure. His family were big cheeses in other words. He said all these things to me before explaining why he lived his life as he did, which seemed to be dedicated to drinking and smoking rather than meditation and the quest for liberation.

"You see," he said, "I like the booze, I like the hash and I live my own life."

Fair enough. There was no mistaking he did exactly that and whilst it seemed to be very good for him in this lifetime at least, it was by no means certain that it was very good for his wife who sat silently in the corner, looking over the precocious Dickey take centre stage as Namgyal rattled on and on. At a certain point in the proceedings, I was called upon to produce my Tracy Chapman tape and after it was stuck on the Walkman Namgyal got up and danced with his daughter to Fast Car, a song which immediately spun me off into sad, stoned memories of my times with Susan from earlier on in my trip. It was quite impressive to see their moves and when it was over Namgyal sat on the floor instead of the couch which he had been on before. It was amazing for me to see him so easily and so comfortably sit there in full lotus position. "You should meditate Namgyal, with legs like that you'd go far," I thought to myself. Sitting there he prepared a joint by taking a cigarette, emptying it of tobacco leaving just the paper tube and filter, something which demanded considerable dexterity. He then sorted through the pile of tobacco and took some bits out of it before crumbling hash over it and mixing it all together. Then with consummate ease he put the tobacco and dope mix back into the cigarette. Namgyal really was a craftsman, so beautiful and precise were his movements it was hard to believe he had drunk half a bottle of whisky and already smoked more than his fair share of one or two beefy spliffs.

The joint he constructed turned out to be the last of the evening, and apart from Dickey burning her arm when she ran into Namgyal after he had just lit it up, nothing else major happened. When we stepped back outside the moon was shining brightly. It was very peaceful, very beautiful to walk in the evening silence of Bir back to the monastery. I said to Magnus that I would probably go to Sherab Ling the next day so there was no point in him asking about any hash for me as I just would not need it. We then shook hands and I walked back to my room with Graham and Robert who had slowly but surely warmed up with regard to being pleasant to me, even displaying signs of friendly behaviour. The following morning, I really felt quite unfocused because of the smoking the night before, and I was uncertain as to what I was supposed to be doing. Eventually I walked down main street and had breakfast in the same place I had been to the previous evening. Magnus and Robert were in there drinking tea so I went over and sat with them. Without really knowing it we were soon talking about hash again and I was then making plans with Magnus to once more try and buy some off the local Tibetan dealer. After breakfast we stepped outside onto the main street and went to look for him. We did not have to look far because a rough-cut Tibetan who’d obviously been around the block a few times was walking towards us.

"Hey, do any of you boys want anything?" he asked as he approached Magnus.

"Yes, yes. Indeed, we do!" Magnus replied before I explained to the dealer that I wanted to buy some dope off him.

It transpired that the gear would not arrive until the next day so I would have to stay another night in Bir if I wanted a 50-rupee tola of supposedly finest black hash. In my post smoke stupor, I said I would stay an extra day before going to Sherab Ling and therefore would he please get me some. Guess it was one of those situations in which I immediately regretted the decision I had just made. Not the first time that has happened in my life, I can tell you. As soon as the dealer was gone and Magnus had disappeared, I realised I did not want to buy a tola of hash at all. It was going to be far too much for me to smoke, especially when all I wanted to do was meditate. I returned to my room in the monastery in an unsettled state of mind and deeply unhappy over the prospect of staying in Bir for another day. All I would be doing was sitting around in my room listening to the labourer monks outside and feeling like a total loser. After a few minutes’ agitation on my bed, I decided to go to Sherab Ling. I mean, why not? Bugger the fuckin’ dope!

There was simply no point in staying, even if I had just ordered another tola of hash off this dealer. The main thing was I really did not want it. I did not want to smoke another 10 grams of hashish, I wanted to get my mind clear and prepare myself for some meditation. It was as simple as that. No more monkey business! I packed my things and left some stuff that I had unloaded as unnecessary and stuck in a corner of the room. I left my blue jumper which I had carried around with me since coming out to Asia. It was a jumper I’d had for about five years after someone had left it in a pub I had been working at back in Cardiff in the early 80’s. One of our customers, who was also a local crook, had picked it up when they had gone. He gave it to me in return for £2 and a couple of free beers. It was a nice jumper! It would have cost much more in the shops, but somehow despite wearing it for several years I'd never felt it was quite me.

When I'd got myself together, I went and paid the monk his twenty four rupees although it would have been very easy just to have walked off without paying anything at all. In fact, the monk wasn't around so I ended up giving it to the cook, who looked like Swelter out of Titus Groan, in other words quite a character. What a bunch! Then I walked down the main street and drank a tea at the usual place, where I also had a nice chat with a Tibetan youth who spoke good English. He said that he had come to Bir one year ago after walking down through the mountains from Tibet and it had taken him two months, only moving at night so as to escape capture by the Chinese. No mean feat if you sat down and thought about it. He told me he was going to go back in a year or so and get a job being a guide for tourists. He said that if he had stayed in Tibet, he would never have got to learn English because the Chinese do not permit the Tibetans to do so, just in case they told people what was really happening in that tragic country. Oh, it made me feel sad for the world again, and the state of it. When I left, I told him to tell Magnus that I had decided to go to Sherab Ling and might be back in a few days. It was the best I could do. I could not face going to tell him straight there and then, go through the motions of deciding what to do about the tola of hash I'd ordered. It was no good, I was doing a runner, simple as that. But really there was nothing to feel guilty about. Somehow, I didn't think the dealer would have a spare tola of hash on his hands for too long in a place like Bir.

By now it was hot outside and a fantastically clear day after the storm from the night before. Everything was so precise; green fields, blue sky, and white topped mountains in a kingdom of rocks. I walked down the main street until I got to the other end of town from which I had entered. Sherab Ling was supposed to be in that direction. Apparently, there was a path you could take behind the final monastery in Bir which would lead you through the fields and woods until you arrived in Sherab Ling. But the whole thing turned out to be a complete and utter fiasco. After going the wrong way twice and not getting any further than a kilometre from Bir and over an hour's hard walking with my pack, I decided to scrap the whole idea on the spot and return to Dharamsala. Why the hell had I ever come to Bir in the first place? All because I had listened to a woman who slogged her guts out in the West in order to sponsor a load of people who, when all was said and done, probably had a far happier existence than she would ever. Poor soul, and poor me for following her.

