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India Round-the-World/John 4 of 7

India Round-the-World, July 2 - November 8, 1971

SATURDAY, AUGUST 21. [[3:55, 8/22]] Up at 7, feeling more rested than I'd been in a long time, and cuddle with John for a bit and then out of bed for showers and breakfast and packing for the week away at Chiangmai and the other cities of Thailand. Then write 204-206 from 9:35 to 9:55AM, and start reading "Starship Troopers" to 10:30, when we catch a taxi to the airport for 35 baht. John studies and find we both spent something like $55 each for the 4 days in Thailand, or $13/day, and since only $4 of that was the room and food from the restaurant, HOW could we have spent $9 per day APIECE? We figure a bit on the way to the airport, but I sadly think they may have pilfered some of the kitty's 100's from the drawer in which it was left. Horrible traffic and we leave the taxi in a jam at 11:40 and walk to the domestic terminal, having left two suitcases and John's package at the hotel and taking only the satchel with pills and dop kits and books and the knapsack filled with clothes. Find the plane scheduled for 12:30, and it doesn't actually LEAVE until 1. Suspect there'll be no food on the plane so I buy a large Cadbury's for 10 baht and read. Into plane, jammed, third from front on left, but still the prop obscures most of the view. But it's just GREAT to be in a PROP-jet, which FLIES as it takes off, FLIES through turns, and flies down to the ground, rather than giving the idea that it's turned off its jets and is coasting. There are clouds all around but we don't ascend, thankfully, to the second level. Land is VERY flat below, with entire VISTAS filled with fields filled with water linked by straight klongs and laced by curving rivers. Few towns of any size until Pitsanoluk, and that's a largish nothing with temples and COVERED with clouds. Land at 2 and off at 2;18, and clouds are thicker as land grows bumps of hills and I brace myself for rough flying but it never gets there. I LOVE prop planes. Hills form darkly and there are whole areas of fields where even the MARGINS appear to be underwater, and the river in Chiangmai appears to be running into the town. Land and get out at 2:50 and it's breezy and cool, though the air is VERY clear and it's sunny. Welcome relief from the mugginess of Bangkok. Usual herd of hustlers shouting for taxis and hotels, and we decide to take FREE transportation to the Prince, but they DON'T have an 80-baht room, so we pick up bags, heading for Tokyo, and pass New Asia, a Chinese hotel, and THEY have a nice room for 80, and we check into 432. Many roads are flooded curb to curb and some homes look like boats in their watery yards. Out and walk the wrong way at 3, seeing Wat Gai Talon across the Mae Ping River, and ask a "Christian" woman how to get to the other temples and she can only direct us BACK across the turbulent muddy overflowing river to Tha Pae Road, and we wander in and out of many minor wats, all with their saffron-robed monks washing and teaching and reading and playing handball, and we relax with a beer for a bit, then catch a cab as it gets dark to go to Ahon Naie Chan restaurant, a large barn that doesn't have goat's meat, and we have a fried duck that tastes like good sausage, a good fried rice, swallow-nest soup (three-color) with pigeon's eggs, and a fried crab dish that's boiled. Beer and I have "Chinese fruit" which tastes like cold hard half beans for dessert, all for 58 baht. Great price and the waitress was as pert and cute as could be. Wander dark streets and listen to startlingly loud frogs and look at swamped houses in the dark and manage to make our lengthy way back to the hotel, wading in spots. Write 206-210 from 8:45 to 9:30, while John goes out for a good massage at the Atami, and we chat and shower and get into bed at 10:45.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 22. But I have to put earplugs in to sleep over the motors and fans and frogs and crickets and PARTICULARLY the dogs, DAMN them. Sleep well and wake at 6:45, cuddle with John who woke during the night with a relaxed sphincter, cleaned it up, then dreamed of losing bicycles all night. Up at 7:15 and shower and get to Prince Hotel at 7:30 to sign up 7th and 8th on the list for the tour to Doi Sutep, and then into the coffee shop for FRIED scrambled eggs and good bacon for 18 baht apiece, after we convinced the waitress we WEREN'T going to pay 19 baht apiece. Price car for a full day and it's 250 baht with driver, which John thinks is too expensive, even if I CAN find a third to fill the car and he DOESN'T want to see the elephants working. Climb into truck and the other six are all Air Force guys, and they talk shop about RTW tankers in the air forever and emergencies that didn't QUITE blow up the world. And they look not a bit at us, even though I look at THEM, particularly the guy in brown with the lovely complexion and tiny eye-wrinkles, the thick beautiful chest and thighs under his brown trousers. His buddy has incredible shoulders and seems a nice guy. The third is plumpish and the fourth tall and thin, uninteresting. The two Italians in front seem gay, and one IS cute, but there's nothing to be seen from them. Through the university and up the hill on the best road in the country, made entirely by hand labor and finished only six months ago. Up, sadly, into the clouds after a few nice views over the flat Chiangmai Valley, and get to the Bhuping (or Pooping) Palace in the fog to follow everyone like sheep AROUND THE FOUNDATION of the palace, then stroll through the lovely flower gardens and back into the bus. Big deal and even the THAIS, puzzled, looked like they'd been took. Down lower to Doi Sutep and the Naga 200-step stairs are nice and slippery in the pouring rain, and they RENT 7-baht umbrellas for 3 bahts! Up top we watch people put three-for-one-baht gold leaves on statues and candles, see the monk blessing everyone, wander around in rain to look at the AWFUL graven images, and back to car. Down now to Huay Kaen waterfall "small, but lovely" that would go unnoticed in Akron, and to Wat Ched Yod, a nothing of a ruin with pretensions to everything, and disgruntled back into the car. Back to hotel at 12, hardly 3 1/2 hours, since we left at 8:40. Across the road to have noodles and lettuce and crab and pork soup, with a big cold beer, all for 27 baht, and back to hotel to look at train schedule. Chiangmai is NOT the best place on earth and John is convinced HE'S touring wrong and I suggest we get 7AM train down to Pitsanoluk and he says OK. Out at 1PM to surprising 5-baht ride (each) way out to Phra Singh, and it's awfully shoddy except for a door with RECTANGULAR mother-of-pearl inlays from Burma and the Buddha was made OVER 1800 years ago (157AD). Talk with monk who shows LOVELY painting in one small section of ruined wall and asks about trip. "Why hurry?" he asks when I say we're leaving tomorrow, and I can't tell him "Chiangmai's a bore" but say "There are so many places to see." Out and walk to Wat Chedi Luang, and it's the grass-covered tower I saw from the roof of Jed Yod, and IT would be GREAT if restored to its 282-foot height, 30% higher than Wat Arun. Look at mossy niche where Emerald Buddha sat, and we walk the long distance to Wat Chiang Man, which is less than nothing and a bore, and we really feel that we should get back to the hotel. Walk through warming streets and get to hotel for John to have a beer and when restaurant has no barbecued ribs or sugarcane-smoked chicken, I have egg foo young, which comes out EXACTLY like an omelet, filled with bits of chicken and ham, I think. Up to room for John to shower and nap and me to write 210-214 from 3:55 to 4:40, and that's RIGHT NOW and I'm caught up to date for the first time since Taiwan---and I'd NEVER be caught up if I hadn't come down to four pages per day. I'd WANTED to have a chance to write MORE, AS it happened, but THIS is the first day to go OVER in quite a bit. AND I can finally throw away that old inky sheet of data and writing times from the Evergreen Hotel, back in Taiwan. I just did, at 4:41. Now I don't even have to put brackets because I'm writing right now FOR right now. John's so like a kid told that if there's going to be a Santa Claus, he'll have to give gifts to someone. He's "not engaged" and "bored" with Chiangmai, but thinks it's HIS fault. In a WAY it is, since he wasn't even "engaged" when the devout Buddhists offered gold to their adored, and he didn't REALLY care for the size of Chedi Luang. But I AGREE that Chiangmai is a loss, Burma MAY or MAY NOT be that way, and hopefully, India WILL be somewhat different, NOT adding "but only if YOU begin to engage YOURSELF." So we find hotel has car at 6AM, and now it's 4:45 and I'll take a shower for my dinner tonight at 7PM for $5 that John thinks is too expensive. [6:50PM, 8/11]] The Chedi out the window looks like a space ship on end, but instead of a capsule on its nose, it balances a lacy golden parasol of iron filigree. [9:30, 8/22] John comes in right then and showers and I shower and he's lying on his bed, and I figure there's only one thing to do with an hour to kill, so I lay be him, tickle him, kiss, then suggest a Baby Magic massage and he's immediately ready, enjoying it in the middle of the day, and I say 5:30 is a bit EARLY for sex. So we do each other, and I'm QUITE exhausted and just lie weakly while he leaves, then I wash off and get to the Prince Hotel at 7 after cashing a traveler's check downstairs. I'm the only one from the Prince and there are five Japanese guys and that's all. I sit opposite them, thankfully leaning against the wall and "hostess" gives me "two strong Chiangmai cigars," a local whiskey and soda that taste like weak tea and has LESS kick, and then she brings out the full tray intended for THREE, and I finish the good spare ribs, get a SECOND portion of the fabulous pork and tomato sauce, get most of the way through the great beef balls in dough, don't care for the pork and no-vegetable in half-dough, take little of the deep-fried pork skin, eat about all the cucumbers and cabbage, and express my surprise over what appears to be HOT lettuce, and there's sticky rice for making balls and regular rice and a local chicken soup that nets three moths. Then tea and three little dessert cups of palm (oh, the cigars are from banana leaves) with the same Chinese fruit of yesterday, but hotter, and a farinaceous pudding on top, sweetish. But for the six of the guests they cart out the seven instrument (two xylophones, two cymbals, drum, crazyhorn, and flute), the six female dancers, and the two specialty dancers; first they do the "long nail" dance, lovely up close and the lead girl smiles and smiles at me. Then the "parade drummer" with everything suspended and him whaling away with drumheads, knees, elbows and head. Then there's the enormously flattering "candle number" and they wield their candles much like their long fingers, except all the lights are out and the effects of the lights, raising and lowering, brightening at top and dimming when they're briefly upside-down, particularly when looked at in the reflection in the windows across the way, is VERY becoming to the girls doing it. I embarrassed by "You have five dollars in baht" that turns out to be "You have father and mother?" Then the sword dance, but a little girl like Cissy Wong ["How long have you worked here, one year, two years?" "Every day."] and she dances around six pairs, then brandishes them, then puts one between toes and one in knee crook and jogs around making hand signs, then she CROSSES two and puts them in her mouth, then proceeds to load the REST of the pairs onto THAT pair. All the while brandishing, toe-kneeing them, and at the end whirling around in a STOOP. Then she lays them all out in a star, then puts one pair in the middle, then tucks the OTHER two UNDER HER ARMS and ROLLS ON THE FLOOR, ALL OVER the others! These have ROUND handles and SHARP edges and I gasp and applaud EXTRA long and she smiles at me. Then there's the simple farewell dance that everyone's supposed to join and I refuse and one Jap only does and that's the end, and then winds and rain race across the open area and it's pouring in torrents. Into the car and make it clear I want the New Asia and we have a nightmare ride through the downrush, pouring sheets of water up on both sides, the klongs around the town have flooded their banks and inundated roads, homes and stores, pedestrians and cyclists are unmercifully sprayed, trucks are stalled, roads impassable and I envision going into a canal in the Toyota truck and drowning. Left at doorway of hotel, thankfully, and up to write 215-217 from 9:30-9:55, and John's not back yet, but it's time to earplug and bed me.

