Chapter Nine

     Tuesday, April twelfth at one in the afternoon in room one-fifteen on the ground floor of Conclave Lodge in Siliguri. Lovely quiet courtyard with a sense of seclusion just a one block walk from one of those continuously busy thoroughfares slicing a way through a transportation hub. Yesterday started early with a seven a.m. ride to the Chennai airport where at the check-in counter, I opted-in for some extra rupees to upgrade my status to include a front row window seat with extra leg room, a meal for both legs of the flight, and priority baggage handling, as well as pre-boarding privileges, thus bypassing the two hundred person queue. From the Bagdogra airport , prepaid taxi through Bagdogra to Siliguri, sixteen kilometers, on that perpetually busy two-lane highway, with about a half lane’s worth of shoulder on each side. Busses, trucks, cars, motorcycles and all of the usual suspects. Following my 2009 Lonely Planet guidebook, I go for the Conclave Lodge. It’s simple and clean and good for two nights, remarkable as an island of silence amidst the surrounding cacophony. Late afternoon exploratory walk along that busy highway to locate tomorrow’s objective, the Sikkim registration office and state bus depot for Wednesday’s ride. Try the outdoor patio of the Khana Kahana restaurant for some Lemon sodas and a small cheese and mushroom pizza. All of this is within walking distance, as far as I want to go in Siliguri. Buy some bottles of mango juice and water to see me through the night, and call it a night, and enter a little story that begins with riding my bicycle from some city towards the edge-of-town convenience store I frequented in Canyon, Texas. Not sure I want to go in there right now, so circle wide around the parking lot, and then up to a small grassy park on a hill where I find a small grove of young trees where I can sit quietly and look at the convenience store below. After a while, I get up, go down the hill and enter the store, and realize that I haven’t played the lottery in a very long time, so as long as I’m remembering this, I’ll play a ticket, the kind of game where you pick five numbers and wait for the evening’s drawing. There is a new game here now in this format, and the ticket is very unusual, three dimensional, and I need to spin dials of numbers like those used on some padlocks. This is all very confusing to me, and I need to consult some brochures, which turn out to be travel brochures for Texas with many maps of natural and geological features of the state. Texas is now sixteen years behind me, and I lived six years of panhandle Texas in depth; that’s an old story, I’m looking for a new story now. Next I’m riding in an open air jeep with some friend, I’m not sure exactly who, some old neighborhood friend, or simply the old neighborhood as a friend, and the driver whom I don’t know but who has a precise familiarity with these streets and alleyways. From the firehouse at the Riverview – Partridge triangle, up Riverview to the top of the rise for a right turn onto Harney, to the first alleyway on the left, which goes down past the rear of the Rio theatre, to the T intersection near the back of my childhood home. I exit the jeep and walk to the gate of our small back yard to the back door which is open, and inside are my parents and brothers and sisters in the last stages of installing a brand new high-quality wooden floor in the kitchen. My sister Rosemary and I are in our later teens, and everyone is as they were at that time and very excited about this new floor. I have to go around to the front door to enter the house, Rosemary lets me in, and I go to the doorway to the kitchen on the inside of the house where my dad is working on the finishing touches for this final section of the project. There is an uneven quality about the way some of the new floorboards are placed, and my dad starts explaining to me how he’s going to make adjustments and make it all even and level. It just so happens the family has a pet horse, dark coloring, which walks in from the living room to where me and my dad are examining the floorboards. The horse sits down much like a dog taking rest. I reach out to pet this horse on his snout, and he reaches out with his long tongue to lick all over my hand and arm. It’s only one o’clock by the time this dream wakes me up, and I’ve got the rest of the night to dream some more, which I do. As for this one, what to say?

     My home is on the road, always between one place and another. Another stopover hotel, this one in Siliguri, West Bengal, coming from Pondicherry, South India, heading for Gangtok, Sikkim. In series they follow, one after another, reaching back through the years, looking forward into however much more time I will travel on this planet. This Siliguri room at the Conclave Lodge is where the new wooden floor is installed. A room on the road, leading to another room. All of these places are part of the same place, the room I live in. It goes where I go. I take it everywhere. I read the brochures with all of their pictures and descriptions and choose some mysterious place, one set of numbers on the lottery ticket, and then take the ride back to where I have always been. It was really very nice sitting with my father looking the problem over, working out the best way to fix the problem. It was nice seeing the entire family happy and working together on a project meant to enhance the beauty of our home. Homelessness is kind of a home for me right now. For all I know, Homelessness really is my home. I have moved away from every place I have ever lived. I find a home where I stay for awhile, then move to another home, and homelessness is the home that is always here. I know where I’m at, wherever I’m at.