Somehow it felt like I had made the right decision, Sherab Ling was really not my scene, even if I hadn't actually got there. I just was not ready to shut myself away on my own in such an environment and I was fully prepared to accept looking a bit of a fool by returning to a place I had only left the day before, even when I’d firmly resolved to leave it all behind me. It would just be so nice if I went back to McLeod Ganj and got a room, fell in with some dope smokers and got a bit of hash. Half a tola maybe, instead of a full one. In fact, my mind turned to hash again with such force that I decided to see if Magnus was still at home and, as I was going back, perhaps he could sell me some of his hash and then he could pick up the tola I had ordered when it arrived with the dealer. When I got to his place however it was all locked up, he was probably teaching, which I guess was just as well because I might have got sucked back into the Bir scene again if I'd seen him.

So, I just went to the crossroads on the outskirts of the Bir Tibetan colony and waited for the bus. One came after about two hours and it happened to be going straight to Dharamsala which was good, as it meant I would miss having to face those assholes in Baijnath bus station all over again. It was a great feeling sitting on the back seat of a packed bus with my rucksack on my knees whilst talking to a couple of Indians who, for some reason, thought I cut a remarkably funny figure. Direct or not, the bus was a rough, rocky ride and when going over some bits of ground you got physically hurt. But the mountains were great, they were with us all the way and you could get some very nice feelings just by looking out at them. On the last stage I got talking to a guy who said he worked as a steward in a hotel in Delhi and that he remembered me from there. I had honestly never seen him in my life before but I did not want to spoil his fun. He was a bit of a bore however and I only chatted with him just in case he was into hash and that maybe he would invite me for a smoke when the bus got to the station. But it did not turn out like that at all, I mean come on, why should it have? So nothing came of it except the usual parting smiles before we departed from each other's lives forever.

The final stretch from Dharamsala to McLeod Ganj saw me change to a bus which got really packed before it left the station and I had to fight hard to keep them from putting my rucksack on the roof. No way did I want that, I was convinced it would fall off halfway up the hill, conveniently into someone else’s lap and never to be seen again. It was another hard ride although much shorter of course, but worse in a way because a little kid next to me kept doing shit farts all the way up. I could have killed him, quite happily watched the little fucker go bouncing back down the hill before landing in a heap at the bottom. Somehow, I managed to get through it without losing my rag and clipping him hard across the back of the head. I arrived in McLeod Ganj early evening where, from the sight of so many people about, I knew it would again be tough for me to find a decent place to kip. Once I'd got off the bus, I went to the Kunga Guest House where there were no rooms available but they did have a communal tent on the rooftop in which there was space to sleep. It was like that, the whole town was packed, nothing much had changed in the day or so since I'd left to go to Bir. I mean, why should I have expected it to? There were three other people already in the tent but since the roof had a nice view of the town and mountains I decided to stay and take a berth. The reception area of the Kunga was the meeting place for its residents. After I'd deposited my rucksack in the tent, I went down and there were a couple of groups of people hanging around so I sat on one of the sofas, initially without saying much.

After a while I got talking to a Swedish guy called Tom, who it soon became clear was a smoker, and so I asked him if he knew a good place to score hash. He said I should go to Johnny’s, the same dealer Jim had told me about. We talked for a while longer and then after reading for a little while back up in the tent, I went along to Johnny's and bought a half tola of black. In the evening I went out to eat with Tom and then back to his room to smoke some of the hash in his pipe. Nice pipe! Turned out Tom was a bit of a drinker as well, and whilst I joined him for one, I let him carry on solo after he said he wanted more, and then more after that. I stuck to smoking hash instead and I guess we had a pretty good time, even getting to the point of reading each other our poems. His best was something called Awake Awoke Awaken, with me telling him I now felt ready enough to read some of my stuff out in front of people, probably because I was buoyed by the reception Jim had given me the other day down in his fry pit, especially to Opium Bongos.

Crashed out late that night and it was nice in the tent on the roof, lying there in my sleeping bag and listening to the dogs barking in the valley below. The following morning, I sat around the reception area of the Kunga for a couple of hours, apart from staying in the tent it was the only place to go. Some of the people staying in the guest house later went off to visit a one-legged sadhu, it seemed like they were all smokers including, obviously, the sadhu. I sat and listened to a couple of English lads by the names of Steve and Curly describe to me their recent acid trip in the presence of the sadhu and they talked about going again that evening and taking along with them some food, drink, and hash. There would be a party because it was a full moon. Tom appeared early afternoon looking pretty hung over from all his smoking and drinking the night before and I suddenly realised I had nothing more to say to him, he was way too far into a lifestyle I did not want to be part of. A boozer’s life. So, I just wrote in the afternoon, notes of my trip so far, and hung around the guest house engaging in idle conversation.

By early evening quite a few people were getting ready to go to the cave of the one-legged sadhu, having gone out and bought food along with other stuff. I was undecided about whether to go along also. One part of me wanted to hang around the guest house on my own, but then I rolled a joint, smoked a pipe and realised I would be going after all. Kurt, the German guy from Bir who’d been hanging out with Magnus and his gang, suddenly appeared just before I went for dinner so I gave him some hash to smoke. He was not such a bad kid after all, quite sweet really, but clearly a hopeless stone head. During the meal in the restaurant next door to the Kunga, where there was a group of us sat round the table, I realised it was quite a nice atmosphere, very secure, as we all talked and ate together. Something which I had no doubt been searching for since saying good bye to Thomas on the streets of Bombay over a week ago.

A whole bunch of us eventually left the Kunga around 9 - 9.30 in the evening to go to the sadhu's cave, but first we called in at Johnny's place to pick up some hash and whilst we were there everyone also bought a space cake plus some cigarettes. The fags would no doubt be needed if chillums started to get passed around down in the cave, an almost sure-fire certainty. We set off on what was about a 2 km walk down to a neighbouring village on the far outer edges of McLeod Ganj and then we followed a path through some fields down to the bottom of a little valley. Upon arrival at his cave, the one-legged sadhu was there with a group of four hippies, two guys and two women. We gave them some food and other offerings but were not made to feel that welcome, which was a bit disappointing to say the least. The hippies looked pretty pissed off, as if we had spoilt a nice little private smoking session, which in fairness we probably had, and because the sadhu sat on the floor it was even difficult for us to know that he had only one leg.

Nevertheless, we all sat down in the cave, there were quite a few of us so we were almost in rows. The sadhu and the hippies were at one end around a fire and the rest of us sat in the dark behind them. The main problem, it soon transpired, was that the sadhu did not speak much English so his conversation was very limited and what there was of it really just centred around the subject of hash. Mainly however, and for quite some time, there was just an uncomfortable silence as nobody else spoke, so the sadhu was left to mumble away to himself. The whole thing was more than a little pathetic and ridiculous. I desperately wanted to do something to liven up the atmosphere but was stumped as to what, so I just sat there in the shadows waiting for the smoking to begin, as if that was going to solve the problem. It just so happened that I was sitting right in front of a shrine to Siva, probably the sadhu’s, and I kept looking at his poster of Lord Siva which I have to say was really rather incredible, best thing about the whole scene by a country mile.