MONDAY, AUGUST 23. [8:45AM 8/23] Pack last night and read a bit waiting for John to get back, but he's not back at 11 and I'm quite tired and the music's STILL going in the hotel and there's a radio blaring from next door, too. Manage to get to sleep, wishing for a desert island of silence, and John doesn't even wake me when he gets back at 12. I'm up at 2:45 to the sound of TORRENTIAL rain on the sea outside, piss and go back to sleep. Phone rings at 5:15, I'd said 5:30, and SHE says "It's 5 o'clock." Up and shower and pay bill, which is exactly 163 baht, 3 for John's pants, and we get into hotel car for the train station. There's just a bit of color in the sky, the streets are busy with walking people and shops are opening and some roofed markets are VERY busy already. Get to the station to find "the train left" and the next one's at 7. Across to good soft-boiled eggs in a glass and glasses of some milo-like substance and mocha stuff, and tea, all for 6 bahts, and over to look at all the hard-seated third class cars and the single second class car with dirtier windows and gloomier interiors than third class, but the seats are good and upholstered and we commandeer two double sections of eight seats, lower all the windows and spread out. John tells me about his evening, going to Sie Surang for good food and beer, for about 30 baht, but they only ask for 3 baht for coffee and 20 baht entertainment charge for the dancing. He gets invited to a table of twenty boys where there's suggestions he dance with girls, then that he dance with THEM, and then THEY dance with each other, he does too, loving all the contact they feel for him and even the crotch touches he does completely skillfully but non-sexually---they even point and remark laughingly when he gets an erection. They dance, there's a brawl at the next table, they all vie for having ganja with him tomorrow, and the cutie drives him home at midnight, with John's hands all up and down his chest and waist and crotch, but he finds nothing but hardness and no genitals. He can't understand when John asks for another hotel that THEY can go to. They shake hands and I tell John they are certainly straight, only vying in making an American feel welcome and "one of the group." He stretches out to sleep and we stop for a long time in Tha Chompu for the southern express to pass, and then start going again at 8:55, which is right now, and it's hard writing with the train jostling, so I'll take it up at the next stop. Into Kuntan twelve minutes late, people rush back and forth, and the five-minute stop is cut to 1, so we're only eight minutes late when we leave. Raincoats blossom as we go through rain forests, with more kinds of trees than I have time to tell: large-leaved trees bursting into yellow candelabra of blossoms at the end, trees with purple larkspur at the tips, bushes of what look like tiny orange orchids, frangipani with its red and white, spiky-leaved trees with yellow hibiscus-like blooms, willow-types with large and small fronds, bombars and conventional trees, pines and other conifers and even cactus, and blooming blue and yellow and red plants. Then there are leaves, large, small, dark green shading to a lovely fresh yellow green, trees ending in red leaves more like flowers than leaves, elaborately yellow and maroon and red ti leaves, "painted leaves" of green spattered with red and white, coleus type with streaks and dots and splashes of all colors but blue. These are folded over hills that are fairly steep, wreathed in foggy clouds, dropping away to ravines beneath the train, where muddy streams dip over rocks. There's a tunnel of vile smells 1300 meters long after Kuntan, and there are climbs and descents and curves, until we get into the flat valleys and see the rice paddies and the smaller brown rivers breaking over their banks, broken plants telling of higher prior waters and pressures that bent them permanently down. Trees wear footscarves of uprooted muddy rushes. People look at the TRAIN, not really at us, lots of people, not only kids, wave from fields. Water buffalos alone, cows in herds, some brahma bulls, few dogs, no cats, more teenagers than children, though the children tend to cluster, touching each other. How do people feel, knowing that Mae Mo is their home for life, they may get to Chiangmai once on a religious pilgrimage. No Messiahs, earth-movers, or Presidents in THESE towns. Do they even THINK about what they have in comparison with others? There are loads of teak logs, all stripped of their bark and looking dark and solid and shiny, and then I'm delighted, just south of Mae Mo, to pull into a station and see a huge bull, boy mounted on bent legs behind his head, pulling a log toward the center pile by chains. Another was lugging something, too, large yellow tusks looking like underclean teeth. Two others had finished their drag and were plodding back to get more, empty chains dragging from their harness. Their mahouts couldn't have looked at the train with more interest than I looked at them. Salesmen roam the aisles, selling rice with fried eggs on top and soda, and there's a lovely short nicely-muscled car boy in khaki shorts with the knottiest leg muscles possible, and huge wings of lovely padding beneath his shoulders, tapering to a packed waist and nice round ass. John's captivated by a tall ticket-taker, but his face is broad and coarse and he seems much too thin. Tall he is, but that's about it. Plants like pineapple tops BURST into fist-sized white blooms. The forest in the north around Chiangmai seemed trimmed and tailored, crew-cut, in fact, with many small young trees and little interest. Further south, however, the forest bloomed into a luxuriant jungle, trees tall and old towering over rank undergrowth, creepers festooning their way from tree to tree, cascading off branches like capes of snow, burdening small trees until they looked like very green ghosts with dangling wrists, and monster heaps peering out of the jungle. Butterflies were there, from tiny yellow ones to large floating black and white fantasies. John said, "That's filled with cobras," and it might just be. Sun began peeping out, and the dripping shadowy wet forest turned into a blaze of tropical leaf-sheen and flow from the reflected light. Huge spiders build webs across telephone wires, and the featureless jungle begins to display banana orchards, dried corn stalks and bamboo groves, and the sun finally comes out in strength as we get to Ban Pin at 12:30. I'd thought the rough terrain would last only 3-4 hours, but it's still going great at 5 1/2 hours, and it occurs to me that there were hills to the west of Pitsanoluk as we flew up, so we may have great scenery to the city, and I won't have to read on the train at all. I'm continually hungry, and John goes to place an order for fried vegetables and pork on an omelet, and heaven only knows what we'll end up getting. We arrive at Din Chao early, so that we can listen longer to the first loudspeaker in a thankfully long time. There's NO music on the train, which is wonderful. Ten hours of loudness would be horribly trying. And a fellow who'd been looking and looking at us sat across from me at the stop and said "Would you help me please?" and I ended up writing "Windshield wiper motor" on his spare-parts request for his Jeep. The train attendants look so much like military men it's hard to tell them from the REAL ones that SEEM to be around, but maybe they're only the majors of the train's squad. Lunch was as we'd requested it, for 30 baht, but there was only one omelet, and the food quantity was perfect. And it's now past 1:30, less than four hours to go, and it looks like I'll survive. At the first I was actually chilly, but now the sun's out and starting to come through the window and it's warmer than it actually needs to be. Third class is jammed and second remains a quarter full. John just bought four Thai zeppole filled with what seem to be minced nuts for one baht. Greasy but sweet. Well, I'm getting tired of writing, so I'll start reading in quiet spots unless something really spectacular passes. Thailand seems even MORE tropical than Sabah, but the little bit of train-passed jungle goes a long way, even with what at first shock appears to be huge vine-covered chedis turn into only tree-grown dykes, of which the country has a lot, some few possessing a drab version of the free-form quality of the monuments in Bryce Canyon. Sunglasses on finally, and we leave Den Chai AFTER the scheduled departure of 13:34, at 13:44, but we seemed to be waiting for a northbound train to pull in off the single track, and the people parade through our train to get to the station, including a Ted Kennedy lookalike carrying a jam-packed pack on his back. Two MORE elephants leaving Den Chai. I begin to RE-hate the Chinese, since someone sits behind me who MUST be Chinese, talking in a harsh, grating, high nasal voice and I'm gratified that he gets off quickly. [12:25, 8/24]] Cloud formations are quite incredible billows of every possible gradation between white and gray standing out in delicate cameos against each other and the sky, as if cut in the thinnest translucent shards of slate, or of blue marble in the shape of Brancusi's "Fish." Into Pitsanoluk right on schedule at 4:25, and we walk out of the train and across the tracks and ignore the first hotel because it doesn't have an English sign, though later we see that it's Hotel Pitsanoluk by a sign on the ONLY corner we DIDN'T see. Walk down the main drag parallel to the station and find nothing, then up the street from the station, still nothing. Ask two people but they don't understand "hotel." Then a samlor driver asks and we get directed to Thammahut Hotel, down THAT street, and after refusing a room on the street because of the noise, we get one on the third, top, floor, in the back over a chicken yard and passel of squalling kids, for 60 baht. John immediately washes his shirt and I grimly remark I'd like to wash my FACE, and he slams it out of the water and into the shower, shouting, "Well, you COULD have said something." Drear silence for most of the rest of the evening. Out for a walk, hello-ed again, and to first Wat, every commercialized, and down to corner to old grass-covered ruins and along houseboats on swift river to THE Wat, wandering around and climbing stupa and told main Buddha is locked up. Back to hotel along inner road and finally settle on a duck place after finding NOTHING in town, not even restaurant in NEW Hotel Siam, and LARGE hotel only being built. Eat raw-like duck and pork in greasy greens and rice, and at least it's filling for 34 baht. Buy popcorn and back to hotel at 8;15, and John's immediately into the bare bed, and I shave and brush my teeth and crawl in with earplugs, expecting to lie awake an HOUR from 8:45, but I'm asleep immediately, to my surprise, but John (he says later) didn't sleep at all.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 24. Wake at 6:30 to awful cries of the single cock, and John's up and washing already, so we decide to catch 12:35 train, pack and get downstairs to cash a traveler's check, and he said he'd have to charge 10 baht for cashing the check in Bangkok, but I insist it should only be 5 baht, so he says the bill is 40 baht. I immediately think of $4 and shout "But yesterday he said 30!" Knowing it was $3. He says, "No, no," and I repeat, "He said 30," so he shrugs and says, "OK, 35" after profiting 4 baht from 20-even exchange rate, and gives me 165 in return. Only LATER am I aghast at what I did. Across for breakfast of good rolls and two eggs each and the same orange stuff and tea, this all for 11.75, with five rolls in all. Had asked for taxi and he's waiting at hotel, he starts at 200 and we start at 100 and end with 150 for getting back at noon. Off toward the gray-clouded west at 8:40. Crowded toward town, but as we leave the fringes of town (stopping at an Esso station to get 20 liters of gas for 40 baht AND get served two cold glasses of water from a beaded bottle) about 3 km out, we accelerate to 80-100 km/hr cruising speed, slowing only to pass busses, trucks, bicycles, motor scooters and numbers of cow carts and people. Remark to John "we're going faster than the speed of the Wave" because we get startled looks and inquiring stares, but are past in a toot and a swirl of speed before anyone can raise their hand to wave. Kids tramping nude in the rice fields, and when the sun reluctantly comes from behind clouds, the level fields of young rice give such a verdant greenness stretching to the palms and the equally-green trees, it looks like the lushest level parkland in the world. Get into the busy dusty city of Sukothai at 8:30, and there are a number of hotels every BIT as good as the one we stayed at in Pitsanoluk, and we pass through and take a little over an hour to get to Sukothai, the old town, and we pass a couple of bell-shaped stupas beforehand and there's a map in front of a very elaborate series of brick platforms and stupas and Buddha enclosures, and this is Pra Maha Dhat, the main one of the lot, with literally hundreds of small squares (6'x6') of bricks piled with debris, about a dozen larger stupas and bell-shaped ruins, half a dozen tiered wedding cake affairs with arcades like the leaning Tower of Pisa, three or four Buddha-enclosing towers and the enormous central complex with two huge Standing Buddhas flanking the central tower, up which we clamber for a 60-foot high view of the complex. Then back to look at the l'il ole map and route out a set of temples to see. The first, Wat Sra Sri, with the Tapha Daeng Shrine is a piddly set of columns around a Buddha, on an island, the second, Wat Sri Chom, is father away but a knockout: an enormous hollowed-cube affair with a Buddha filling every possible cubic inch, even to having arches in the side walls to accommodate his knees. And you duck through a small doorway in the left wall, after buying two candles for one baht to chase the spiders from the dark, and turn funhouse corners to ascend a steep narrow flight of stairs straight from Poe, with line engravings of Buddha on each ceiling step, which occurs every OTHER footstep. A stop onto a balcony for a profile of the Buddha, a turn and another grated window onto the snails on the back of his head, and then another sharp turn and through a little funnel onto the flat roof and a great view all around, particularly down on the enormously-sashed Buddha far below. And a view of the NEXT stop on the near mound of hill, Wat Saphan Hin. [12:30, 8/27]: we finally find "the end:" get into Pagan and there's no room at the Rest House because VIPs have taken it over. So we sit and John complains and the UBA bus takes us to the "friend's house" of one of the flight officers, and that's where we can stay, getting a glimpse of wood-slat floors with air coming through. A roach comes out of our bag and John sees a very large lizard and there are chickens and dogs and cats (and at least one rooster to crow his fool head off at dawn). [11:15AM 8/28. But after we wander through temples and walk part way back and catch a truck ride for another part back and are just walking along the huge monastery at the side of the house, the BUS comes past with three more Americans who flew in this afternoon from Mandalay, after having been told there was no place to stay, and we all get taken to ANOTHER guest house in Pagan, and they ask how much it is to stay there and it's 3 chats a night, and if we take the 9+ rate we get as average from black market and regular, that's somewhat less than 30¢ a person. But sadly the room isn't worth it, with the three tourists getting in late on Friday, gabbing and keeping everyone awake, and then the beds are VERY hard, being only a thin pad and sheet over slats, and I have to take a little bit of pillow to rest my facial bones on the surface without unduly pressuring them. To bed at 8:45, to sleep about 11, up a couple times and wake at 3:50 to get out for the temple offerings and back to lie at 5:30. NOW it's 4:15, and I'm sitting on a hot red- rock seat at the top of Htilomilo, and the flies are buzzing maddeningly around my head, little black ants are scurrying over bricks, me, and this pad, a spider is spinning a web from my leg, the squirrels who live here aren't visible, and crows and cicadas are making sounds in the trees along with a VERY reluctant wind that's finally arriving with the lowering black clouds that are finally shading the sun from this uncomfortably hot day. Can't be said to be really TROPICAL, since we walked bareheaded in the sun for upwards of half an hour without really sweating, but we've had no water since the soup and tea at lunch and things