     Found a nice breakfast spot this Tuesday morning, up the quiet lane from my lodge to the upscale hotel on the corner where the traffic goes by. Met with Edward and Laura, young travelers from UK, just coming back from several days in Gangtok. They made a hotel recommendation, which I appreciate. They are heading to Nepal for a couple of months, and it’s possible that I could meet up with them again after I enter that country mid-May. As breakfast winds down, I give them a copy of my book and tell them something about it. Something to read on those long train rides. Get my registration document at the Sikkim tourist office on the main road, and learn that busses leave from here every hour in the morning. There are jeeps aplenty around here, parked in clusters along the road, ready to take customers to Gangtok or Darjeeling or any of the other hill stations nestled in the rising northern terrain. This is a hanging-out-in-the-crossroads day, another one of those in-between places.

     Wednesday at nine-forty in the morning at the Sikkim Nationalized Transport (SNT) bus station. Arrived at ten to nine to be first in line for the nine-thirty bus, only to find out that the next bus this morning leaves at eleven. Time for sitting in the canteen sipping masala chai. Afternoon walk yesterday after four, going south along the main road, across the bridge across the river into the heart of the Siliguri shopping district. Crowded with traffic, and pedestrians, and shoppers is the word. Stop into a small shop for two cups of Elachi tea. Walking back across the bridge as a golden sun disc slides down towards the upriver western horizon, there are a few hundred people, mostly women, carrying on some kind of pujas on the banks of the river and in the shallow waters near the shoreline. Blessings of bouquets of flowers, and lots of little candles and oil lamps are burning. Most of the saris are in variations of red, which makes the occasional green or blue sari stand out brilliantly.  Another example for how the soft, cool colors can outshine the bright, warm ones. The low and slow river waters reflect golden sunlight. The drummer boys get out their instruments and keep their rhythm going strong while the ladies go on and on with their blessings and ablutions and children play and splash in the shallow waters. Sun disc disappears into the haze at the horizon. Streetlights twinkle on and headlights begin to sparkle in the dusk.

     Thursday morning, April fourteenth. Bus pulled out of the station at eleven-thirteen and I’ve got my front row window seat opposite the driver, with our front windshield view of what ever is coming on down the road. Through the city, across the plains, and into the hills we go. Alongside the Teesta river much of the way and the farther we go, the deeper the gorge becomes. The hills are heavily forested. The road is mostly narrow, and needs some construction crew attention in many places, and the drop-off from the road, if there should be some mishap, is quite severe. I’m guessing this is the driver’s regular route, from Gangtok to Siliguri in the morning and return in the afternoon. He knows the road well and drives carefully like he knows where all the rough spots are and how to negotiate the hairpin turns and the assortment of trucks, cars, and small busses along the way. I need to step down from the bus and enter a building at the border of this restricted area to get my papers stamped and info entered into the official books, and when I step out, the bus is nowhere in sight! Hmmm! Walk up the road and around the turn a couple of hundred yards and find my bus at its chosen rest stop. Needed a little bit of legwork exercise anyway, at this border crossing town. Bus does a lot of stop and go along the way picking up and dropping off locals and we finally enter the built up citified area, as jammed with traffic and pedestrians as any Indian town, although here it is all layered into the hillsides.

Bus station of course is in the middle of it all, and I find a Tibetan taxi man who knows where the Hotel Pandim is, which was recommended to me by Ed and Laura at Tuesday morning breakfast. Up and away from the maddening crowd, the taxi climbs into forested hills with occasional buildings, and I can see clearly that the Hotel Pandim is an exquisite location.

     No room available until tomorrow night, but I can book one tonight at the neighboring Hotel Pomra, and then transfer to the Pandim tomorrow.  Evening sky is overcast and hazy, and the cool mountain air is like a springtime shower. After all of the burning hot Chennai and Pondicherry days and nights, it’s like I had forgotten what this kind of air could taste like. There are no ceiling fans in the hotel room, just shaded hanging light bulbs with Tibetan and oriental motifs. This is really a different part of the world from where I’ve been the last four and a half months. All of my little Tamil and French phrases and greetings are no longer relevant. The linguistic atmosphere is a whole different kind of music, and I know none of it. My taxi man gives me his number for when I want to call for a ride, and I’ve got a whole new world to explore up here, by foot and however. For one thing, no yellow hornets up here!

     Friday morning, April fifteenth, around eight-twenty in the morning after breakfast of plain omelet, bowl of porridge, one fine pancake, all with a mug of coffee before and after. All at the Pandim hotel, where I have a treasure of a room. First night was in the fine room of the hotel Pomra, where manager Pema Namgyal showed me a pictographic map of Gangtok. We are way up on one of the highest ridges on the east side of the valley. There is a forested area on the other side of the road that rises towards the highest ridge. View is towards the west across the valley, with multistoried buildings built into the hills on both sides. Dense misty clouds cover the sky. Only the outlines of the surrounding higher forested hills in the soft gray light shine through. The snowy peaks I know are beyond are invisible.