After some time, the sadhu got out a huge chillum and announced to everyone, "One tola chillum, one tola chillum!" which meant that we all had to get our pieces of dope out and give some to him. About 10 grams of hash and six cigarettes were used in the mix, so that by the time it was ready there was a huge amount of ganja to smoke in one go. When the sadhu lit it up it went round 12 people 3 times and we all took 2 big tokes on it each time. Even then it was not finished and it was left to the professional smokers to clear up the final dregs, namely the sadhu, the hippies and young Kurt who had strung along with the group from the Kunga and who simply couldn't get enough of it. For me at least, the hash had a very strong effect on top of the space cake from Johnny's. I started looking at the Lord Siva poster which seemed to be coming alive right in front of me and it was only the fact that I was feeling mildly paranoid about my fast heart rate going boom ticker boom which stopped me from seemingly falling right into it. All in all, I was very stoned.

The sadhu started making tea, "jingly chai" as he called it, but still no one spoke, the smoke only serving to seriously compound the already inhibited atmosphere. It might simply have been the case that there were too many people. Certainly, that was how the hippies saw it because not long after the chillum was finished they got up and left, which was probably no bad thing because the vibe they had been giving off quite simply stank. All the same, the group inertia persisted. A little while later another bunch of punters arrived. Their voices sounded happy and lively as they approached, but their faces soon had looks of dismay when they saw what the scene was like inside the cave. They came in and soon were silent themselves. It seemed a bit low to blame it all on the one-legged sadhu, but what the hell else could it be? It was his place after all, his show.

Eventually one of the newcomers asked, with it had to be said, some degree of exasperation, whether or not anyone could make up a chillum because he was broke and had nothing to smoke. He did have his chillum with him however, so I gave him some of my hash and told him to use it, somewhat relieved at being given the opportunity to show a friendly gesture. After I smoked some of the chillum that he made from my hash, plus a couple of cigarettes, I went outside the cave to sit on some rocks. Initially I suffered a small bout of stoned paranoia over any possible snakes that might have been about, but that soon went away when I realised just how cool the evening was and that anyway, they would never get so far up into hills and away from the plains. Once I'd got settled on a nice big rock, I realised what a fantastic night it was. Full moon with mountains so clear they were casting deep shadows over the smaller hills below. It was as if I could sense somewhere that the Himalayas were the pride of the planet; quite simply nowhere else on Earth was more awesome. I felt at one with it, the whole damn spectacle, what had created the mountains had created me; both being the sport of one single all-encompassing emptiness. From my perch on the rock, I saw more people coming down to the cave. Some rather bad stomach indigestion meant that I smoked a couple more cigarettes and then felt much better after releasing a few farts brought on by the nicotine.

Despite my usual stoned confusion, I felt that some kind of change was taking place inside me, that it might well be this period of smoking was drawing to an end and that I would soon be able to devote my time to meditation. Suddenly I felt strong enough to do it. After an hour or so on the rock I went to sit with a group of people outside the cave and smoked a couple of chillums with them before eventually going back inside and once more into the realm of the one-legged sadhu. By now there was not as many people as before but still there was not much going on apart from chillums being smoked and some food getting cooked, so I went and sat at the back of the cave. All the others in the group I had come down with from the Kunga had gone back by this stage but I stayed on. Somehow, I had got used to the atmosphere, strange as that might sound, however I eventually left after smoking my share of one final joint and chillum made up by the one-legged sadhu. He could certainly smoke, I had to give him that. I nearly had a heart attack walking back up the steep hill out of the valley I was feeling so damn ropey. Then on the outskirts of Mcleod Ganj I was closely followed by a shady character smoking a cigarette but thankfully it did not come to anything, just made me jog the final leg back to the Kunga. By the time I got to crash out in the tent on the roof, the sky was beginning to get light.

Unsurprisingly I woke up late the following morning, inevitable I suppose after all that time I had spent in and around the one-legged sadhu's cave the night before. I felt hot and it was as if my blood was still thick with dope, really fucking fuzzy. Eventually I had a breakfast of two plain teas and two hunks of Tibetan bread with some peanut butter. I just really wasn't up to doing much, so I sat around with the others in the reception of the Kunga and talked about the night before. I also played some backgammon, a game in which I thought I was a master. Played three and lost three which had to mean something, like time to retreat and that things were by no means as great as I thought they were. Later Tom came in with the Sunday papers having also spent the night in the cave where I had avoided him because he’d brought some bottles along. He was in bare chested mode but looked horribly unhealthy with his red face and a rough brand of Indian cigarette dangling from his lips. About as beautiful as an exploded piece of shit.

There was still a bit of my dope left and I decided I would smoke it at some point during the day and then that would be it. No more getting stoned! I managed to get out in the late afternoon to go for a walk to the waterfall, which was a kilometre or so away from town. Everything was clear and the sun was shining brightly as I passed Buddhist monks and Tibetan families out for a Sunday afternoon stroll. When I got the waterfall, I found a quiet spot to sit, where I took my top off and caught the last rays of the sun. I did some mediation before I returned to the Kunga early evening and smoked up the last of my dope with some others in the tent on the roof, but not before some rather intense internal deliberations over whether I should share it with them or not, because there was not as much left of it as I’d initially thought.

I stayed in the Kunga for the rest of the evening, eating there and then hanging around the reception where the rigours of the night before saw me enveloped in a cloud of inertia. Tom appeared at some point with some bottles of Tibetan wine called chang and which he steadily drank whilst whoever oversaw the music player forced us to sit in silence and listen to UB40. It was all a bit depressing and I thought about going to bed early. There was nothing I had left to say to the likes of Tom who sat there with his red face, red top and bottles of alcohol. It was made all the worse by the sound of UB40’s bad reggae, their drone reminding me of the early to mid-80s when they had a lot of hit records, many of which were dull, almost irritating, and which made it all a bit of a mystery as to how they'd become so popular. I really do not know if Tom wanted me to stay, I suppose he did because he'd told me on our first night that he was a social creature and would thus have probably appreciated having someone to talk to. It was a sad thing for me to do, a bit bad possibly, to reject someone like Tom without considering whether there could be so much more inside of him, sad because I had only met him two nights ago but already categorised and packed up on him. Too bad for me and too bad for Tom, but that was just the way it sometimes went, I did not hang out with pissheads. Simple as that.