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over the top that I've been seeing but not identifying. And Gawdawpalin IS open, with nice view. We DRIVE to Apedanya, stark and simple and locked, and Nagayon looks like next stop, but still no one's allowed on top., Menuha looks big and white and square and we don't stop, but stop at Nampaya and I write THIS. THE BEST stone carvings on four central pillars here. Simply THE best. And it's carved in STONE, and not stucco, too. With lots of black and red and white paint still showing on the leaves of the capitals of these columns. On the basis of THAT beauty, we're back to go inside Menuha, but it's ENTIRELY filled with three knee-to-knee Buddhas peering down on us, and all that expanse of blank white wall is AWFUL. Photos in museum show Hitlomilo BEFORE repair, upper terraces almost a PYRAMID of debris and greenery, all corners rounded down. Also Nanpaya's roof was just a heap of rubble and they had to RECONSTRUCT its "non-walkable" top. Even a photo of Gawdawpalin BEFORE it was cleaned, good square edges but FILTHY with dirt dripping down flanks. Lots of VOTIVE tablets on display---maybe 1% of stupa loot? Nagayon was in great condition, however, as were most of the temples that the people actually used. Shwesandaw was REPAIRED to be white, "before" photo shows just undistinguished levels of red brick. Cave photos from Nyaung-U are just caves in the photos, so it's probably NOT worth the trek to walk 4 miles to see them and back to road. A very FEW Indian-influenced "figures holding figures" steles, but NOT a TRACE of the Indian pornography. And LOADS of carved steles and columns and monuments under shed roofs outside. Nothing of ANY of this is left at ANY site I've seen. Standing figures of wood with hand raised to chest so ERODED that it could almost be a natural driftwood object. Wooden Buddhas eviscerated in the search for valuables, heads split, middles town out, legs ripped apart. Then it starts to rain about 11, and then we go back to the house, passing right below Shwegugyi, and I don't even feel like stopping in. 11:15AM 8/29. Am mightily tempted to take the only map of Pagan I've seen so far, but it's falling apart at four seams and seems to be on loan to anyone who stops at the guest house, so I take the unnatural task of leaving it so OTHERS can look at it, rather than taking it with me. But I bring MY map up to date using it, and I did a FAIRLY good job of getting everything of note down and seen. I've been quite tired at the end of each DAY, but still eager to see more of Pagan for the first two days. Now on the third day (and maybe the rain helps) I'm tired even at the START of the day, and, as I said, didn't even stop to stare at Shwe Gugyi in the rain. There are STILL places to see, but I can see myself coming BACK to a place like this in about forty years JUST to see how much has been restored, all the new roads and hotels, and see it from an air-conditional bus (helicopter?) without having to walk a step, with magnificent maps and brochures on sale in all the main buildings in English. I DO get the feeling I'm seeing them before they become overrun, as, say, the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, or Bangkok has been taken over by the tourists. Hey, I've GOT to do TUESDAY, before I break a record on it, as I think I already HAVE]. We get out to the base of the hill and there's a stone causeway to the top, from which there's a concrete-braced Buddha looking out over hills and rain clouds on all three sides from Wat Saphan Hin. John again wants to sit and loaf, so I'm slowly down, enjoying views, and it starts to rain and John dashes down and we're back ready to go. Driver says Prabat Noi is five kilometers on, and we decide it's too far. Back to complex and PASS road in, and demand he turn around and we point to museum. In, but it's closed on Monday and Tuesday and any BOOK available is locked in WITH the museum. Around grounds looking at elephants and boundary markers and Buddhas and stone gongs and pillars and capitals and pieces of ornamentation, then try to tell him to take a circular route back via Wat Chet Upon, but he refuses to understand and we're on road at 11:05, getting into Pitsanoluk at 12:10, through some rain, and we pay him and get into station and buy ticket to Lopburi. Ride is long and hot and we're in at 6 with recommendations to the Nett Hotel, but find they WON'T cash our traveler's check! John's dead tired and sits on curb while I walk around town to find hotel, finally back to Nett and they draw map to Taipei Hotel, which we miss in the dark and go around temple circle and find the Vibulari Hotel, which John dubs "the Polish dump." In and he looks at three rooms while I fend off laughing attacks against hippies and a crew-cut woman who says I should cut my hair. John finally accepts an air-conditioned room for 60 baht, and showers as I go down to cash checks. Much fuss and talk: no take. Finally guy drives me to US NCO club, while I worry about being abducted and robbed and killed, but they give me US cash and back to hotel to pay $3, and John's sitting looking for me. Driver takes us back the six doors to the Subai and I stupidly give him $1, and we're in to find a "Beatles" group with screechy girl vocalists and John has good hot curry, we guzzle two lovely cold beers and I have great chicken MEAT, not bones and gristle, and it's 101 baht and we're back to still-laughing hotel and get into noisy bed about 10:30.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25. [11:40AM 8/29: hard to write because I don't have my map]. Up at 7, to cock's crow and John says he didn't sleep. I sit and figure and look at train schedule and Pimai write-up [and, taking the map from the back of book 2, review the itinerary given by the Thai family at Prambanan: train from Bangkok to Korat and Pimai, then bus to Nongkhai on the Laos border near Vientiane, and then down the Mekong River to Phra Wihan, or Wiharn, in northeast Thailand, on the Cambodian border] and announce that we'll be catching the 12:57 train out of Lopburi, skipping Pimai, and would get back to Bangkok at 4PM. We both agree it would be nice to get back to the "quiet" Suriwong in the "city" of Bangkok. Pack, but leave stuff in room and look out window to see the huge heap of stupa (big Nakhon Kosa) on our side of the tracks and two temple towers beyond that, both across the tracks. Out at 8 and browse about the Kala Shrine, with the monkey troupes, very old, agile, and kitteny-young, making great entertainment, far better than the praying people in the adjoining temple before the awful Buddha. One fellow even USES a coconut shell as a mask, using the opportunity to harass his friends under the disguise of the shell. And it's not an accident, when a tussle knocks it off, he grabs it up and puts it back ON. John's sitting and dozing and we're across the tracks to the Prang Sam Yot temple, and it's getting hot and dank already and the temple's in pretty poor shape, though the triplet towers are nicely proportioned. Around and into town, across the street for a place to eat eggs for 4 baht, and I get awfully rooked by going across the street to buy good bread, but they charge five baht for a single 5-piece jellyroll. But they make the eggs taste better. Down the street to watch an old yellow-robed monk being helped down a rickety aluminum ladder after blessing the sign on a newly-opened shop, and it seems there's a LOT of new business going up in the small town. Past the triangular traffic island housing Prang Khock, the propped-up Hindu shrine, and walk along the ruins of the Wichayan house, that are more war-bombed Europe than Southeast Asia. Past the Wat Sao Tong Thong and in to look at the awful linoleum floor and plaster Buddha, and back to the festival area to see a coffin and flowers and offerings and people seated under an awning and a gamelan, so we're over and find it's a cremation at 3PM, and they give us good cold orange drinks and talk to us and it's 10:15 and the next event is at 11, and I want to see the museum, so we leave and get a cute uninforming guide through the airy Buddha exhibit, the black enameled one particularly nice---how great they would ALL be if they were in mint condition. Down to wander Narai Palace grounds (no books, 2 baht black and white cards, Buddhas, clothing, pieces of temples, coins: two US pennies, nickel, dime, quarter) and lots of people LIVE there, and into main museum to see coins and Buddhas and carvings and brass work and woodwork and old clothing and paintings, but THEY have no books and the black and white cards are 2 baht each! There's a map that I copy and walk over to Mahathat, and they're rebuilding, digging up the square European-looking building, and they laugh at us and call me Hippy and I look at impressive central tower and find the stupas in my cards and then out at 11, hot, back to the festivities, stopping to see the Wat Krawit, a yellow plaster and stucco monstrosity, and see Wat Cheong Tho as another chimney in the distance, and we stop in shops along the way. The gamelan is playing and the FOOD's about to come out for the monks. We wheedle two free cold Pepsis each and John gives his kid a Touch-Me that turns them ALL on. Out at 11:30 when they're obviously eating for awhile, and search for a bank, find one to cash checks, and John buys a nice heavy Buddha for 120 bahts. Walk back to hotel, exhausted and sweating, shower and down to the station at 12:30, and he buys meat (awful sausages) to eat and I buy lychees, and we're on train at 1:15 and down to Bangkok at 4:15, enjoying food and cold beer and the approaches to the city. Limo to hotel for 6 baht, switch from ONE room when the toilet doesn't work to ANOTHER where the toilet doesn't work, go across for a haircut and hair wash for 50 baht from 5 to 6, and shave and leave for Chez Suzanne at 7PM. Her vichyssoise is as bad as her vegetable cream soup, the chicken liver tastes and looks funny and pasty. John's lamb stew is good, he says, and my Poulet Provencal has great tomato and chive and garlic sauce and the chicken is good too. He has ice cream and meringue and I have a caramel-colored pudding that they call creme caramel, and it's not as good as the first time, but it's a bit cheaper, too. Walk back to hotel, full, and decide to pack and leave TOMORROW for Burma, since the UBA flight on Friday leaves at 9:45PM. Try to phone but they're closed, and the office is open at 8:30AM so we can't call.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 26. [3:45PM 8/30: Rangoon Zoo: First of all seems to have 50 kinds of monkeys, all relatively local, but South America shows up. Then some guinea pigs and rabbits looking comfortable among all their little turds, and an actual Burmese mongoose along with lots of Indian mongeese. The four elephants were in durance vile, chained by left front and right rear foot to opposite corners, they could only bow and crash their trunks against the cement and dance back and forth to relieve their legs of their weight. I hope they unchain them at NIGHT. Admission was 10 piastres, or 1/2¢, but the WALK was 40 minutes. THOUSANDS of crows cry from threes and one of the SADDEST sights to see is a cobra with a broken back trying his puzzled best to swim while his last half lies lifeless behind him. Turns over and coils and writhes and ALMOST succeeds in heaving and knotting himself, but CAN'T move out of the puddle. A whole specimen snobbishly easily performs the task he find impossibly difficult. Pitiful bears, alligators, lynx, screeching otters, and a poor green acouchi with his climbing talons all crooked and bent from the concrete floor. Leopard eyeing a goat. Civets getting a diet of bananas, bread, peanuts and rice. [Before I get stoned THIS time (9:15PM 9/2) let me say what hit me LAST time: (1) That commonly the universe is thought of as coming from CENTER out, as if the GENERATOR was a POINT in "this space." But if the point extended to a CIRCLE and touched "this space," it would produce an INWARD-moving universe, and I got the FABULOUS idea of these OVERLAPPING waves forming the ATOMS of the world, and everything was just these WAVES. And (2), that each person's EVERY STIMULUS was a source of IMPRINT, and the PERSON stores only the overlapping of THESE waves, the person WAS his memory, the memory IS the person and I got it going In and Out---and I'm stoned THIS time now and John's just flicked out the LIGHT! [9:20AM, 9/4] But the BEAUTY of these waves overlapping, reinforcing here, canceling there, was intense. Also the progressive STORING of external stimuli in the form of vibrations (for the person is ONLY made up of atoms, which ARE vibrations) was remarkably clear, so that the BODY, traditionally thought of as growing from the inside OUT: hair and nails have to be clipped, skin flakes off in shower, might be thought of as growing from the outside IN. [John just stopped in the rain on his bicycle on his way back to Bodhnath to buy an incense burner, rang his bell and blew exuberant kisses to me sitting in the window, and I waved and grinned and felt good inside, reminded strongly of Bill Hyde and HIS puppy-love exuberance in this letters, and smiled warmly at the thought of what people's love for me DOES to them!] As a baby is born small, receives little stimulus and grows, each meaning vibration settling from the surface of his body downward (this could even account for fetal growth, back to the first cell, whose stimulus is the male sperm---the innermost CORE memory of a person would be his moment of FERTILIZATION, since this would be the first moment that he wasn't a piece of his mother or a piece of his father. THIS is the crucial moment, and wouldn't it be FITTING if the STATE of the mother (post-coital tristesse because the husband has rolled over and gone to sleep, sleep herself, or the joy of a NEW orgasm) was THE most determining factor of a person's life, even more important than his BIRTH trauma? ANYWAY, the person is a sheaf of inward-moving memory-vibrations, yet this person is making noise, giving an appearance, touching, and thus is simultaneously acting as a stimulus SOURCE for the people AROUND him, so INSIDE he's moving INWARD and OUTSIDE he's moving OUTWARD, just as the UNIVERSE is moving INWARD but its stimuli are moving OUTWARD, and the flux and flow and DIRECTIONALITY of the thought made me think AGAIN of Wheeler's "The universe is merely the action of geometry on empty space," and it seemed so RIGHT that I was swept up in the waves, RECEIVING these memories, EXUDING these stimuli. Then I went to sleep.] So we get up at 7 and pack and eat breakfast and get taxi to airport for another 35 baht, and though there's a lot of traffic on the morning streets and John gets very anxious, we're into the airport at 8:45, well in time for the 10AM flight. He gets us on the flight while I go to the airport post office and spend only 7 baht for every stamp they have, and then we have lots of bahts left so I'm back to the bank with the bahts and two Singapore dollars that John had left and the old 500 yen from Japan. The bahts and the dollars came to $10.15, and I get a nice $10 bill and two coins that I decide to keep for change later. Back to find everything in order, but the plane's delayed and I read lots of "Glory Road" until 10:30, when we're first in line and dash out to the UBA plane and I take a window seat third back on left and John, saying he can FEEL his stomach insides and upper intestines and thinks it might be the Bangkok water, sits on the aisle. We're off late because there's some sort of jet flyover for some reason, and we take off VERY flatly, not getting very high at ALL, and then proceed to head DOWNWARD. The two jittery girls in front of me ask "Why are we going down?" and that confirms it's not MY paranoia. Plane continues down and all I can think is "Goddammit, is this REALLY IT?" clutching my armrests and bracing my feet, my stomach knotted, sweating, and guys come around to sell cigarettes and booze and I say "No" sharply, and then they serve beer and I AGAIN say "No" to get chewed out by John later for not taking it and giving it to HIM. But I was in ABSOLUTELY no condition to be kindly. Finally plane at LAST seemed to level off, and even climbed, but we were in clouds and they announced it was stormy over Rangoon. Sat glued to the seat, staring futilely out at clouds, HATING the flight, and the time of 55 minutes dragged terribly until we broke through dark clouds over Burma and I could see temple ruins in the fields below, and it seemed quite wet and flooded in places down there, too. Low and see a few golden pagodas in the distant city, and we're finally on the ground and I'm limp with relief. Land at 12 and through the stupid "count all your money and record it" check, and out to the free bus to sit and sit as it gradually fills with hippies bound for the 3 kyat WMCA dormitories and one old Japanese and one luggage-ridden German for the Strand. Leave at 1:15 and through slums and fields and flowers and past the Shwe Dagon into the seemingly enormous city with posh homes and institutes and embassies all grouped along the road to the airport. Stop at AWFUL looking WMCA and somewhat better YWCA, and then to the Strand. Its high ceilings and turning fans and old wood, musty smells, gloomy interiors remind much of Raffles, and we're nonplussed to find that the room will be $19.35 per night. Sign book and there's no mail for us, and up to big old room with a very sluggish air conditioner and a big old bathroom with no shower curtain. We settle in for a small bit and decide the small stuff on the plane was lunch and we can go walk around. John cashes $10 at the official rate of 4.6 kyats/dollar and we're out to be offered 12, then 13. Walk around the National Monument, enjoying the broad streets and LACK of traffic as opposed to Bangkok, and the park looks pleasant and we go into Sule Pagoda to look at the mirrors and gold plate and Buddhas and statues and plaques and shops, and then down to walk north toward Shwe Dagon. The sun comes out and it's VERY hot and humid and walking becomes a chore and John gets tired. Stop for a moment at silver and mirror stupa, then up to the front stupa and past the enormous arcade of shops with wood and stone and ivory carvings, bronzes and brasses and flowers and paper umbrellas and foods and plastics and clothing and combs and chess sets and souvenirs and palmistry books all in Burmese. And at the top there's this HUGE stupa with crows croaking and flapping their black wings against the faded gold of the pagoda, mixed with the silvery tinkle of wind-blown bells from high on the top of the pagoda. The STUPA wasn't so impressive except for its size and reputed antiquity, but the old PAGODAS of exquisitely carved wood, weathered and dark, were striking and all the NEW temples and wats and pagodas the stupas formed an INCREDIBLE panorama that changed second by second as we walked around the huge enclosure. Many people praying and offering incense, monks sitting in lotus position, as well as natives invoking the blessings of Buddha, huge old guardian dogs/lions and serpents and more shops and an incredible treasure room to which they were moving the offering boxes, full of wooden and brass and ivory and paper Buddhas with elaborate coin trees and semi-precious stones and books and piles of precious and semi-precious and worthless junk. Out on one of the three flying bridges that lead to elevators to look over the city, and down, sated with gaudy splendors, to grab a bimo for 4 kyats back to the hotel at 6. Find we're not welcome downstairs without a tie (oh, went to the tourist organization to find there's only the Liberty or Orient hotels, check to find the Liberty closing and the Orient awful, for $6 a day, too), and go across to the snack bar for paratha and small inedible chicken satay, then to the bar for a beer, and an old Indian reminisces about how grand the Strand was during the British when he was chef and bartender, then how it went downhill after "the Revolution" and people were poorer than ever, no freedoms, black market could go as high as 20 kyats for the dollar, everyone depressed and depressing. We thanked him and found a Chinese restaurant at 7:30 where everyone from the Y was eating, and had flower soup by the gallon for 3 kyats, and sweet and sour pork and a chicken dish for only 12 kyats total, and it was FAR more than we could HOPE to eat. Rickshaw driver met John outside with 140 kyats for a $10 bill and we wondered what would happen if he was picked up by the police then. But nothing happened. Back to hotel over broken sidewalk over which rats ran, deserted because of robberies on the streets after dark, the huge government buildings dark and faceless. To hotel and decide to go to Pagan TOMORROW, and pack bags and pay bill and arrange for the bus to pick us up at 5:15AM! Bed by 10PM.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 27. [10:25, 9/4: It's STILL raining very hard outside the Hotel Manaslu in Kathmandu, I'm STILL over a week behind, so I'll keep on going until my hand gives out]. Up at 4:45 and take bags and the gift package down to the desk to check it until we get back, and sit around till 5:30 waiting for the bus, only the merest trace of light in the sky. There are lots of people going up to Pagan, but most are on a one-day tour, and the ride to the airport is a bore a second time. Into the terminal and have no trouble getting on the flight, and it's a Fokker Friendship with the wing above, so we sit in the middle on the right, having a good view of the ground. I'm nervous because the FIRST UBA flight was so horrid, but the takeoff is perfect and we're clear of clouds for a long time, so I can relax and enjoy the breakfast. Then into clouds and [there's a poor frazzle-headed bird with a perplexed eye resting on a window sill across from me, futilely trying to get SOME of the water off his SOAKING wings.] there's a bit of jouncing, but we start down early on in the one hour twenty minute flight and I can see some of the temples out the right window. We fly over white ones and red ones, new-looking ones and old crumbled ruins, dozens and dozens linked by orange-dust roads and interspersed with fields. Fly and fly and circle around over the river and it looks smaller and muddy, then low over cliffs and AGAIN past the temples and finally land at the short Pagan airstrip. The motors stop of DEAD silence, and there's an empty frame one-room "airport" and three UBA busses and a string of jeeps waiting for the Majors and Captains that were on the passenger list (and on the plane already when we boarded). Climb into first bus but told we had to get on another, since this was a tour. The bus to the government rest house? Sorry, the military VIPs are in residence, so there's no place to stay---UBA had been told not to let ANYONE fly up YESTERDAY. Oh. Well, it's news to us. I sit grimly on the steps and the jeeps pull away and there are only ox carts and pedestrians left beside the buses, and John goes inside and raises the roof. We wait a bit, I knowing that SOMETHING will come up, and it does: flight officer says we can stay at HIS place, get in the bus (see page 225). We drop stuff off and back IN bus to get told there's only one tarred road, so we can't get lost, and we drive past Amaida and Thattibinyu to get to the large red Sulimani temple and the bus drives away and AGAIN there's COMPLETE silence but for the insects and the birds and an occasional vehicle on the distant road. Sulimani is vacant on the ground floor except for some frescoes on the wall, and we find stairs leading up, other hidden stairways and John begins to find it FUN, wandering around and up and down over the brick stairways, and we think of sand castles we built as kids, or of enormous toy-brick constructions by dozens of fun-loving kids. There are steep steps and small shallow ones, tiny holes too small for adults to huge doorways for 40-foot Buddhas. I'm up top to make a map of the things I see since no one's given us a map yet (see p. 286 with NOTES for the day.) To Damayangi, snack bar for lunch, Ananda, the Upali Thien, then walk back (see p. 225) to get taken to NEW place, walk to restaurant on main road to eat at 4, hear band warming up and follow it around collecting money, fruit and rice for tomorrow's offering, stop at the Mahabodi on the way back, back to house to shower and wash shirts in the gloaming, and walk back to restaurant with Ed for fried noodle dinner for only 2 kyats apiece, back talking and sleep. [From the BACK of the book: FRIDAY: (1) Sulemani: 9:30-11: Paintings of dying Buddha inside. Lovely stucco details and colors on outside. Great "Innaga" Buddha with FABULOUS snakes. Perfect centralized view from top, a Frank Lloyd confection of beautiful thin long red bricks, two Buddha levels, great paintings, four terraces (inner stairs in 1 and 2 like climbing in thinly ribbed esophagus of some giant, mucus-secreting being. (2) Damayangi: 11-12: Not so many paintings, repairing exterior, huge inner two-story arcades, stairs hidden in corner, to the porch and literally climb up outside of building to get to UNRAILED top deck, but much like (1) and staired like Borobudur with narrow stairs on four sides. (3) Anada (gold top): 1-2: Two huge Buddhas standing in silver and gold, lots of lacquer ware shops and bays, yellow "stone curtain" pavilions, nice tile floors of flowers and birds and trees and birds of paradise. (4) Upali Thien: awful drawings, locked gates. (5) Mahabodhi Temple (All whitewashed and eroded.)