    From booking at hotel Pomra in late afternoon through an evening meal, through night’s cool darkness, into an early breakfast, and a full morning room rest, transfer to neighboring hotel Pandim where this treasure of a room is now mine. On the corner with windows facing east and north across the valley, the city below is in a panoramic splendor of colorful rooftops and buildings of varying heights nestled amongst the hillside trees. The misty cloud continues to fill the valley, the faraway peaks still invisible. A private balcony two chairs wide. Pale green tiled bathroom. TV table with hand-painted Tibetan dragon and conch shell, and hanging above the double bed is a Tibetan Thangka painting of a male deity holding a rosary and a Upalla flower in two outstretched hands, while his other two hands are holding before his heart an oval blue semi-spherical object. Rivers flow on both sides of the lotus blossom he sits on. The manager showing me the room cannot tell me who exactly this deity is, so I’ll just have to take him at face value without any preconceived notion about his powers or influences. A thick comforter blanket and a richly soft and densely woven upper blanket to melt into. A solid wooden desk, about four feet by two feet with accompanying upright sit-down chair. I could live in this room for a very long time and call it home. And for hotel price ranges in this part of the world, this is a gift.

     As I’m filling in paperwork with Tibetan manager Kesang Norbu in the top floor restaurant, and I start asking him about places to go and how to get there in both Gangtok and Sikkim, his quiet voice comes forth with rivers of information. How long shall I stay? I have no plan and know nothing about anything anywhere. He checks his pre-booking ledger and says I can keep this room till May first, about two weeks down the road, so I settle into that idea. Two weeks exploring Gangtok and whatever is a day trip’s distance away. Then ten days or two weeks exploring the outlying towns and villages towards the west and north, closer towards tne snow-capped ranges.

     Kelsang lives here with his family, including his mother, so is available twenty-four-seven. His English is perfectly well spoken and he emanates kindness. The top floor restaurant has a table for four, two tables for two, and two corners with cushioned seating around low tables, the entire area in elegant Tibetan décor. There is a small, neatly kept library, and a stereo for playing soft background music from time to time. The afternoon comes through with the most massive downpour of rain I’ve seen since the Chennai monsoon. And for sheer volume of water coming down at one time, it was a waterfall for a while, as the tall vertical prayer flag banners – blue, white, red, green and yellow – flapped vigorously in the relentless wind. Around five o’clock, I go upstairs for a late afternoon tea with a plate of French fries. Meet Niall from Liverpool, a young traveler here for his last night in Gangtok before going to Calcutta on his way back to the bar on Penny Lane where he works. His girl friend Alice and he are in room four, and I visit them after my fries and tea, with booklets in hand to share. Alice is heading to Nepal for a few weeks before returning to Liverpool. The Liverpool English of Niall and Alice is like no kind of English my ears have ever heard up close and personal, and I really have to pay close attention to the words as spoken by Alice especially. Niall had been an English lit major with a special interest in George Orwell. Niall and Alice each get a copy and I go through an explanation-introduction and we have a good conversation. I take my dinner on the rooftop at seven – vegetable curry and vegetable fried rice and masala chai – so very well done! And see Niall and Alice again for our farewell wishes. Evening air is cool and foggy. The comforter and thick soft blanket are for crawling into, where memories from under the comforters of times long gone by flow in their misty rivers once more.

     “The Lepcha language is monosyllabic in character and possesses  an inexhaustible capacity for derivatives and suffixes. Two striking aspects of the language are the wealth of vocabulary devoted to nature making it possible to verbalize complex subtleties of the natural world; and the allusive characteristic of the Idiom, so that the language appears to revolve around innuendo, and a verbal statement is almost always a suggestion rather than on explicit observation. Not surprisingly, this has made the Lepcha language rich in metaphors, similes, and riddles, and consequently, very poetic.”

    Sikkim: A Traveler’s Guide

    Pbotographs and essays by Sujoy Das;  Text by Arundati Ray; © 2000

     Saturday, April sixteenth at two-fifty in the afternoon. Woke up to some continuous raining at two this morning. Then again at dawn for most of the morning, and the valley between the ridges is filled to overflowing with a Himalayan cloud. Now the rain has stopped and the cloud has evaporated into a mist still dense enough to veil the ridge of the city on the other side, and the hills beyond. Five shining silk prayer flag banners ripple in the gentle breeze not thirty feet in front of my window looking across the rooftop of the three story building built into the hill one level below the Hotel Pandim. This feels like the sportscasters box at the stadium. Atmospheric perspective washes with multiple shades of gray the horizons of ridges and hills receding towards the furthest foothill. Took a walk yesterday afternoon, which means going downhill, and then downhill some more, and then more, until I found a leveling out road, which by now is in the thick of the city and which evolves into an outdoor shopping mall. Just like an American shopping mall on a Sunday afternoon, endless streams of pedestrians going in both directions, shoppers, browsers, people like me out for a walk, all the local people, very few western tourists. Buy a couple of Sikkim maps

in a bookstore, and mostly walk around from one street to another, down one set of steps or another, setting as a goal to find the bus stand where I alighted two days before. By the time I get there, it’s been a good walk and I plan to taxi it back to the hotel. As I’m approaching the taxi stand, who should come out but Pan-Kg, the Tibetan with his old blue minivan who knew, when I was asking a cluster of taxi drivers, where hotel Pandim is. He’s the pro and he knows, and the fleet drivers are left standing, asking each other where is this place and none of them knows. I’ve got his number, and I do believe I’ll be sticking with Pan-Kg for my taxi needs during my visit to the Gangtok area.

