Words Without Music: A Memoir (24 page)

Our information about the Khyber Pass was sketchy. It was known that no commercial buses passed that way. There was clearly no rail travel and whatever air transportation might have been available was far too expensive for us. The best we could find out was that there were “oilers” (big oil rigs transporting gasoline and heating oil) going through the Khyber Pass to Pakistan all the time. Travelers would wait on the main road out of Kabul until one of them would pull over. The going rate was one British pound per person, two at the most (the drivers preferred English money). It all seemed a little unlikely, but we had no choice but to try. First we changed money in the market and bought about four pounds, and the next morning we were standing on the road outside of Kabul leading to the pass. In only a matter of minutes, a big truck stopped just ahead of us. I suppose he was a Pakistani driver, as he knew a little English. Sure enough, the fare would be two pounds for us both. It was only a few hours to cross the pass, but the trip was extraordinarily beautiful. We had the name of a small town used for the border crossing, but after being dropped off near Peshawar we went on to Lahore, which would be our main stop in Pakistan. Also from here on we would be traveling by rail, where—with a few notable exceptions—travel was much more comfortable than the buses we had used since leaving Erzurum.

The British colonial regime had left behind a three-gauge rail system that served the whole of India and Pakistan, all of which it had ruled as one country before the disastrous partition of 1947. I would say that the whole governmental infrastructure, including mail and telephone, was then running quite well. Before the British, there had been another well-organized government on the Indian subcontinent, that of the Mughal Empire, which had ruled from the early 1500s until the British East India Company gradually took over some two hundred years later.

With a history of four hundred years of well-organized government as a legacy, it should be no surprise that India is considered today to be the most populous and successful democracy in the world. However, JoAnne and I were there long before the age of internet communication, and some things were not functioning in a completely modern way by Western standards. Even in a major city, like Bombay, you had to go to a telephone office equipped with rows of wooden benches in order to make an international telephone call. There, you waited for your phone connection. When you placed the call, you were given a choice of “normal,” “fast,” or “lightning.” For an international call, “normal” would mean a wait of six to eight hours, “fast” two hours, and “lightning,” half an hour. Still, everything actually worked and, considering the size of the country and the density of its population, not that badly at all.

First, though, we had to cross the border between Pakistan and India, and given the deep hostility between the two countries, we were expecting some delay. We began by taking the train from Peshawar to Lahore. Lahore is the second largest city in Pakistan and the capital of its Punjab region. It is laid out as a grand city, with wide boulevards and architecture that looks a lot like what you see in India if you visit the Red Fort in New Delhi or other buildings that have survived from the Mughal dynasties, which lasted into the eighteenth century. We found Lahore picturesque and pleasant but left after a few days for a small town nearby, which was where the actual crossing took place. The Pakistani and Indian border authorities had decided that a small fixed number of crossings both ways would be allowed. It was clear that they both would have been quite happy to shut down the border altogether, but since that was not practical, the crossings were cut down to a bare handful each day. We had to queue up and wait our turn, which in our case was about three days, not nearly as bad as we had feared. While there we were treated to all kinds of horror stories from the local hotel people and restaurant waiters about how horrible India was and how unhappy we would be there. Of course, once in the Indian Punjab we heard the same stories about the Pakistani Punjab, almost identical in sentiment and tone.

We managed to make the crossing in the morning and headed directly for Amritsar. We were now in the homeland of the Sikhs and were eager to visit the Golden Temple. All of this was quite nearby. Once we arrived at the lodgings provided for pilgrims, we were greeted and asked if we were on a pilgrimage. We replied that we were, which had the virtue of being true. We were then given two beds in a dormitory for married people and were invited to take all our meals in the adjoining dining room. We would soon find that this kind of hospitality was available throughout India. It is a wonderful system that encourages all kinds of people to travel around the country and become familiar with their own heritage. In Amritsar, the hospitality was simple, the meals always adequate and well prepared. The work of maintaining the dormitories, kitchen, and dining room seemed to be mainly volunteers. I spoke with many of them and found that they had usually traveled great distances. Their work was an offering to the temple, which they carried out with a real sense of joy. No one ever questioned our motives or right to be there. Our status as pilgrims was enough.

The Golden Temple in Amritsar is just that: a gleaming golden pavilion. It’s set in a large pond with a walkway from the shore to its entrance. Services were continuous, day and night. The music part of this service—singers, string instruments (sitars, tamboura, etc.), and percussion—was most appealing to me. This was certainly the best known of the Sikh temples. True to its renown, it was beautiful and impressive, and JoAnne and I spent the better part of four days there.

After making the trip by rail from Amritsar to New Delhi, my first stop was at American Express to see if there was any mail for me. During our journey we hadn’t been getting any news of the world because we didn’t stay in hotels or places where it would have been available. There was no place from which I could send mail, so I hadn’t been writing postcards or letters. As a result, I was out of touch with any European or American connections for most of the whole journey.

To my surprise, I found a letter waiting for me, and it was not good news. Satchidananda, whom I expected to meet at his ashram in Kandy, had decided to go from Paris to New York. He had met the artist Peter Max, a friend of Conrad’s, and he had been invited to New York to open a yoga studio that Peter would sponsor. Peter, who was a well-known photographer and designer, had photographed Satchidananda many times (on my return, I saw these photographs of Satchidananda, so handsome in his red robes and long white beard, hanging all over New York). Satchidananda was an absolutely marvelous teacher of hatha yoga and a very kind person, and my acquaintance with him had partly inspired my visit to India, which I count as having been a momentous event for me.

At that moment in the American Express office, my first feelings were of deep disappointment. But then, and very quickly, I began to feel released, even liberated. We were in India and I had no plans to go back to New York before spring. I had done a lot of reading about India and Tibet and was in an absolutely ideal state of mind to pursue all the questions that were swirling around inside me.