SATURDAY, AUGUST 28. Wake promptly at 3:50 to sounds of gong and out in pitch black to see them gathering at an intersection and going AWAY from Ananda. Walk down dark road to Ananda and it's empty, so back along main road, past damn barking dogs, to hear ANOTHER band past the house, and back to watch IT form, people come out to watch, then IT takes off and goes through two or three villages until it gets to Bupaya, where there's a fluorescent-lit temple with priests crooning prayers in the center, a fine array of dishes of flowers, fruit, rice and other foods, including pineapples and some poor people get rice at side door and boy leads me around to river side where spoonfuls of rice are thrown over the side to be gobbled by dogs and birds and rats and roaches on the white smelly terrace. Priests and band go off and I try to follow, but boy directs me to road, and I get back to house at first light at 5:30, and get back in to lie down until John gets up at 7. Tell him about the adventure and we go for breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and rice and cakes and coffee, and back to start on the temple route again at 9, since we seem not to want to join the others on their pony cart. Across to Mimalaungkyung and the others described at p. 286: [Saturday: AM Bupaya (offerings in river); (1) 9-9:15: Mimalaungkyung: not much; (2) 9:15-9:30: Nat Hlaung Kyaung: red, desecrated brick-back Buddha; (3) Openable gate at door, large Buddha in small space. (4) wrecked stories, no Buddha, black and white drawings (5): I didn't climb; stupa, broken; (6) stupa, repaired; (7) garage-shape, gutted (8) huge stupa surrounded by dark temple, all Buddhas broken but two, bats flying back and forth, and ABOVE a central Buddha into a great dark hollow inside, obviously ruined; people, laughing at us, appear to be LIVING there, following us through. (9) PROOF: doorway, ruined Buddha, and hole through bricks to central cavity, lower 3'x3'x4' deep, upper about 1x1x3' long, which held SOMETHING that it no longer holds. 10AM. (10) Upper part has ten-foot "square" solid center, hole dug in to 1 1/2 foot circular well in center 4' high. (9) was from front; 5 from the side, 10 from back, 11 had hole at base at 10 side, leading through two feet of wall to a chamber over 4 feet tall, lost in shadows, over 5' wide, then through ANOTHER tiny hole to a CENTRAL core. All gone. (12) a "Roman bath arch" type, where a surrounding hall of cross-section from the side has fallen, creating a pleasant curve from the FRONT, as if someone had pulled part of the roof down by inserting a giant finger. Buddha-niches empty of all save knees. (13) Thattynniyu: Two long flights to main terrace, THIRD long flight leads to main Buddha and the "Acropolis." FOURTH flight, inside left center wall. Then four more flights to top, and it IS the highest. There in rock until 12, then to restaurant and ride to Nyaung-U at 12:30, finding no beer, have cold pineapple crush, and walk to Schwe Zigon at 1. Lovely distorting red mirrors, like Shwe Dagon, wander around, next whole temple with pornography drawn, then to riverside and sit, back to temple and lie down 2:45-3, then hitch ride to Htimolo, or whatever at 3:15. The sun is a LOVELY color at 3:30. Bathing the rocks and bricks BRIGHT orange-red, and the earth CLEAREST yellow-green.