Woke up early the next morning, all the other people who'd been in the tent with me had left to travel up to Srinagar in Kashmir which meant I was now on my own. As I sat there on a cushion, I felt the desperate need to smoke something but I had no dope, my last piece had gone, the only thing that I still had was a packet of Ganesh beedis. There must have been about 10 of them left. I decided to smoke them up instead of throwing them away which was my usual practice when trying to give up smoking, so I smoked three of those beedis on the spot. Somehow, I burnt a hole in the mattress I'd been sleeping on in the tent and then burnt my finger trying to stub it out. All in all it was a bit of a messy business which probably summed up where my head was, in other words all over the place. I then had a cold shower and went out to eat some breakfast. It was supposed to be the day for me to go to Tushita Retreat Centre, to see when I could get a room in which to meditate and then, obviously, live happily ever after.

By mid-morning I had got myself together to go, the centre was up in the woods behind the Kunga and I took the road, which was steep. My heart felt terrible. It was beating so fast that I had to stop and stand in the shade on a couple of occasions, but it had calmed down by the time I struck off on a path through the woods. There was no one at reception in Tushita when I arrived and I had to ask a moody looking Western nun in the office if there was anyone who could help me. "Well, there should be," she said sharply, sounding really pissed off and with that she walked off supposedly to look for someone although I was not quite sure. Maybe she was just sick of the sight of fucked people like myself and was not going to help me at all, just leave me standing there for fuck knows how long. It was difficult to tell, only time would tell, and in fact time told true because she eventually came back with someone to give me assistance. "Here" she said, as I was sitting there on the steps, "please speak to this man in the office." His name was Pema and I told him I had been up before etc etc blah blah and what should I do? Was there any chance of a room? He said the meditation course was still on and that I would have to wait until Thursday, there should be a room then. So that was that, still full, and I walked back down the hill. On the way I stopped and had something called black curd along with sweet tea in a shack by the roadside, and where I wrote a letter to some friends back home.

When I had made my way back to the Kunga I chatted with a couple of couple of Oz women who were now sleeping on the roof, in fact they'd arrived the night before where they'd slept on beds outside the tent and under the stars. We talked a bit about Buddhism and meditation, one of them had already been up to Tushita where she had joined in a group session which had been going on there and she spoke highly of it. I smoked some more of my remaining beedis at the same time as chatting with them, and soon didn't feel that well from all that cheap rough-cut tobacco, but I was determined to finish the pack and then that would be it with smoking. Crazy now that I sit back and think about it. I later went out again to post the letter I had written earlier on whilst returning from Tushita and had a snack in a place called The Himalaya, a burger.

Back at the Kunga I hung around and sat in the reception, doing some more writing, and wandering back and forth between there and the tent up on the roof. Guess you could say that I was at a loose end and I was also still smoking those damn beedis, just could not seem to finish the packet for some strange reason. At one point Tom came into the reception with a newspaper to read but we did not say anything to each other beyond the merest pleasantries and in fact he turned his chair around so that he had his back to me, which was a bit disconcerting. I tried to spark up some conversation because I did not like feeling I was a cunt but he was seriously not interested, probably because in his eyes I most certainly was a cunt. It was a bit of a bad scene to be honest and after a while I just could not stand it so went back to the tent where I stretched out my legs and tried to release some of the tension I was feeling from the vibe from Tom.

By around 5.30 I was back down in reception having had enough of the tent and where I now had a talk with some fellow travellers about the general political situation in that part of the world and the possibility of there being a war whilst we were out in India. A recent US report said there could very well be conflict between India and Pakistan, also that India would have border clashes with China. It was as if they were trying to precipitate a situation, destabilise things for their own gain by selling arms to the combatants. It all seemed horrible and dangerous. Who knows what would happen? India's unity seemed to be under so many threats; Punjab and Haryana, Kashmir, Assam, all were under heavy rule with the authorities trying to stamp out independence movements. Much killing was going on. Someone got some gear out and started rolling a spliff. Although I had at last finished my beedis and therefore in theory all forms of smoking, the spliff went round all of us and of course it was very pleasant indeed to take a few tokes. It seemed so nice just sitting on the balcony in the reception area of the Kunga, in comfortable chairs with a fine view of the valley below as it slowly slipped into evening darkness. It was easy to stay there.

After the second spliff had been passed around, which was just as good if not better than the first, one of the Oz women was back on the scene and she came up to talk to me. She told me she had just been up to Tushita again and that they now had a spare room which I could probably get. Of course, I now remembered through the smoke that I'd told her earlier on that I desperately wanted to go and do some meditation up there. I suppose the natural thing to have done when she told me it should now be possible, was to have gone immediately, so as to ask if I could move into the room that night. But after smoking the spliff the effort required to go all the way back up that steep, steep hill seemed much too much. It was far more relaxing just to sit around the Kunga and smoke the free dope which was on offer. Floundering by way of finding an adequate response I finally told her that I did not know whether to go up to Tushita there and then or, infinitely more preferable it had to be said, wait until the morning. Put simply, if I left immediately, it seemed like I would be going all the way up there because I suddenly felt pressure to uphold the image that I must have given her earlier in the afternoon of being a serious meditator. Yes, I was sure that if I did go right away up that steep, steep hill it would be purely for that, which of course was rather contemptible.

But then, lo and behold, a part of me thought that I really did want to go up there. After all it might be a good way of starting off my period of retreat, arriving mysteriously at a place deep in the woods quite late in the evening. I was rough shaven as well, in fact I didn't know whether I should try and go for it and grow a beard, as if somehow it would suit the shady character I was cutting for myself at the time. It was all in my mind, and a fucked-up mind it had to be said, filling my head with such weird visions. For the time being however, I continued to sit there and smoke instead, which surely must have given the game away to her about my true meditator's credentials, or more to the point, my lack of them. Nevertheless, I still went ahead and showed her a Green Tara postcard I had and consequently brought out the whole of my meditation kit which I'd been carrying around with me since Kopan. The statues, the booklets, the malas, the white Tibetan greeting scarf which they were all wrapped up in and which itself was wrapped in a nice maroon coloured cloth. I was suddenly very conscious I was showing them off, as if all along I had just been waiting for someone to ask me a question so I could shoot off all I knew about Tibetan Buddhism. The realisation inevitably made me feel sick and a total fraud, which of course was exactly what I was. I quickly folded it up after going through the spiel and stuck it all back in my rucksack. What a dick!