RISHIKESH, KATMANDU,
AND DARJEELING

I
N FUTURE YEARS, I WOULD SPEND WEEKS AT A TIME IN NEW DELHI, BUT
most of the things I was interested in at that moment were elsewhere, so we did not stay there for long. I made a survey of places I wanted to visit in the Himalayan regions that were home to Hindu and Buddhist yogis. First on the list was Rishikesh, one of the most famous places for Hindu yoga retreats in northern India. There were supposed to be hundreds of solitary yogis living in the open or in caves in the area and, as well, there were a few well-established ashrams, such as the Sivananda Ashram that served as the headquarters of the Divine Life Society and the Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy.

To get to Rishikesh, north of New Delhi in the foothills of the Himalayas, we went by rail to Hardwar and then took a bus the rest of the way. Until we headed back to Europe, JoAnne and I depended almost entirely on the railways to get around. For quite a while we traveled third class, which could be very rough at times, because the trains were extremely crowded. Somewhere along the way we learned that there was a tourist incentive available. With a foreign passport, you could ask for an automatic upgrade at an office in the train station. It was almost always given. From then on we traveled second class, which was almost completely filled with military or petty government officials. It made a huge difference in comfort and the degree of travel fatigue. India is a very big country, but express trains are not always available.

When we arrived in Rishikesh, we went directly to the Sivananda Ashram where, as a student of Satchidananda, I was welcomed. We were given a room and meals at the ashram but we were also free to look around. It was here that I saw for the first time
sadhus
(wandering ascetics) and yogis living in the open, completely unclothed, often with their thin bodies painted and using a trident for a walking stick. Mostly you didn’t see them, as they lived alone in the forests around Rishikesh. Local people claimed that the sound “
om
” could be generally heard around there due to the many, many yogis living in retreat in the area. We never spoke with the ones we would happen upon walking in the many footpaths in the forest. Instead, almost invariably, we would be greeted with a beaming smile, a very slight nod, and they would walk on right past us. I did take some yoga classes with a young man who was living in the ashram, but I already knew the
asanas
he wanted to show me, and he seemed disappointed in our meeting.

When the residents of the ashram learned I was a musician, they insisted I meet their “music” yogi, an elderly man living in the ashram. I was introduced to him, but he never spoke to me. When I entered his living quarters he was already playing a vina, a string instrument often used to accompany singers. He sang hymns and devotional songs for the several hours of my visit. He was far from the great musicians I have known, but he was clearly transported by this practice of playing and singing. I was told that most of his waking time was passed in that way.

I learned that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation, also had an ashram in Rishikesh, though I didn’t visit it at the time. Later, on my way back to Europe and passing once again through New Delhi, I attended a big public talk he gave. I believe that this was about the time that George Harrison met him or was even visiting him. He was very “at home” with a very large crowd and easily held our attention. I never met him personally, though later I met many of his TM students.

Among my most memorable experiences was taking a refreshing dip in the Ganges. The river, though not wide at this point, is very fresh, fast-flowing, and clean. JoAnne and I found a quiet spot just outside the town, took off our clothes, and bathed in the Ganges. The sky was blue and clear, the sun unclouded and strong. Even though it was now November and we were in the foothills of the Himalayas, we weren’t at all cold.

To return to New Delhi from Rishikesh, we traveled by bus and then by rail as before, but we didn’t stay at the Birla Temple, where we had previously lodged and which had provided accommodations much like those in Amritsar. After weeks of traveling, we had already outgrown the Indian hospitality system, so we found a small hotel near Connaught Circle where we were close to most things of interest to us.

We decided that our next stop would be Katmandu, Nepal, in order to visit Boudhanath, an ancient massive stupa, reputed by some to be the holiest Tibetan Buddhist temple outside Tibet. That meant a train ride east from New Delhi to Patna, a major rail junction in the northeast of India. From there it was a long and bumpy bus ride to Katmandu. Nepal was (and still is) a mix of Hindu and Tibetan Buddhist culture all through. It seemed very exotic to us. Clearly this was a place that drew from far and wide. There were also more wandering sadhus, just as we’d seen in Rishikesh. We stayed at the Tibetan Blue Moon Hotel, which was modest but authentically Tibetan, and I had my first experience of the food, tea, and beer of Tibet.

Katmandu in 1966 was much smaller than it is today. It was little more than a muddy-street town, and Boudhanath was located outside of it. (These days, it’s inside Katmandu itself). On our first day we took a taxi through the surrounding fields out to Boudhanath. It is a most impressive stupa, with large eyes painted on all four sides, indicating that the compassion of the Buddha is without limit. For some reason, as we were looking around, we were taken to see Chinia Lama, the director of the temple. He seemed very pleased to see us and spoke English quite well. We had tea with him and then, to my complete surprise, he wanted to know if I was interested in buying a
thangka
. Until that moment it had never occurred to me that these paintings were even for sale. He took my hesitation for a yes and showed me two vivid paintings. About sixteen by twenty inches, they were oil-based paintings on canvases sewn into a much larger brocade of Chinese silk, complete with two red ribbons that hung down either side of the main image. The paintings were not that old (perhaps ten or twenty years) and the colors were still strong. I later came to know the central images very well. One was a simple Shakyamuni Buddha and the other was a meditational deity. I was sure that JoAnne and I didn’t have the cash for anything of that quality, but it turned out that we did. I told Chinia Lama I needed to think about it, and we returned the next day and paid the asking price—seventy-five dollars for both. That was the beginning of my serious interest in the art of Tibet, and by the time we returned to Europe we would be bringing home seven
thangkas
. In almost every case they were offered to me for sale or barter.