     Today is for sitting at the window watching the light change through the afternoon as the angle of light from the sun reflects off from and shines through the fluctuating mists wafting through the valley between ridges in their soft and subtle shades of bluish-gray.

     Monday, April eighteenth, at four-twenty. Stranded on the Marg (open air shopping mall) at a window table of Taste of Tibet watching the pedestrians with umbrellas walking through the rain. How long is this going to take, this sitting around watching the clouds roll through the valley from daybreak to nightfall, watching the rain decide when to fall? Five days in this Shangri-La, and not only have I not seen a snow-capped peak, neither the sun nor the blue sky have made more than a teasingly brief suggestion of their existence. Here comes the waterfall out of the sky! Here comes the river flowing down the steep sloping street.

     Wednesday the twentieth around eleven in the morning at the Baker’s Café again overlooking the pedestrian mall. Been doing the walkaround Gangtok city these last three days. Down here this morning to buy my ticket for the jeep ride tomorrow to Tashiding in the west. Starts at seven and will go for four and a half hours. Kesang, manager at the Pandim, has set up a home stay contact for me in Tashiding, as well as at Yuksom. Tonight will be my seventh in the lap of luxury Pandim Hotel, and tomorrow the road trip resumes. Met a seventy-one year old French woman on the rooftop during breakfast this morning. She has been coming to Sikkim for a couple of months at a time for the last sixteen years, and the family run Pandim is her choice for a place to stay. She has set up some sort of a small NGO that helps look after about seventy Buddhist children, and today is taking a group of about thirty to the theatre to see The Jungle Book. She tells me of her journey three years ago to Lake Manasarovar and Mount Kailash in Western Tibet where she did the three day trek around the mountain. Some of us older people got things we need to do before we get too old to do them. That was one of hers, and what I’m doing is one of mine. The seed of an idea is born. Could I go to Lake Manasarovr in Tibet on this go-around? The trek around Mount Kailash is unthinkable for me, but a trip to visit the Lake?! I’ll be asking around in Nepal when I’m there next month. My budget is pretty tight, and I’ll bet it’s not a cheapie, so I’ll see what I can find out. Meanwhile, where I’m going tomorrow should be rather exhilarating in its own right, and meanwhile again, getting to know the streets and ridges and pathways and a couple of sit-down places of Gangtok serves as entertainment, and while the skies around the horizon all around continue in their cloud-covering haziness, there is a peek-a-boo glimmer of sunlight from the noontime sky above. Time to trace another path and see what’s down the road.

     Tuesday the twenty-first at two o’clock in my little room on the side of the hill at Sanu Home Stay, near the village of Tashiding, after the jeep ride along the winding, twisting, curving, turning convoluted ribbon of mostly single laned or

lane-and-a-half asphalt, potholed, rocky, uneven, rough and occasionally smoothly paved road for the hundred kilometers from Gangtok to my drop-off point where a graceful middle-aged woman, Sanu Bhutia, waits to meet me, with her driver who will take me that last kilometer or so into the hills where we will get out and physically climb a rocky path to her set of simple rooms built into the forested hillside.

     Alongside the overland driver are three passengers in the front row. I have a window in the second row of four, alongside three of the local young women. In the third row are another four passengers, and all of our luggage is packed into the rack on the roof. The young driver is by no means shy about going for the pass whenever there is a vehicle before us on the road. This is mostly a cliffhanger road, twisting down into the valley where the river runs swift, twisting up into the haze between the hills. Four hours altogether with one stop for tea along the way. Where a lovely elder teenaged girl with her family in another vehicle is absolutely elated  to learn that I am from the USA, her favorite country she declares enthusiastically that she so very much wants to visit, and is immensely pleased when I agree to pose with her for a selfie.

     I’ve got what you’d call a wide single or a narrow double bed, a solid wooden table about eighteen by thirty-six inches, together with a plastic lawn chair, in my corner room with two sets of windows looking across the valley on one side, and towards the village down the road on the other. The haze on the horizon is as opaque as it was in Gangtok, and I’m told by Sanu that the snow-capped peak is there, but if or when I will see it is still a mystery. There is a long narrow balcony where I can sit and listen to the sounds of silent nature through the treetops.