It was not until 8 pm that I decided I should go and check out the situation at Tushita. Guess I put down my indecision to a combination of being nicely comfortably stoned and also being wary of immediately acting on information someone gives to me. I'd paid the price for that by going to Bir and I didn't want to make the same mistake again, even if it wasn't quite exactly the same situation. Nevertheless it was a bit late and as I made my way out of the Kunga I more than once stopped to ask myself whether I should really bother. By the time I got to the woods it was pretty dark and I realised I'd made a mistake by not changing into a better pair of shoes, wearing as I was a pair of chappals I'd bought when bombed out on opium back in Bombay. I paid the price the closer I got to Tushita when I was stumbling all over the place and over the final bit even lost the path. Then, when I got to the office in Tushita there was no one around apart from two old Tibetan monks sitting outside who told me that Pema, the guy I needed to speak to, was in McLeod Ganj and that was where I should look for him. Suddenly I felt despairing and wanted to speak to someone who knew what was what, I really wanted that room but there was nothing the old monks could do about it so they just ignored me and returned to their own conversation whilst cutting up some vegetables. So I simply turned around, weakly thanked them for the information, and then set off in the dark with my useless chappals on my feet, convinced I would break one of my legs and that I would be lying there in the dark woods until Pema came back from McLeod Ganj.

Somehow I got back down safe enough and decided to go straight to the Kunga to see if anyone was still smoking. On my way however I bumped into the Oz woman and told her about my trek up to Tushita, suddenly pleased that I had at least gone, showed my credentials, so to speak. She said she was going to eat, having got tired of waiting for her friends and would I like to come along? So we went to the Om and her friends, the ones she'd been waiting for, were there; a big blonde Swedish guy with an NZ girlfriend and another Oz woman. We sat down with them and I suddenly realised I still felt pretty stoned, especially since it was clear these people were non-smokers and a therefore a different kind of traveller to what I had got used to hanging out with. To start with there was very little conversation and I realised it would be a horrible meal if I didn't make the effort to talk so I started to go on about meditation. Shot the bull about it and the other Oz woman turned out to be working with cancer patients. It was therefore pretty interesting listening to her stories whilst I threw in descriptions of different forms of Buddhist meditation to do with death. As if I knew! Nevertheless, all in all it turned out to be a very enjoyable meal. Once I'd managed to relax I was able to talk freely, quite inspired, and on top of that the Om served up an excellent American chop suey.

When it was over we all walked back to the Kunga where I immediately sat down with a group in reception, three lads who'd arrived in the roof tent earlier on. They turned out to be English - Ben, Matt and Andy - and as soon as I got talking to them they started skinning up, a situation which suited me just fine. They'd come down to McLeod Ganj from Srinagar, having spent six weeks in Kashmir. Following on from my conversation with the other travellers earlier that day, I asked them about the political situation up there and they told me how the people - Muslims of Kashmir - hate the Indians and love Pakistan, love Khomeini and Gaddafi. All the world terrorists in other words. If you were a tourist it was OK, but there was the possibility of something big happening although the Kashmiris were usually peaceful people. There were plenty of tanks and soldiers about whilst would be terrorists in Kashmir were now going to Pakistan for training and coming back later, after 20 days or so, and kicking up all kinds of shit. Despite all this the lads were planning on going back and would maybe would be there when it all went off and so would be able to sell their stories for thousands of pounds, at least that was what they thought, rather than the obvious, which was they wouldn't and would probably just end up dead. Our political discussion ended with everyone agreeing that India was hardly ever in the news in the West, only when things like Bhopal happened and Mrs Gandhi got shot. No one really knew what was going on in Asia yet it was all a bit of a mess, from China to Sri Lanka, Pakistan to Afghanistan and Iran close by too.

We then got down to the business of smoking some Kashmir hash. Ben, one of the lads, showed a piece to me and it was totally unlike any hash I had seen before. "Indian version of black Moroccan" was how he put it. Going by the name of Kashmiri Twist I have to say it looked and smelt exceptionally good. It was light, which meant you could smoke it throughout the day, unlike ganja and charas which could sometimes be too heavy and put you to sleep. We then spent quite a bit of time talking about the many different hashes and many different ways of smoking, but eventually I quietened down, looked at the moon from the balcony of the Kunga and just waited for the odd spliff to come my way, perfectly content sitting there in my stoned silence. In other words, I was off my face.

Crashed out around midnight and then slept heavily. As soon as I woke up the next morning I began to smoke again, just lay around the tent with Ben, Matt and Andy as they rolled spliffs and showed me photographs of the farm they'd stayed at in Morocco which looked like it was packed full of hash plants. The other guys who'd been with them were now in the nick after being caught trying to smuggle a couple of kilos of the gear back into Spain. We smoked spliffs of Kashmiri Twist, which was brown green in colour and fluffed up nicely when burnt, really quite different to other hashes in India which tended to be black. And of course because the Twist was not so heavy, you could smoke it all day. Steve said it was what the Kashmiris smoked themselves. He then showed me a piece of charas, hashish from the male cannabis plant, which was greenish black in colour and smelt incredibly strong. "Yeah, I think I'll roll a spliff of charas," he said, as I handed it back to him. I still hadn't managed to get out of bed. I knew that I should try and make the effort to get up to Tushita, but it didn't look like I was going to do it for a couple of hours. Not that it worried me. Things just had to be left as they were, there was no point in forcing myself out of the situation, everything was bound to fall into place in its own time.

So I just continued to lie there, first smoke the spliff of charas which Matt rolled and then a couple more spliffs of the Twist. Just before midday one of us managed to get it together to go down to reception and order some breakfast. In the early afternoon the lads decided to go down to the waterfall in Bhagsu and, in their words, "check out the nature". I didn't feel like I had enough energy to go with them and so I just stayed in the Kunga and wrote some notes. Guess it felt like I had been grounded again because I had simply smoked too much dope, but all the same it was nice enough sitting on the balcony staring at the plains below, very nice indeed. In fact the weather soon changed, the day had started off hot but then there were many clouds and the threat of rain. There was a nasty breeze as well and not long after that I had to help the Tibetan boy who worked in the Kunga to cart all the stuff out of the tent and into reception because it soon began to piss down. The tent then collapsed due to the strong winds. Somehow I could only take those things as a sign that I should get my ass up to Tushita and so in the late afternoon I hiked up the hill again to see if there was anyone about.