Let's TRY to count MAJOR things: from Htilomilo:

 

               WHITE     WHITE     BIG  RED       SPECIAL      LITTLE RED
TOWARD         TEMPLES   STUPAS    RED  STUPAS    TEMPLES
              
Shwe Zigon 5         27        40   26        SZ, Horo(?)    50

Mountains      4         12        42   60        Mountain       100

Sulemani       1         1        10   18        2 big ones 30

River to Red   8         13        15   70        Anada, That    120

Red to White   6         5        35   60        Upali, Two 70

White to SZ    1         1        14   10        None           30

              25         60       156  244         10             400

     About 100 white      About 400 red

OVER 1000 RUINS (and twenty minutes to count)

Yet to see Gawdawpalin; Saraba Gateway Museum; Myinpagan: Nagayon, Abeyadana, Nanpaya (Myingaba), and not Kyaukku beyond Nyaung-U. 38 stupas, 46 temples; 84 places on MAP; 11 villages---100 items on the MAP.

1         Place (Pagan)
10        Special Temples
100       On map
1000      Counted
10,000    ACTUAL RUINS. [[[[]]]]]] and 225-228 and I DON'T die at 5:52PM, but get back to house and shower again in the coolness and get out to eat at the same restaurant, this time with a teacher of English for the Peace Corps in Afghanistan, and he says Kabul isn't worth ANYTHING of note [John's back at 11:15, so I'll stop now, tired]. [3PM, 9/6] and so he puts the idea in my head, that we don't go there. Later, when we find we can't get into Sikkim before waiting two months for forms to go through Delhi, we discuss changing the trip to include Ceylon, and substitute either Istanbul or Hungary for Afghanistan. He seems terribly spaced-out, long pauses before he answers, not curious about anything, answering all we ask with amused patience, shoveling his food into his mouth in the far-out way of someone starved by being stoned. We walk back through the dark and get told that "Where are you going?" derives from times of famine of plague, when people would wander from one place to another looking for shelter and food and health, so it's the same as asking "How are you?" and "Where is the food?" He also said that the local English books have exactly the line of questions they ask us: "How are you, what is your name? Where are you going? What is your father's name? What is your mother's name? What is your sister's name, etc, etc, etc. At various point in the trip I get PAINFULLY tired of answering these eternal greetings, particularly when they're only a FRONT for asking for money or "Want to see my batik?" as in Bali or Nepal. Then I'll sullenly not respond to a few shouted "Hellos" until a tiny child, face absolutely abeam with honest interest and joy of seeing a strange face, will launch himself to the side of the road and POUR out his gladness to see me, and all I can do is grin foolishly and wave back. I guess the long trip in Bangkok and riding on the back of the train in Thailand were the BEST times for these "Hail, I'm the best thing you'll see in YEARS" feelings. Back to smoke two of Ed's joints among five people, and I lay down on settee, listen distantly to girl talking of fucking rabbits and crawling ants, look at the ceiling to imagine fire or earthquake, think of myself not breathing, and even get into a mandala-color-number pattern of all existence, and swing way out before John pulls me up and says it's time for bed, and I fall RIGHT asleep when I realize the guys around me are NOT about to start having sex with us.