     Meet with Brenden and Kate this evening in Sanu’s dining room. They have taken a twenty-one kilometer hike today through the forested hills between Yuksom and here. They are interested to hear my story of my several trips to India since I first came here in nineteen sixty-nine. Yes indeed, that two year visit was a watershed event that focused my direction for the rest of my life. It led me to my encounter with Anthropology, which in turn led to my explorations in Art, through my earliest paintings and notebook keeping of the early to mid-seventies, and from there into my excursions and inquiries into the Aztec calendar stone and from there into my linguistic encounters with poetic expression. Until I came up with my book of drawings and poetry that I have been passing out since the early eighties.

     That is four couples in a row since April sixth: from Martin and Alin, the German travelers in Chennai, to Edmund and Laura at the breakfast table in Siliguri, then Niall and Alice from Liverpool at the Pandim, and now Brenden from Maine and Kate from Melbourne who will get their copy tomorrow. Every time I meet someone, I start sizing them up through our conversation as likely candidates for getting a copy of my book. It’s all really very simple. If they are interested in my story, if they ask questions and want to know who I am, our connection is clear. There are those who are more intent on telling me their story, and that is fine. I will listen and perhaps find them interesting, but unless they are interested in my story, they will not know who I am. It’s not exactly for me to say who I think I am. It’s up to the listener of my story to decide who I am to them. For isn’t that really what it comes down to? There is no truly objective, I am, except in my own convoluted imagination. The only, I am, who really exists is interpersonal, and that will always be an aspect or a fragment of my internal sense of self. I have been who my career path says I’ve been, and lived and traveled and interacted through several stages in the theatre of my time, and we paint portraits of each other in our minds. Who on earth does that smiling teenager who took a selfie of her and I together think this fellow with her in this picture is? Her friend, the American traveler at the rest stop on the road. I illuminate her dream simply by telling her where I’m from, and the joy in her expression is a treasure to my heart. We create a meaning together, a shared experience that is uniquely ours, etched in memory forever.

          Dream of teaching, or trying to teach, a group of about twenty of my ITT college students how to read. An impossible task. As I’m listening to one student practice his reading, what are the other nineteen doing? Mostly sitting there with listless minds, neither paying attention nor caring about how I am helping the student I am focusing on. Then I notice another group of about twenty other students on another side of the room, the other half of this class. Since I am concerned with trying to keep everyone involved with the class, I go to another student in the other part of this class to listen to him practice, hopelessly hoping that the entire class can somehow keep focused on what is going on. Are we all learning how to read better while I give my attention to one student? The futility of what I am attempting seems overwhelmingly senseless. Before very long, I notice another entire class of students, another forty or so, are sitting together in another part of what has become an open air, outdoor classroom. And they are also a part of my overall class. Shall I go over and select another student to focus on, while maintaining a sense of cohesion and attention amongst all of these students, many of whom apparently couldn’t care less about what I am trying to do. Caring very little themselves about learning how to read, the inevitable smart-aleky, disruptive ignoramuses in the class start throwing out their smart-aleky remarks, seeking only to annoy in their childish search for ego-boosting snickers from their classmates, challenging my sense of responsibility for keeping order and effecting a collective learning process. There is absolutely no point in my getting into countering this mob of fools who are motivated by no other objective than to disrupt. If only I could single out those individuals who do want to learn, for I know that some of them do, but I don’t know exactly which ones those are. Meanwhile, if what has gone on so far is any indication, the classroom size is on the verge of doubling again, and I am about ready to throw in the towel, leave the whole bunch to their desserts, and walk down the hallway to the Dean’s office and tell him that he can take this English reading class and shove it. Along comes Mr. Ed, the acting teacher I got to know and took some classes with last summer when I was spending time on movie sets working as an extra. A very talented and experienced man with a lot of good advice, he is basically telling me to keep playing my part and to above all ignore the distracting fools, and play my lines with all the heart and soul that I have within, and that is all I really need to do. Fulfill my role, and let everyone around me take responsibility for fulfilling their roles, as they see fit, and emphatically do not let those who couldn’t care less about what I’m doing interfere with my sense for accomplishing my goal, teaching those who want to learn.

     Saturday morning at seven, April twenty-third, on the balcony looking west across the valley into the haze receding towards the horizon. Sunlight filters through from over the hills behind the cabin, and there is birdsong in the air. Took a walk down the quiet asphalt lane yesterday into the village, where I took a few pictures, and stopped into a couple of shops for some crackers and  chocolate bars. If there is an internet connection around here, I don’t know where it is. Getting to know Brenden and Kate through breakfast in the dining room, later on the balcony, and then again through dinner in the evening. Such a cheerful, enthusiastic young couple they are. Kate has a law degree, and has been working in China for the last ten years with domestic violence issues in that country and is well versed in Chinese language and culture. She is from Melbourne, Australia and has an extensive background of travels through and living in India and Sikkim. Brendon has been living in China for the last two years, working as an educator in developing innovative ways to encourage young people to develop the skills and knowledge they will need to pursue their chosen careers. Brendan and Kate met in China and are a charming, intelligent, and adventuresome couple whose company has been a precious gift here on the outskirts of this remote Sikkimese village.  You just never know when or where or how the lovely people in your life will show up. Our paths have crossed as we have been traveling in opposite directions. They are coming from Khecheopalri Lake and Yuksom where I am going, and I am coming from Gangtok where they are going. A magical encounter along the winding trails of exploration and discovery.