This time I had no problems because as soon as I entered the courtyard Pema came out of the door, took my hand, and said there was a room for me if I still wished to come and meditate. "Oh yeah. Yeah I do, I do!" I said feeling delighted and relieved. I was in, finally! Pema showed me the room, which in fact was one of the more expensive ones, costing 25 rupees a day, however he told me that in a couple of days I would be able to move into one which was cheaper, no problem. He gave me the key and I told him I would move into it the next day. It was too late to move out of the Kunga and I didn't want to waste my precious rupees on a one night double booking. Once Pema was happy with the arrangement I walked back down the hill in a jubilant frame of mind. Tomorrow I would at last be able to start my meditational practice and also be in a peaceful environment which might be good for my writing. Plus, it meant I also had one more night for smoking, just sitting around, and once I got back to the Kunga I chatted with the Oz woman, telling her that yes, getting a room at Tushita would be a great opportunity for meditating etc etc blah blah urgh urgh!!!

Played a game of backgammon with the Oz woman. Lost. Then someone rolled a joint and I had a good couple of hits on it when it came my way. Not long after that Ben, Matt and Andy returned from their outing to Bhagsu. "Hey, you know what we've done today?" said Matt. "Sat in a cave and got stoned. Fuckin' great it was!" The only thing which had spoilt it for them was that Matt had somehow broke his chillum. All the same they sat down and proceeded to get their dope out and pass it around, which meant that spliffs were soon coming at me from every direction. The lads seemed quite excited when I told them that "Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom" was playing that night in the video bar a few doors down from the Kunga. When the Oz women left to go to dinner I was mildly insulted they didn't invite me to come along with them but I let it ride, I mean what was the point in kicking up about it? No point at all and no big deal anyway. The lads sat around talking for a while, going on about how "great it was" playing backgammon in the cave, before they also decided to go out to eat.

I ended up in Kailash, one of the worst restaurants in McLeod Ganj, returning to the Kunga around 9.30 where I then put all my stuff back in the tent because it didn't look as if it would rain. By the time I'd done all that the lads had returned from their meal and when I asked if they'd gone to check out the timings "Indiana Jones" Matt simply replied, "Nah, couldn't be fucked!" They soon started smoking again and playing cards, a game called "Arsehole", both of which I joined in with. Played, smoked, and won! When I went to the bog and came back, the Oz women had returned and one of them had already taken my place in the game. She shouldn't have bothered because she was "Arsehole" the whole fucking time she played. I just sat in a chair watching for a while before I went up to the tent on the roof and crashed out.

Woke up the following morning still in one piece, with there being no wind, no rain. The boys soon woke as well and surprise, surprise, started smoking their ganja again, however when the joint was handed to me I let it pass, knowing that I was soon going on a steep climb up to Tushita. Ben and Andy explained to me their money situation and I could soon see they were really quite hopeless when it came to financial management and they could quite easily end up being in India with absolutely nothing. They were already talking about selling some of their clothes in order to raise more funds. Both had come out with 700 quid, and in six weeks had spent 500 each; way, way too much considering they still wanted to go to Kathmandu, Goa and South India. Ridiculous really and they didn't stand a chance of being to do all that without some serious help from people back home.

I started to pack my rucksack. I felt quite reluctant to do so, it was just so tempting to stay in the tent with the boys and smoke all day, but I was just about old enough to know it was too sad a thing for me to do. Breakfast in reception saw the Oz women heading off to Manali and by mid morning I finally got everything together and checked out of the Kunga. On my way out I saw Kunga, the owner, and told him I might be back in a couple of weeks. I then walked up to Tushita with all my stuff, my heart beating horribly fast as I slowly climbed the hill and by the time I arrived I was in quite a sweat. I put everything in my room and got out my Buddha statues and placed them on a shelf. There was a nice Medicinal Buddha mandala on the wall that I gazed at whilst sitting on my bed and recovering from the walk, which all told had been a bit of a killer.

After a while however I felt a bit unsettled, there was a meditation course still going on in the centre and two days to go before it finished, so I was very much an outsider and didn't feel like being anywhere in Tushita apart from in my room. At some point I decided I would go down to McLeod Ganj and buy a big exercise book to write up all my notes in. I would also get my chappals mended as the soles were falling apart, too much wear and tear from all the recent walking, often done when stoned. Cabin fever soon set in, so in the early afternoon I walked downhill back into McLeod Ganj, the place I'd been trying, or maybe not trying, so hard to escape from these last few days. First of all I went to a shoe mender who was just a young boy sitting on one of the side streets. It took a while for me to explain to him what I wanted done, which of course was far less than what he would have liked, however I kept my eye on him and pulled the chappal away after he had finished doing what was required. From where I was standing whilst watching him work, I could also see Andy from the Kunga sitting on a bench by the entrance to the hut of a local chillum maker. "Matt must be getting his chillum repaired," I thought, so after I paid the boy I walked over to see what was happening. Matt soon came out and showed me his newly repaired chillum.

"Oh yeah" I said, "looks good!"

"Yeah," replied Matt, "he's glued it all together, should be no problem now. Coming for a smoke?"

"Ah, shit man I'd love to but y' know, I'm supposed to be at the meditation centre and, y' know, the two don't quite go together. I wouldn't mind a fag if you've got one though."

And so Matt gave me a fag and we departed from each other again.

I walked back across the street to get my exercise book and then went into The Darjeeling for a tea. As soon as I was in it started to piss down outside and I could see from the way the clouds were forming that there was going to be a one hell of a storm. I met two gentle English boys in there and it was pleasant enough talking to them for an hour or so about all the places we'd been to and seen in India. It was one of those well oiled travellers conversations because we had all been on the road for months. Eventually they decided to make a move and I got up to leave with them, however it was still raining quite heavily and I stood in the doorway of the cafe for a good five minutes wandering what it was I should do as the English boys disappeared into the distance whilst getting a bit of a soaking. Finally I made a run for it but only ended up in another tea house about three doors away from The Darjeeling and there I sat for another hour drinking plain tea and listening to Eric Clapton. When I eventually stepped back outside it was still raining too hard for me to face walking back up the hill to Tushita so I decided to go and pay a call on Jim, to see if he was still in town and if so how he might be getting on. I hadn't seen him since he'd left Bir and he probably thought I was still out in the wilds somewhere.

When I got to his place, his fry pit in the basement of The Green, it was all locked up so I ran back up the steps to the restaurant. It was far too wet to walk around. And then when I stepped inside The Green, Jim was in there sitting at a table in the corner with a Tibetan text placed in front of him.

"Hey Jim," I said as I went across to sit down.

"Hey bud, how you doin'? Thought I saw you in town the other day but I didn't believe it was you. What happened? Why are you back?"

"Ah, shit man, y' know how these things go. Sometimes they just don't work out."

"Oh, why was that?"

"I don't know, just wasn't much to do. It was one of those things where I knew I had made the wrong decision. All the time I was there I just wanted to get back to McLeod Ganj."