SUNDAY, AUGUST 29. Up Fairly late, feeling slightly high from last night, and we go eat and John wants to do something, so I wander around to Gawdawpalin, where I write 228, and we're scheduled for the pony cart at 10AM, for a ride down south to some of the older places we haven't seen yet. I get back after clambering up the ruined stairs to the grassy top of the ruin NEXT to Gawdawpalin, and we're told at FIRST that the river's flooded and we can't GO to Apedanya, but then another guy says he CAN take us, and we tootle along the road, through lovely little villages surrounded by and interspersed with ruins, and then to a flowing creek that he wades out to mid-thigh in to show his horse it's OK, and the horse snorts and avoids, but finally trundles across, water sweeping over the step in the back. Up the side and through more villages and get to the temples on 228-229, and back across stream and back to town for the museum of Pagan, and take notes on that, too, and it's 11 and we're through so we're back to the house and I write 229-233 after re-working my map from the REAL map, and then I read a bit as John plays with the kids and the sheep and the goats, and finally John wants to go eat, so AGAIN we have the fried noodles, and then back to the bus at 2, to the airport across VERY MANY flooded areas, and the OFFICER offers to change US money at 15 per $1, and we pay for our trip VERY cheaply, thankfully. But because of the ticket hassle we're about the last ones on the plane, so we both take aisle seats on the left side and watch the take-off, then I dive into "Glory Road" and finish the last 50 pages just before we land in Rangoon, a reasonably painless flight. Again get on the wrong bus after waiting a long time, and into town to get another room and try to bluster through a drink at the bar, but it doesn't work so we're again across the way for beers and then again over to the Chinese restaurant, and Ed comes in toward the end to envy us our chicken and cashews and carp with soy beans, and says that some black marketers were arrested and the rate's gone down to 13, when we could find someone SURE enough to trade with. We fuss about not having changed another $10 at 15! I really can't take him too long so we leave while he's still eating. Back along the dark streets and no one DOES ask us to change money, and we're worried about having enough to change BACK to show a better rate. I hate this scheme of black market prices: it's bad enough to constantly change from one currency to another to see how much something costs, but adding to THAT the "pressure" to get the best possible rate for each transaction and the continual DOUBLE re-evaluation of every price---it serves to keep money on the mind ALL the time, and since I don't like to think of it al ALL, it's just an enormous pain. John kept talking about "what the kyat SHOULD be worth," which made even LESS sense. Peoples are MORE similar than their MONIES, and only governments and politics made the hash out of finances that existed. Very tired to bed at 8:45, hoping to get on a late schedule which would make the 5:15AM bus the following morning that much more palatable. Earplugs again to screen out the awful piano, violin, saxophone trio from the unspeakably decayed "grand hall."

MONDAY, AUGUST 30. Wake at 7:15, an unbelievable 10 1/2 hours for me, and John doesn't get up until 8. Have good leisurely sex and a shower and get down to breakfast room at 9:15, just before it closes at 9:30. I have bran flakes which is the only cereal they have and John has papaya, we have cheese omelets, and fuss about the bill, paying ONE in kyats and adding the OTHER to the bill so we won't have to cash more than $40 for the bill at LEGAL rates. Out to UBA to get on direct Rangoon-Kathmandu flight, then around to PanAm to VERIFY the ticket switch, and walk around a large block to get finally to the post office, wrong door, down street to RIGHT door, and find there's a FORM needed for it. I'm up to buy stamps and we walk three blocks, as directed, and no Central Trade building. Walk another block and get told it's the OTHER way. Walk two blocks OTHER way and get told it's BACK. Walk SIX blocks and find building, and two utter boobs point to next table, who sends us BACK to two boobs and they charge us 15 rupiah for a FORM, and THAT has to be signed at ANOTHER building. Sweating and tired, we go THERE to be ushered from floor to floor and get told "He isn't here, come back in two hours." I DEMAND to see him, shouting and waving arms, and finally ANOTHER flunky comes out, shouts, tells us to WAIT, and John finally goes to ask questions and finds it'll take five DAYS for forms to be cleared from ANOTHER office. I tear up sheets and throw them on floor, wishing I could utterly WRECK the office by throwing FILES of old paper into the air and out the windows. John said I looked like the Ugly American and that something from my childhood was causing me to act like a spoiled brat now, but I insisted it was THIS heat and frustration and stupidity that angered me, NOT something in my PAST. BACK to hotel and dump packages BACK into suitcases, then across to eat, to find that nothing's OPEN till 4:30. Wearily BACK to Strand to EAT in bar, ham and egg sandwich fairly good, beer two times the price across the street. John wants to write letters, so I get map and walk up to zoo, seeing that the Horticultural Gardens have been REPLACED by a brand new slum, like a compacted Pagan on muddy rice fields. Zoo notes on 233, and I FORGET how depressing zoos ARE, the poor bears compulsively walking from side to side in EXACTLY the same way, another bear making mouthing motions to one in another cage, others SCREAMING to get out, birds forlorn, cats STILL stalking creatures OUTSIDE their cage. Then I walk BACK to hotel along lovely Royal Lake, and this must have been where the palace was, but only the outlines of the lake show how beautiful it may have been. I'm wearing my good trousers and lots of people crotch-watch, but the Burmese are NOT one of the loveliest races. Back to hotel at 5:15 and shower and John's back from typing and we're over to the bar, the ground floor this time, for lazy beers, watching about a full DOZEN of lizards catching flies and wasps, and sit watching the ferries being swept in front of the modern Russian freighter on the heavy current. Feeling completely through with Burma (oh, also cashed 130 for $10 in a rickshaw ride of SURPASSING intrigue, letting us off at the park, which we strolled through before returning to the hotel), and BACK to the Chinese restaurant for two MORE dishes, and then back to pack the suitcase and shave and get ALL ready to go by being rung at 4AM for the 4:15 bus. Effortlessly to sleep at 9:30PM. [Now I cheat a bit, not TYPING Tuesday until the NEXT page, but it starts HERE]: wake just a few minutes before 4 and phone rings and we're drinking coffee in our room and down promptly at 4:15, then John returns for another cup of coffee and of course the bus doesn't arrive until 4:30, still pitch black outside. Stop at WMCA and pick up hefty brunette and her blond skinny boy friend who carries all the backpacks, and a lovely fellow reminding me of Chuck from Claude's class with a beard. Still dark as we get to the airport about 5, and fuss through buying the tickets and getting money changed and baggage weighed and find we're traveling with a group of 17 from Peking, but we're not allowed to talk with their over-large blue-suited formalities. Sit and talk with the lovely, and there seems to be good interest for the future, but though we see him tomorrow on the way to Bodhnath, he could only get a three-day visa and has to leave to pick up a car in Germany tomorrow. Pity.