     After last night’s dinner prepared by Sanu, another guest at this home stay guest house, a professional Sikkimese guide, gives us an extensive explanation of how his business works and things he must keep in mind as he leads his clients through their travels. Brendan has a deck of cards. First, I show Brendan and Kate how to play casino, my favorite two-handed game, and after a few rounds of this, he and Kate show me and our Sikkimese guide friend how to play a complicated four handed game. Public service electricity is an on-again-off-again feature of this cabin on the side of the hill, and an overhead hanging LED lantern helps keep the table in light when the regular connection flickers into darkness. Considerable rainfall yesterday afternoon. The air is cool and damp this morning, and Sanu’s mother, the quiet matriarch of eight children, of whom Sanu is the youngest, keeps her prayer wheel turning.

     Monday, April twenty-fifth at four-fourteen in the afternoon. Reviewing the last couple of days beginning with Saturday. Brendan and Kate have heard of a hotspring at Tatopani, a couple of kilometers down the road from Legship, which is seventeen kilometers from here. Sonu confirms and gives us instructions for getting a shared taxi, i.e. multi-person jeep from Tashiding to Legship, and then catching a vehicle that will go down the road to Tatopani. Shared jeeps are off-schedule today, so we take a pricier personal driver, and split the five hundred rupee fare three ways. This highway is rockier and more uneven than many a New Mexico mountain forest road. At the Tatopani drop-off point is a shack of a shop selling crackers and cokes and no one is there. A switchback, rocky hiking trail descends sharply into the depths where the river runs swiftly around boulders and whitewater ripples over low-lying stones. A suspension walking bridge has a plate metal footpath that rattles as we walk. The bridge is festooned from one end to the other with bright colored prayer flags. A couple of hundred yards further along another rocky trail to the riverside, where tiny bubbles of sulphuric gas from the volcanic magma far below, infuse a pool of water at the edge of the river with therapeutic properties. Sheltered on two sides by huge boulders fallen one upon the other, or open to sunlight on its other sides, the pool is plenty big enough for half a dozen adults stretching and resting to soak, and half a dozen small children who romp and play and splash around. Being a Saturday, some parents have brought their kids here. The water is from the river flowing swiftly by, somehow siphoned off into this niche of a pool about eighteen or so inches deep with its fine black sand bottom. There is also a pool of quiet water in an open niche at the side of the fast running river. One can dip in the cold river water, and one time of that is all I need. Finding a spot to stretch out and let the medicine waters infuse my every pore is more my cup of tea. Sky is clear and the noontime and early afternoon sun is refreshingly warm. One of the boulders of this enclosure is just high enough out of the water and level enough in a curvy kind of way for me to start standing little pebbles that my fingers find in the black sand atop one another, one upon one upon one, up to five and even six, looking for balance points every time I stack one stone atop another. The children are enchanted with this, and then start fishing through the sand with their fingers for pebbles to give me to keep building these little balancing towers. It doesn’t take long for these kids to start piling up pebbles, and the surface of the boulder becomes a cityscape of balancing towers. Around two o’clock after about three hours in the pool, Kate and Brendan and I decide to move on and hike back across the bridge and up the switchback trail to the side of the rocky road to try and flag down a passing jeep heading to Legship. Most passing jeeps are full, so we agree to have one or two of us go at a time in available seats, and meet up in Legship. I get a single seat first, and Kate and Brendan get a pair of seats in the time it takes me to have two cups of tea at the shop next to the taxi stand. The skies have clouded over, and raindrops are lightly falling. Again, a shared jeep is not available, and we opt to go with a personal vehicle. More rupees, more leg room, and get back to Sonu’s home stay sooner than later. Getting towards five and the clouds on the western horizon are gilded in gold, and beams of light reach through holes in the clouds to filter through the moist valley air, lighting patches of the hillside forest in bright green. Sonu’s marvelously prepared meal of rice and intricately spiced vegetables at six-thirty as darkness settles in puts a finishing touch on this masterpiece of a day.