I then proceeded to tell him the whole sorry tale of my going to Bir; being given the run around in Baijnath bus station until it got to the point where it nearly drove me mad; smoking dope at Namgyal's with him and a bunch of kids who were supposed to be teaching English; my farcical attempts to get to Sherab Ling before turning back and getting the hell out of there.

"So where you been staying?" he asked after I'd finished.

I then told him how I'd been staying for the last five days in a tent up on the roof of the Kunga halfway up the hill, and how just about everyone in the place was a dope smoker, including Kunga the owner and that it had been great, well, more or less.

"So you've been in town for five days smokin' dope and you don't even give me a call?" Jim said in mock outrage after he'd heard about all the gear I'd been having.

He made me feel guilty but I knew it was just a joke. He then told me about the full moon party he'd been to which in comparison to my trek down to the cave of the one legged sadhu with his jingly chai sounded great, incredible even. Jim had been invited by an Indian friend to go to an ashram 12 km away and there in a spotless temple he'd smoked the finest ganja and listened to sadhus play sitar and tabla all through the night. He said that the sadhus had something which was known as a barrel chillum and which when fully loaded took about 3 tolas of hashish, approximately 30 grams. Jim estimated that they smoked together about 25 tolas of hash during the course of that night of the full moon. A cool 250 grams! In England that would have been about £1000 worth of gear, an astounding amount in anyone's book.

"Say," Jim said after we'd been shooting the breeze for a while, "do you fancy a beer?"

"No, no, I can't Jim," I said, "I'm now staying in a meditation centre. You're not supposed to get pissed."

"Ah come on," he said, somehow probably picking up that I didn't sound too convincing, "what's a beer?"

"Look man," I said, "if we had some gear, and I wish we had, I'd have a smoke, but I don't want to drink. It sends my head."

"Oh, ok, ok" he said, "some other time."

Soon after this, Jim's Tibetan friend came into the restaurant, it was time for his English lesson again. Unfortunately he hadn't improved much since last week's performance, his level of conversation was absolutely atrocious and much of the time was spent with the three of us nodding our heads but not really knowing what the fuck was going on. As Jim persisted in trying to converse with his pupil, my mind pondered upon his offer of going for a beer. Somehow it didn't seem like a bad idea! It was a miserable afternoon, pissing down with rain and blowing a gale, so what better place was there to be than a nice warm pub full of Tibetans? But I knew I couldn't afford it and I already owed Jim a couple of rounds from the other week.

"Hey Jim," I said after the Tibetan had left, "I could do with a beer but I'm fucked so far as money's concerned."

"No problem," he replied, "if you were in England you'd buy me a beer wouldn't you?"

"Well, of course!" I said, happy in the knowledge of what was coming next.

"So there's no big deal if I buy you a couple of beers out here then?"

"No, no," I replied, "don't suppose there is!"

And so we finished our cups of ginger tea and made our way through the rain to The Yak, the only pub in McLeod Ganj. When we stepped in through the door we made for an empty corner table, in fact it was the same one I had sat at when I'd come in with Tom a week or so previously; sat and watched him drink a couple of bottles of Black Prince and tell some of his initially fantastic stories. This time around Jim ordered two bottles of Golden Eagle at 25 rupees a pop and which was a somewhat lighter beer than the Black Prince which weighed in at a more hefty 27 rupees. It was nice going through the ritual of pouring some ice cold beer into an empty glass and then, when it was full, raise it my lips and take a draught which hit the back of my throat and rolled into my stomach igniting various other parts of my body along the way.

"Mmmmm" I said, putting the glass back down on the table, "that tastes so good!"

As we drank we began to talk about meditation, the hazards of practice and the hazards of non-practice. Think it was fair to say that whilst Jim had more to talk about in regard to the former, I had plenty to say about the latter, about which I was becoming something of an expert, a serial offender in terms of running shy of the meditation cushion. Don't know why but Jim began to talk about Thailand and how it would be a good idea for me to go there for a year, just sit and do some vipassana meditation.

"Look how much good Sri Lanka did you" he said, "you can't deny those experiences you had there!"

He was referring to Nilambe of course, and those couple of weeks I’d spent at the meditation centre there, not to all the rest of it, which was weed smoking all the way up the west coast from Galle to Colombo.

"Yeah, yeah. I know Jim, they were great, but it isn't me who should go to Thailand, it's you. When you're saying these things to me, you're really saying them to yourself. You're the one with the discipline. You're the one who can sit full lotus. Don't kid yourself, it's you who should be going".

But no matter how much I tried to tell him, he just wouldn't listen. It got to the stage where he was offering to go back to Canada so that he could work and send money to me. He wanted to be my sponsor! But it was a ridiculous and frightening idea, borderline preposterous. Since Sri Lanka, my experiences had been so far removed from the peace and quiet which comes from simply sitting down in a bare empty room, that it truly frightened me. At the moment I was on a different path, and in the light of all the drugs I had been taking, all the tobacco I had been smoking and now the alcohol I was drinking, it had to be said that it was a far less wholesome one. Yet it was one which I seemed destined to walk, as if it would somehow cleanse parts of me which I wouldn't be able to get to at the moment if I simply sat down and tried to meditate.

When our beers were finished I said, "Let's have another one and I'll get this round." But Jim insisted on paying and this time he brought me back a Black Prince instead of a Golden Eagle. I poured some into my glass and took a good draw on it. Yes! Yes! Yes! It was bloody strong lager and it surprised me how joyous I could feel over an alcoholic drink when I'd had little more than a couple of beers in the last 18 months. In fact the Black Prince tasted so good I had another one, but by the time I was halfway through it I felt so pissed that Jim had to help me out. Somewhere amongst all our drinking at The Yak, we each ate a vegetable chow mein which must have looked quite messy. When we stepped out of the pub it was late evening and although the rain had stopped I was in no condition to walk back up the hill to Tushita. It was too high, too dark, too far and too fuckin' dangerous. If I had attempted to have walked along that rocky path, I would almost certainly have broken a couple of legs, so I just followed Jim back to his place and crashed out on his floor as he plucked away on his sitar apparently unaffected by the booze.