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31. Onto the plane and it's finally not dark, but quite cloudy and we sit together on the right side for the two hour and twenty minute flight, which takes off rather on time, just a half hour late, at 6:30. But there's something like a fifty-minute time difference, so we get in around 8AM after a rather boring flight: there were clouds as soon as we left the ground (in fact the Shwe Dagon Pagoda was eerily NOT visible though the ELEVATORS to her were), and when we come out in half an hour, the sun was behind and below us, and we were over clouds then over the featureless waters of the Bay of Bengal. Just as we hit the outlines of land about halfway through, the clouds closed in again, not breaking until the hills and deeps of Kathmandu Valley and we saw neat square brown houses in VERY green fields under the gray skies, and we sank lower and lower and saw the streams washing down the terraced hillsides and the trees and brooks and houses looked JUST like hill-Italy. Lower and circle to the left and there are hills all around, and we drop over what MUST be Bodhnath, large and flag-draped in the light, and the brilliant yellows and chartreuses and greens of the fields look like the MOST luminous "cloudy-weather" Van Goghs from the Arles regions. Land and don't even have to show INOCULATION forms, and no luggage inspection and we're admitted to the throng of drivers. Insist on Royal Hotel, but one says it's closed, and we don't know others. Then one sharpie says HE'LL take us to the Royal, and we're into his cab, ignoring the FREE ride to the Hotel Manaslu. THEN he says Royal IS closed and we choose the Manaslu because it's more than $5 for bed and breakfast, but still only $9. So we paid 12 rupees for the trip which should have been free. Like SECOND room on second floor, and decide to go STRAIGHT to post office. Rent bikes and pedal down road, with good map, and get to crowded foreign post office to find we have to fill out forms (costing 20 pice apiece), then get it signed by someone in the back, and then it has to be inspected and mine's torn so THAT'S easy, then two MORE forms have to be made out, and one SEWN to the cloth binding they SEW around it, and others stamped, and cloth sewings SEALED with wax, and address put on, then the stamps, then ANOTHER thing sewn on, and FINALLY it's ready to mail, after only two hours. John, however, has to visit another place to get his Garuda certified that it's not antique Nepalese, and he fumes and I sit and wait, then find Change Alley and get 14.5 rupees for John's 4 fives and my ten, after a LONG explanation from cute trader, and back to buy one of each stamp, going through awful hassle thinking a guy WILL change 12/$1, but he DOESN'T, and I have to get change and back to watch John go through ANOTHER tantrum: "He's just STUPID, that's all," and he gives a Touch-Me to the doll who helps him and it's 3PM and he says Paras Restaurant is no good, we should try Indira. It's been raining all morning, our pantsuits are soaked inside AND out, I'd bought a handful of paper wrapped around what I HOPED was grass for 15 Rp, and had ANOTHER pocket filled with cash I hoped was NOT phony, though the PO, stamps and wrapping, took them without even looking. Settle into Indira gratefully and watch hippies parade through and have Danish beer and good food for very few rupees, and the rain FINALLY stops and we wander up to the Durber square to look at all the temples and the statues and all the people without getting any really connected idea about where we were. Then it was getting dark and we were tired and we walked back to the cycles parked outside the post office and rode home. I noticed that the Mascara Restaurant was just down Kanti Path, so we rested for a bit (John argued the hotel into paying the rickshaw driver 5 rupees for bringing him and his chain-broken bicycle from the center of town, saying that he was refusing to pay the 3 Rp rent for the day, too. I just listened from the window. Rested and dried out and walk further than I thought, then catch cab for TWO doors for Mascara, and John had tough chicken and my mutton was IMPOSSIBLY tough, though the sauce was nice, though too salty. We waited AGES for service, and only ONE, and then two, other French girls came in to break the dreadful monotony of waiting for the food---and they never DID serve my soup. Back tired to hotel at 10, and smoke the harsh damp stuff in the wooden pipe we'd bought, and we have sex, but I get limp and have to beat myself off while suffocating, and I was sore and it wasn't really such fun, since John had to do himself, too. Wearily to bed about 11.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. Wake about 7 to hear children singing next door, and we lie next to each other and feel sexy and have GREAT sex this time. Down for breakfast of surprisingly disgusting HOT milk over cornflakes, and scrambled eggs that are the worst in ages, except that the yolks of John's poached eggs are SO light mine MIGHT have been real and not powdered. Decide to ride to the east and see Bodhnath, and we get on bikes and head out into the country, and everything is SO quiet, the little villages are SO traffickless, and we stop at each little town square with its erotic roof supports (to frighten the prim, shy, Virgin Goddess of Lightning, we learn later) and carved window frames and steps and red-dyed Buddha-rock washed out of shape into a lump by laving loving worshippers. On and on, asking directions on the awfully forked roads, and come to a SMALL Bodhnath that turned out to be [9/10, 4PM] Chaumati Vihar, older but smaller, and into Bodhnath to look at all the shops surrounding it and John buys a shirt and it starts to rain. So we put on rainsuits and stand in doorway until it slackens, then onto stupa and wander around looking at the RING of houses with carved windows (and American heads) around the whole circle. I start sniffling and sneezing like I was allergic to COWS. Down and buy bananas and some tea biscuits for lunch and stop at a Tibetan rug-weaving place and listen to the pleasant singing and chit-chat among the bored weavers, a copy of what they're doing turned up above them so they can count how many knots of what color for their row, then we go next door and John buys a jacket that he ships immediately, and prices an incense burner that he likes. Then we're cycling to Pashupati, down the long steep hill past cleared fields for pilgrims' camps, and down to the bottom to a small erotic pagoda and John goes around and I figure he's wandered back into the dark enclosure he'd remarked earlier, and I pass through old gate to gaping people and see squatters in shameful cubbyholes with dirty bedding and brick dust, and look into smoke-darkened dye-spotted temple innards to see stubby lingams, and then out to shouts of "Hindus only," but there's no "The entrance for The Hindus only" sign on the door. Over the swift river and up the hill to see John and HE says he thought I wandered away, and he was on the bridge waiting for me. He's got a kid tagging along and we go down hill (I walked UP the dank, creepy, sun-dappled mossy stairs and saw a gauze-clothed sadhu standing at the top of the stairs, and went through a dozen changes as I fantasized he'd have a perfectly hypnotic face and I'd want to follow him forever, that he'd look and see that I was holy and would proclaim MY glory forever, that he'd be wildly sexual and we'd have a fabulous time. But when I GOT to the top he was gaunt and pock-marked and rather sly-looking, so that settled THAT. EVeryone's looking for SOMETHING.) that the kid says doesn't go anywhere and we're through pleasant forest glens and end up at Gusheswar, which we can't go into either, but look up and see silver doors inside and look at people living in the strange apartments AROUND the temple. Watch people bathing in the river though they're careful to show NO nudity at all. Walk back along the bottom till the river sinks into a chasm, then climb slopes and wander along sides and top till we get to terrace above Pashupati and I use binoculars to see doors and roofs, but can't really see any of the erotic details for which it's so famous. Kid gets very whiny when he wants a tip, but I can ignore him and John looks embarrassed. Walk bikes back up hill and ride back into town, again having to ask directions a number of times, and we're back into town about 5, completely starved, and we get to Indira and order the biggest things on the menu: the vegetarian and non-vegetarian dinners, and we have tomato and chicken soups, peas and chicken curry, and a number of other dishes and salads and breads and fruit salad with cream for dessert, and we're feeling quite full. I've still been sniffling constantly, so much so that I have to stop wiping my red, sore nose and simply let it DRIP down onto the ground. I use paper tissues until the fuzz from them starts me sneezing all over again, and I try the free-finger open-air blow a couple of times, but I know it looks awful since I DO have a lot to get rid of, and stray strands end up on the chin and hand and I haven't learned how to DIRECT it yet. So I just let it drip and drip, except when I sneeze, when I tend to spray. And then I begin to develop the sore throat that goes along with swallowing so much mucus, and the Spec-T is a good temporary relief, but NOTHING seems to do much permanent good. [I still have that cold as I write this, on the 10th]. After we eat we're out to the market street to look for a pipe, and though we search and search, the best we can find is a wooden pipe from the Cottage Industries, so we take it back, I work on the post cards for a bit while John bathes, then I shower and we smoke, and I go quite a distance out before I fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion. I wanted to take notes at the time, but I didn't so I jotted down the main ideas of p. 234 while I was smoking the FOLLOWING evening. Sleep took over about 9PM.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2. Up and don't even feel like sex, so down to breakfast, both having porridge to get away from the awful cornflakes, and John goes to fried eggs while I have the poached that HE had yesterday which were better than my SCRAMBLED. Decide to inquire about going to Sikkim and write more postcards, John finishing many of them, until 10, when the embassy opens. Ride up and park our bikes and get told that it'll take at least two months, as things must go through Delhi. Hell! Out to talk about it and I'm BACK to ask how to speed it up, but the guy is out and doesn't return by 11, so we decide that ends it, and we might as well skip Darjeeling, too. That changes the schedule even MORE. Down through the market area and wait for John while he CONTINUES to search for child-size yak jackets, and over the river and into the country for Swayambu, pass the museum that opens at 10:30, and up the hill as far as we can pedal and tell the kid, "No, you can't watch our bikes," but I GUESS I leave the key in the lock. Walk up the stairs to the top and see the gold steeple enveloped in canvas bags ready for repair, and the offerings get immediately grabbed by hordes of monkeys chasing away the flocks of pigeons. Into an awful Buddhist temple where a family LIVES, and we don't even have to remove shoes. Drop-curtain chains are pulled back to show grimy statues, and a tourist group has a box of cookies wrenched from his hands by a marauding monkey, and we get told of the dozens of rabies cases from dogs and monkeys. Wow. The view over the valley is fabulous, but we're SEEN it by noon and we're back down to look at all the cows and John makes out with a couple of nattering kids. I sit to watch two goats trying to fuck, and later see two billies fighting, rearing up and clanking into each other's horns, until the owner separated them, whereupon the putative winner humped the supposed loser. Down to find the key GONE from bike and pocket, search for it and TRY the bicycle shop to see if they have a spare. The same kid says "I have just one, it's not common," and it slides in and CLICK. I feel great relief but jew him down from three to two rupees anyway, Smart kid. Down to museum, but few of the Tibetan tankas were any good, but some of the bronzes were great, and even some of the contemporary stuff wasn't too bad. The enormous grinning figure with the entire universe and zodiac in his stomach was particularly impressive. Carvings not as good as on doors and windows in town, and someone who turns out to be the Prince and his wife come rushing through and leave in a car, applauded by the students. To roof to spot Soaltee and decide to lunch there, having a FABULOUS bloody mary, good mushroom soup, and chicken that's tasty but still tough. Bill comes to 65 Rp, quite expensive, and we ask at desk to see where the tourist office has moved, and we look at rose garden and I sneeze more than ever and we're to the tourist office and find NOTHING on Pokhara, but a great brochure on trekking. Back to the hotel for John to take a nap, but I stay up looking at the Helambu, festivals, trekking, and Annapurna books, correlating mountains and views, and John's up at 6:30 and we decide to eat in the hotel. Great mistake. We order soup and roast mutton, and after the first half-hour of boredom John jokes that it takes an hour and a half to roast mutton. Soup comes after one hour, and apologies for lateness, and a huge bottle of Eagle beer---tiger piss, but good. Finally AFTER an hour and a half it comes, and it's not very good. How AWFUL. John wanted to go into town for the festival, but at 8:30 I said I was too tired, I'd stay in the hotel. At 9, as we finished eating, the rain began to POUR down and John decided the festival could wait, so we were back up to the room to smoke again, and I write p. 234, and passed out quite quickly at 9:45PM.