     Sunday morning is departure time for my friends whose paths met and converged  in China. They have been studying the book on Northeast India, and after their short visit to Gangtok, will be heading to Assam and Megalaya and wherever else in that area suits their fancy. Make it up as you go along. My kind of itinerary! Early morning resting time on the balcony for me until after ten when I begin the upward trail towards the three hundred seventy-five year old monastery at the top of the hill. Up, up and away the climb goes on, through the forest, over a trail nurtured by hand with rocks placed intentionally into a rough washboard-like arrangement. I imagine this rough surface minimizes the slippery factor when these mountains are coated in fresh snowfall. Perhaps a half hour for me to climb the winding trail which leads to the monastery, meditation hall, and courtyard of chortens. The grounds are wide and flat, grassy and green. Nothing goes higher from here than the sounds of chanting in the meditation hall, which I sit with as a guest on a bench alongside one wall. An eight year old monk pours me a generous cup of milk tea. There are about five other visitors today sitting alongside the wall on either side of the rows of altogether about thirty monks. The youngest and younger boys sit in the outer two rows, while the mature and elder monks sit on the inner two rows. The little boy monks can be playful and unruly, as little boys will be, and no one imposes any correction on them, telling them to be still and behave or some such thing. They are obedient to the directions they are given, and aware of the boundaries of the occasion. Respectful and smiling and perhaps a bit curious about today’s visitors, they will be here for the rest of their lives, however in their minds they might think about this idea! In the courtyard of chortens, tall white spires rise from the earth towards the sky, pointing the way to the heavens. There is an immense metal bell, much larger than the cracked American Liberty Bell. This bell is inscribed all around in Tibetan messages, and the huge clapper has hanging from its end a woven cloth rope, and any visitor who comes by can pull the clapper against the bell and send a deeply resonating sound into the monastery grounds and through the valleys surrounding the hill. Like from any bell made by Tibetan metallurgists, the sound carries on forever. I take one moment in time to pull the woven rope and send the sound through the valley, for as long and as far as it will go. Altogether a little over three hours I spend on the top of the hill, then follow the path down back to Sonu’s home stay to rest before dinner, and watch again the sun descend behind the clouds hovering over the hilltops on the western horizon.

     Tuesday, April twenty-sixth at nine-forty-seven in the morning after a seven o’clock breakfast of porridge and two brown, dense apple pancakes, along with a cup of milk chai, at the Limboo Home Stay in the end-of-the-road village of Yuksom, which has a continuous enough trickle of backpackers and trekkers who keep the several small hotels and homestays, and a couple of larger hotels as well, in business. Met Eric from London, now living in Wales, at the Gupta Café, next to the Yak Café, on the side of the road in the middle of town yesterday afternoon. He’s worked a lot with autistic people in institutional settings, is very dissatisfied with the way autistic people are being treated, and wants to set up a residency out in the wilderness of Wales, where autistics could live in an environment that encouraged them to live their creative lives. Eric is thirty-three now, with an excellent background in experience and professional associations, he has a well-developed idea and I can see support for his vision coming his way.

     Not long thereafter comes along five hikers who have just come in from the  several kilometer walk from Lake Khecheopalri. Two British couples around in their twenties, and an Indian fellow of similar age from Rajasthan, who is studying at an art school in West Bengal three hours from Calcutta. They all sit around the table next to where Nick and I are, and soon the seven of us are sitting around in a circle mostly around the hikers’ table, trading stories and making inquiries. Ankur, the Rajanstani art student and I fall into a beautiful conversation about the kinds of art we do and why, and who amongst artists from the art history books have been sources of inspiration. Is there a line or is there only a shifting haze between ideas of subjective and objective beauty? It is extremely much fun to pull images into the conversation from out of those art history books, images that illustrate a concept or an appreciation, images that we both recognize, for we are brothers who have chosen to spend time with and page through those art history books, just as we have chosen to search through our brush for that elusive mystery that expresses the beauty we feel within. After the hikers have ordered and eaten their meals, Nick parts way to return to his hotel, and I walk the mid-town road with these two young couples and my brother in art. At the Limboo Home Stay where I am, the hiking group deems the three hundred rupee dorm room too costly, and heads off to look for one of the economy hotels along the road. I truly admire the adventuresome spirit and the sense of cohesion these British hikers embody, on a shoestring budget that puts eight hundred rupee rooms like my single at the Limboo out of the question.

     White walls in clean paint, one set of windows looking out across a couple of home gardens below to the green slopes of a steep incline. Sit-down toilet in a bathroom of tiled floors and walls, clean porcelain sink, and hot water on demand. Wide single bed with covering blanket soft and warm, woven blue carpet, and long red oriental throw rug with curving and twisting and winding brown and black dragon, with flames and smoke coming from his open saber-toothed jaws. This is the dragon room and there is no image on the walls. Where do I go from here?