Woke up at 7.30 the next morning on Jim's floor. I was surprised I didn't have a hangover. Jim had given me a sleeping bag and mattress and I had slept like a log, very comfortably, whilst Jim said he'd had a poor night's sleep, and when I saw what his bed was made up of, I wasn't surprised. I felt bad he had given me so much. We went to a place called Dolkar for breakfast and whilst we were eating Jim wrote on a piece of paper his name and two addresses plus phone numbers for him, to serve as contact details if I should ever wish to seek him out in Canada. I wished him all the best in his attempts to get a visa extension in Delhi, which was where he was off to in the next couple of days. Strange thing happened when I looked at his personal information, which was -

Jim Fitzgerald
c/o 637 Christie St.
Toronto
Ontario
Canada M6G 3E6
(416) 651 3849

The fact was his surname almost certainly must have pointed to some kind of Irish connection in his family ancestry, nineteenth century possibly, time of the famine. Now didn’t my Mysore astro-palm reader, Sri Daniel Roberts, indicate I would meet someone from Ireland whose name began with J? So there you go, Sri Daniel might have looked down on his luck when I bumped into him on those hot and dusty streets of the Sandalwood City a month or two back down the line, but his eye for a correct prediction was more or less completely spot on. J for Jim, Fitzgerald as in the wilds of County Kerry. It was a done deal as far as I was concerned and it left me in no mood to ever underestimate the powers of Indian astro-palmists when what they say can turn out to be true.

Just as I was leaving and getting ready for the hike back up to Tushita I ran into the Charms smoking Oz guy who'd been on the same bus as me when I'd travelled up from Delhi, which was now coming up to the best part of a couple of weeks ago. He was with someone and they had their rucksacks with them.

"You guys going?"

"Nah, nah," replied the Oz guy to my question, "we've finally got space up at The Greenwood so we're going there today."

I had bumped into a couple of times in McLeod Ganj and he would always go on about trying to get rooms in The Greenwood, a place which lay a couple of km outside McLeod Ganj and in the woods.

"Yeah," he said, "we've got three rooms between two of us. Great up there! Got couch, armchairs, open fire, kitchen for cooking."

"Yeah," I said, "sounds wicked. How much is it costing?"

"We rent all that for 60 rupees a day."

After a while he asked me if I wanted to come and take a look at it, there was enough space in there for six people, so there would be no problem if three shared it. Forgetting that I had only just moved up to Tushita, where I was supposedly on my way back in order to meditate and generally clean up my act, I agreed to go and take a look at the place. So I left with the Oz guy and the other guy who happened to be Canadian and who was called Leon. After a half hour walk we arrived at the house, which looked like it had been built by in the days when Dharamsala was a hill station. It appeared to be deserted, but the Oz guy went to find the manager who when he appeared was Indian and looked little older than a boy. He opened the place up and we stepped inside. There was a big living room with a couch, chairs, fire and two beds in it, there was also a side room with a table and mattress, and there was a back room with a double bed. There was also a wash room to the side of the back room. For three of us it all seemed perfect. I thought the atmosphere was very peaceful and that the surroundings were in fact quite beautiful.

As I stood there, thinking about what to do, it seemed that it might be a better place to write and meditate than Tushita, where everything was a lot more ordered but where it was quite possible to step out of line. Suddenly another guy appeared, as if from out of nowhere, and he went up to the Oz guy to ask him if it was still OK for him and two of his friends to take the back room. Apparently the Oz guy had agreed to all this the night before, but had forgot to tell us. That would now mean six people instead of three sharing the three rooms which didn't seem so appealing, and what followed was worse because this new guy said that in the evenings everyone could use the living room to cook a big meal because it had a fireplace. In other words people could all take turns in cooking, something about which I knew fuck all.

It turned out this guy was Israeli and he soon started talking about food, kebabs etc, which were what he always had back home. He told us how much he missed this food, that he was stoned the other day and had got a hard on after someone described to him a meal of diced lamb and chicken. He seemed a nice enough, and I guess it made me feel sad that I simply couldn't stand him. He offered me a smoke of hash and soon came back with a homemade water bong which he then filled with a hash tobacco mix in its bowl and passed to me after he'd lit it, telling me that he thought chillums were far too dry and that smoking hash water cooled in a bong was much nicer. Everyone in Israel smoked bongs apparently, well, those who were smoking hash that is, and I remembered Israeli guys in Amsterdam from a few years ago constantly making up little bowls in their bongs. I smoked a bowl up in one toke and then handed it back to him, sitting there in a state of chronic indecision which was now greatly compounded by the dope, the effect of which soon began to kick in. Everyone started talking about going to buy food, cooking utensils and getting things organised, clean the place up, etc. I really didn't know what to do, how had I managed to stumble into such a situation?

The manager came back and asked us to sign the visitors book and write down all our particulars; passport numbers, where we'd come from, the usual shit. Soon enough I found myself signing my name. Somehow I guess I must have struck quite a sad picture, extremely nervous and unable to see the answer to a simple question; was I doing something that I didn't want to do? Was I suddenly going to make the biggest mistake of the whole of my journey? All this time I had been planning on going to Tushita, in fact technically was in Tushita, and now it looked like I was turning away from all that after only a single night during the course of which I didn't even stay there. Yet it seemed that was exactly what I was going to do after the manager handed back my passport, having spent about ten minutes studying its particulars and thus making me even more agitated. I mean come on, what the hell was he looking at? I went outside to join the others when he was finally done.

"Yeah, plenty of space for parties and barbecues!" the Oz guy enthused to me.

"Yeah, right" I said, trying to sound equally enthusiastic but fully knowing it wasn't my scene.

The Oz guy and the Israeli guys soon left to go down to McLeod Ganj to start to buy stuff, whilst I stayed on a bit because the feckless manager had forgotten to get me to fill out one of his endless fuckin' forms, so I had to do that. Then I walked back to Tushita on my own through the woods, where the effects of the bong fully hit me and my head was stuffed with all kinds of disjointed thoughts.

It seemed strange that I should have bumped into the Oz guy and that he should have come up with his offer. Maybe it was chance. Maybe I could make it all a productive experience, but the trouble was that it was blindingly obvious everyone would be smoking hash and that was quite simply something which I didn't want to do. I seriously needed to dry out! Then again, there was nothing to stop me from not smoking, but I had little faith in my willpower, after all I had only been in The Greenwood less than ten minutes and had already smoked a water bong which had knocked me sideways, so there was no way of knowing what else I might get up to. Nevertheless it still might be a good opportunity for me to work on myself whilst in the company of others, not to reject their presence or wish I was somewhere else. I could even look upon it as a great adventure, get into cooking delicious food and learn how to make great chai, become king of the kitchen and win the respect of everyone due to my hitherto unknown culinary skills.

My mind continued rambling on in this vein until I reached Tushita when I sat down in my room and stared at the Seven Medicinal Buddhas mandala and realised how peaceful the atmosphere was. Suddenly that was enough to convince me that I would be far more likely to finish my book and practice some meditation if I remained at Tushita.