     The story is about the book, the one I have already written. The roots reach deeply into the soil of two boxes of college textbooks copyrighted in the nineteen-thirties, science books, biology, chemistry and physics and math, and the book that most enchanted me was the astronomy book, with all of its pictures of the planets, the solar system, the stars, and the galaxies, and the half page article about the recently discovered Pluto and what was known of it which was not very much. These were my father’s books from the years when he was learning the things in these books, and now they are in two crates in the corner of a closet. And I entertained myself with them, wanting to know what was in them, as a way, I suppose of wanting to know what was inside my father who was working in a Chevrolet assembly plant supporting his wife and family of five children, keeping the home above water.

     Reading books became a very large part of my way of knowing. The local library branch was one of my favorite places to visit and hang out, scanning every title on every shelf. Some book or another to read is always on my horizon of things to do in between everything else. Now I have a book of my own to share, and it is kind of fun keeping my ear and my eye open for someone to share my writing with.

     There was also a huge, heavy finely bound book of paintings in color, all North American birds. Semi-gloss paper pages with drawings and paintings by Audubon, and other artist bird watchers. An amazingly beautiful book to page through after I’d had my fill of galaxies and planets.

     Wednesday morning around ten, April twenty-seventh. In the dragon room with white walls. I’ve been looking for a place to be, a place to return to, since before I arrived in Chennai five months ago. Thorough the Chennai guest house, two Pondicherry guest houses, the Hotel Qualithe’, two nights at the lodge in Siliguri, one week at Hotel Pandim in Gangtok, and four nights at Sonam’s Home Stay in Tasahiding, I’ve found a place to be, a place to return to. Limboo home stay, run by graciously smiling, soft spoken Rani and her husband, Head Forest Guad Birkaman, with their three school age children. The backyard garden is a phenomenal space, and Yuksom is a phenomenal place. There are more bird voices out here than a person can count. Just ask the visiting birdwatchers from Bangalore with their telescopic lens cameras and guide books and check-off lists! Skies have been clear or mildly cloudy with no rain. There is no automotive traffic  along the well-worn asphalt main street through town, except for the occasional jeep passing through, dropping off and picking up. Couple of outdoor cafes and a post office, no ATMs or Internet. A short walk leading away from town from here is magical Kathog Lake, “sanctified in the seventeenth century for the purpose of his (Kathog Rigdzin Chhenpo) oracular practices.” This is his Bla-Tsho, i.e Soul Lake and Lamas perform purification rites every year to retain the sanctity of the place. This is the town where the kingdom of Sikkim was born in 1641.

     The Limboo homestay garden is designed around relaxation settings for small groups around tables under shade, and narrow rocky pathways network through the flowers and small bushes. The main building has rooms and the kitchen and dining room for temps like myself, and there is a duplex cabin in the back, which I have yet to ask about, but from the outside, it looks like a home. Itinerant trekkers and hikers and sightseers pass through town every day on their way to somewhere, and it would never take long to find company at either the Yak Café  or the Gupta Café.

     Went out for a walk up the road yesterday mid-afternoon to look for the 1641 stone coronation throne on top of a hill, and as I’m taking pictures around a middle-of-the-road stupa, along comes Ankur, my art student friend from yesterday, so we walk together up the rocky path to see what there is to see. The coronation throne platform is weathered gray stone with seats for the three great lamas who presided over the inaugural ceremonies. Just have to take a minute to imagine how colorful, and crowded and musical the event would have been, and here we are, Ankur and I, in the middle of it all. Be There Now! The towering white chorten of this ceremonial center points towards the sky amidst straight towering trees. Ankur and I sit on the first ledge of this chorten and he shows me his portfolio on his phone camera. Truly a talented young man already and he’s only completing his third year of a four year program before going on to three years of graduate school. His portraits are entirely real in color and tone and linear accuracy. His landscapes are bright and playful, gentle and contemplative. A pleasure it is to meet this talented thoughtful person. Descending the hill as the solar disc approaches the hilltop horizon, we walk to the nearby Kathog Lake, more on the order of a large pond in my vocabulary. The grass around the lakeshore is a naturally luminescent green, and a few large boulders clutter the water and ground in one corner. Two necklace strings of white prayer flags adorn two sides of the smooth as silk and reflective waters. As Ankur and I find some flat stones to sit on and continue our conversation and simply sit and admire the lake, two of the young hikers from yesterday enter the lakeside grounds and walk over to join us. Natasha from Ukraine, the artist friend from Kerala, along with a young artist from Italy, not formally trained in art, but seriously dedicated, with a velvet soft voice, and aesthetically discerning. Visual art is about seeing and showing what you see, and I give them each my address card with my pueblo painting for background and my three website addresses for my book, my poetry and my paintings. Our conversation has been through art. Here is an image from my brush. You can see more and read some on the internet, and this is my avenue for sharing today and they all appreciate it. Eventually, the company of three go their way, and Ankur and I circumambulate the holy lake. We return to the road and walk to our parting way. Ankur is leaving Yuksom tomorrow. We will meet again, or, as Mali would say, we have always met, exactly right here.