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3. [8:20AM, 9/14: Khandagiri caves: rather like Mesa Verde, but squarer holes in cave walls and NO front barriers. Much too much reconstructed and bolstered with new, too-square, too-little-aged, pillars in front and sides. Funny auxiliary holes, square and round, over walls, alongside, in floor and one LOVELY overhang carved into the top part of the head of an open-mouthed snake. Udayagiri cave has an overhang that I don't look JUST under, and go BACK to see the Kalevala king's inscription, looking like rock was cut away, then plastered, then the plaster carved to carry the message. HUGE ants crawling about, and hole in rocks appear to be part of drainage system, maybe also catching water for drinking. Lovely Jain tells us about his temples, and the 1950 black marble Buddha in Pashanath temple has a magnificent full-veined uncut penis of bull-like majesty, too-long legs for the short pleasing torso, and hands that reached the knees. Buddhas in Jain temple have small neat cocks, too, nice and refreshing. Then the BOOK is a welcome buy for only 75 paises. [3:20PM 9/14: The museum leaves me with the typical STUFFED feeling, particularly the manuscript room with its files and racks and glass cases of wooden representations of the Gopalila, the local Ramayana. Miles of gitas on bamboo leaves and some wooden gates on wooden representations of temples done in STAGGERING detail. The early sculptures were VERY fragmentary, the temples HERE being the repository of art between 700 and 1200 AD. Then there are the natural history exhibits with the ARTIFICIAL tiger and deer, the boring farming exhibits that occupy the 1 (crore), 27 (lakhas), 45 (thousand), 222 people of Orissa (and I wonder, what those numbers are---and find out). There are some fabulous primitive peoples exhibits AND in person in the museum, beautiful women with gold plates in their noses and wearing only a diagonal strap across the back becoming a wider diagonal strap across the front for the barest minimum of coverage, and the males are oily-haired, black shiny eyed, bare-chested and beautiful. A few bearers in diaphanous long dhotis are arresting in transparent gauze, too. And the fisherfolk (men) of Puri look like they're worth seeing. The Prehistoric section is awful because everything's a reproduction of Harappan artworks that are unique, and the stone age paintings are only vaguely sexy and the costume mannequins try to be cute but aren't. The ivory carving and silver filigree handcrafts are nice, but the golden grass weaving, bone work, wood carving and painting and stone carving is not much to rave about, nor are the contemporary soapstone representations of old art pieces. There's absolutely no pornography in the museum except for some dangles of the Boys dancing in a particular section, and one threesome of two men holding up a woman's torso, and one guy has an erection. But EVERY position and grouping and person and activity and decoration detail has a NAME, a dozen or more letters long, and it boggles the mind to even remember the SEXY ones to look up in the LIBRARY. The few tourists spend even less time in the rooms than I do, except when they're staring at me instead of at the exhibits. There's also a room of donated items and bronzes, and whole strings of Vishnus with tiny cocks, but also awful sword cases from ivory tusks and pen holders from bird's feet and umbrella stands from elephants' feet, a fantastic elephant tusk and silver medallion picture frame for some old turbaned cat, a lovely piece-work ivory table from the Raj of Bemari, who also gave a throne (a red plush upholstered chair plated in silver and embroidered) and a bust of "Maharani Victoria" in 1960---when he was SURE she wouldn't come to visit him, I guess. A whole room of guns and swords, all unlabeled, and various other exhibits, including a geology one under construction, with a quote that "The mines are the treasure of the country" which is simple-mindedly obvious. Then we're outside to fume and wait for the taxi to take us to Konarak, due at 3:30, and not here at 3:40, though the clock at the hotel was 10 minutes slower than my watch, but I have more faith in IT than in the hotel clock. But it looks like rain and an early sunset, so we'd better go SEE about it in a few minutes, dammit! [6:45PM, 9/14: Fantastically, the first two days in India turn out to be quite marvelous (with significant exceptions, such as the "3" then "5" rupee charge for the taxi from the airport, the shrew in the bathroom and the roaches, and then the inexplicable confusion about picking us up at the museum at 3:30PM, which doesn't happen until John phones twice, at 4:15) with the relaxed quality of Bhubaneshwar, the heath, vigor and beauty of the people, the absence of absolute poverty, the real look of CROWDS, the good food, and the beauty of the temples. The Government of India Tourist Bungalow is a dream, far out from everything except the sun temple, we're alone in a large double room, the food is excellent: bland and tasty for me, with a VERY hot side dish for John to TOUCH his food against to bring it up to his desired level of pain, and a quiet, though hot, night [6:30AM, 9/15: Sun rises at 5:30, and we're a bit late at 6:15, I'm just on time to see it rise from a bank of clouds and John, moving slowly, misses it. Guy who leaves loudspeaker car comes up to me and says something, and I merely angrily wave him away: I want to watch the sun and the sea in SILENCE. Then the guilt of my action overcomes me, and it dawns on me that this is EXACTLY the same treatment royalty, movie stars, sports personalities and other famous people get ALL THE TIME: Everyone watches them, everyone wants to talk to them and touch them and be with them and "take" part of them. Even if the stranger really has something to offer, really wants to help, the built-in exasperation with the CONSTANT begging for attention would lead them, as it did me, to angrily wave them off without even CARING what they wanted to say or offer or do, without caring what the person WAS going to do or how they felt about being shut off so abruptly. What a BURDEN it must be for a life, when I got so tired of it after only 2 1/2 months on a vacation! 9:30AM: the Konarak variations go on and on: front, rear, sucking, being sucked two by two; threesomes with two men entering women, two women enticing man, even a foursome: two kissing while each is being sucked, genders uncertain, but certainly heterosexual. Then one blows my mind: standing fellow with woman's legs thrown over his shoulders, and he's fucking her while her head's bent upward sucking a third man, who's probably (the junction has been removed) sucking the woman ABOVE him, who, sadly, ISN'T kissing the first man. The chain CAN be linked. Babies look on and are nursed and paw at asses, women grasp snakes fondly, snake couples interweave tails. One huge DEATH-like woman kissed the top of a man's head while ramming a pole up the ass of a woman who's bent over kissing her foot. Woman admired and spread themselves alone, but the only solo males are genital-less old fat grotesques. And THREE women and man: one kissing, one kissing cock, one squatting below, spread, watching. Then there IS a man alone, erect, dancing over that strange pyramid or flame the solo women dance over. Southwest corner is be FAR the strangest. In one threesome a woman obligingly holds down the man's cock for a second woman to suck. One grand standing portrayal of 69, a smaller one lying down. One has FIVE figures, but important parts are missing. One solo fellow cups his erect member in his hands, knees bent outward in excitement. A woman massages herself by reaching under an upraised leg. Another woman handles a fold of cloth that could ONLY represent a cock that she's jerking off. Is the male satyr REALLY doing it in her EAR? It assumes MARVELOUS symmetries ALL distances from it, even from right BELOW. Graffiti from 1848 and 1863, neatly carved into doorway. The BEST stuff, pleasingly, is RIGHT on the ground at EYE-level. THREE fish-like creatures intertwine and I only ASSUME one without earrings in middle is male. JOINTURE between two temples BEAUTIFULLY carved with doorways, one with a LOVELY series of fucking poses. Funny INNER altar at WEST, main entrance at EAST. Funny that the side whose BASE is MOST pornographic has TOP part LEAST so. 11AM: Museum's FABULOUS double-backed dog for corner. The Simha Virala, or Leogryph, is the backward-looking lion-dog, Naga Couple are intertwined snakes, Gija-Virala is an ELEPHANT-dog, same as Simha but for head. Deul Charini is the squatting supporting figure, hands DOWN between knees, Kinnara is the celestial musician rather like a satyr, but except for ONE cunt-lapper, the museum has NO pornography. Pity. [7:10PM, 9/15: GOT to get back to 9/3, so I can FINISH it in the ridiculous space of seven pages, THEN get to the lovely things I want to remember from today]. [This is now 12 days late. DAMN!] Up and the awful breakfast, then onto the cycles for Patan. Ride south through the Durber Square Market Road extension, and John shops for tiny-tots yak clothes while I fume. Across bridge and through little villages' areas and then onto a busy street and through a gate, and we figure we're close to the main square, so we lock them and off the bikes and the kids assail us with "Mahabodi" and "Golden Temple" and "Marble Temple" until I'm about ready to scream, and add to that the fact that John wants to shop every store. Down and around and through and after a tiny alley we're right up against Vishnu Mandir, and I'm up to look at the ORNATE carvings in stone, and get ready to enter but there's a sign at the top for Hindus only, so I'm back down waiting for John, and go into an antique shop and ask HIM for the directions to everything and they boil down to "Downtown" and "Out the far road." Look around the main square and see the Patan Museum and pay some little bit, and they're just starting up in a great old palace building, but the guy runs ahead of us from floor to floor turning on the lights, and the stuff is a bit small but good, and we're through quickly. Out and down the directed road, but see a few side temples and finally ask how to get to the Golden Temple, and it's through a gate with two lions and very ornate inside [see notes in "Patan" folder (which will be in brackets)] [Krishna Mandir: MONUMENTAL 4" frieze all around, beautifully organized.] [Hiranya Varna Mahavihar: Golden Temple: at entrance of two lions; much ornamentation; MUCH offerings; no LEATHER shoes]. Ask for the next one from here, and it's not too far down the road for the miraculous spring. [Kumbheshwar: lots of lingams and worshipping cows, some lingams with side-heads JUST like French ticklers. MORE carving, in wood, terra cotta, stone, slabs, brass; large deep dank pool fed from bottomless weir, or pipe in new building.] Ask someone HERE for the next one, and forget that's on the banks of the river, so the small fellow tells us to follow him and we walk and walk, finally out into the country, and into a narrow temple-alley with people shouting very unsaintlily at each other and into this decaying compound [Jagat Narayan: like Mahabodhi without the Buddhas over the top. River is bathing place, people praying, washing clothes, spitting, pissing, and drinking the sacred water. Garuda sometimes with BIRD face and sometimes with MAN face.], then out to the jests of the fellows who followed us, and it starts to rain. Not a day yet without rain, and we're hoping the rainy season will END and give us a look at the PEAKS. We wait it out on a porch, it slackens, and he leads us back to where we started, and we take a LONG time to get back to our bikes, but take off across town for Mahabodhi, getting to the military camp at the other side without finding it. Ask and it's back in town, and then we ask for the Tibet refugees and are told it's that-a-way, so we're out rural street, ask again and left, and down rocky road to a SIGN at last, and trundle into an old shop with junky stuff, another rug-weaving factory with everyone singing and bantering, then a wool-spinning room, and a carding room, and the dye-works, and then to the restaurant, where they want to buy clothes, our rain suits, the messenger bag, or ANYTHING. John gets a cap and a belt, and we taste the acidic milky Tibetan beer, take a sip of the colorless VERY raw wine and I have GOOD mutton chop and John something awful. No bread or other dishes, and John FASCINATES them with a Touch-Me. Back along road and find Red Machendra [Machendranath], and sit on grass and gaze at it while John plays with goats, then ASK for Mahabodhi and find it squeezed in with gamblers and THIS is better than Pagan, LOVELY effigies ALL over, and we're back to Indira after getting lost in market circle south of square, and meet Len who wolfs food and acts awful and he's trailed by a boy who wants to be sent to Naples for "training." Umhmmm. Eat good stuff and get out to see what's doing in square, and his stupid "boy" tells us to go UPSTAIRS at Living Goddess' palace, and we're shooed down by aghast followers who shout "Hindoo, Hindoo" and I feel a total fool. But the tiny rooms and halls were quite bare, so there's really nothing to see, anyway. Watch people in square, but nothing's happening despite the crowds, and finally we agree we're not going to see anything and wearily pedal back to the hotel, too late and too tired to even SMOKE, and I'm beginning to feel that I've had ENOUGH for awhile.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4. [8:45PM, 9/15: Today was just a magnificent miscellany of beautiful and ugly details: the bird in a red cap and blue cape, and another of Prussian Blue widespread wings; the dog gnawing at the cold gray coils of goat intestine; the incredible beauty of the males, and the girl making a scissor motion with her fingers over her forehead; the loveliness of the purple-eyebagged girl on the bus in the orchid sari, the beach at sunset: people gathering unbroken sea shells, touching their foreheads with drops from the highest tide [and I NOW remember to record what I thought of BEFORE, how the human race is like a fireworks explosion: each single igniting to a pair and forming other singles, and some singles, the childless ones, dying out at the end of their trail, yet the sky is as filled with new trails as the earth is filled with new babies. And this SAME skyrocket/chain reaction effect takes place in the chain of THOUGHT in the brain, except that these can repeat: common thoughts occur again and again, rare thoughts light up parts of the brain previously unillumined, thoughts lead from one to the other in increasing chains, the parallels are multifold], children lead around their blind ancestors and beg for baksheesh, and I have to wade into the waves to evade them. The sunset is rather pallid, as the sunrise was, except at the end there's a broad beam of pink rayed from the right and three and then four definite narrow rays on the left, and as the sun sinks lower below the horizon, the rays move upward until they reach the top, then vaguen and vanish, lower to upper. The cruel joke played by the fellow who tied the dog's and goat's hind legs together, and the poor hound yelped and squealed as he tried to attack the stupid little goat. John buys a ludicrously amateur tanka for "guess how much" and I guess accurately at 10 rupees. Not worth half that. He's off again with his people: wants the Germans over for pot, though he's quite sure they're straight. There's a chorus of dogs out the back window: earplugs again tonight and tomorrow. Showers unending today, one after the walk back at dawn, one before the museum, one before leaving, one before dinner, all cold and wish they were colder. No towels at Panthenivas, so we use room draperies and pillowcases. Again debate what to eat and what not to eat: cukes OK but unpeeled tomatoes not? Doesn't the same knife cut BOTH? Trust the boiled water in the room? Then why the boiled water in the dried milk? And I continue to pick my nose and eat it, a dreadful habit that refuses to go away even under such NECESSARY conditions. Let's see, what OTHER notes from today: my sore toe needing bandaid after bandaid against my chafing clog. The delight of having ENOUGH time to see Konarak THREE times, and get the pictures I want, and satisfy myself that I've SEEN it, and not be rushed through like a tour. And I sit in the bus and feel absolutely DELIGHTED with the trip the last few days (Is this because I haven't smoked for 10 days now? What might happen if I smoke tonight, particularly with the Germans chatting together in Cherman and the dogs barking outside?), and sit and grin at myself at the prospect of four weeks in India and one week in Ceylon before heading back toward New York, and everything seems to be going WELL, except that I really MUST get caught up with the diary, which the extra day in Puri should help with]. Decide at BREAKFAST that I really feel only like sitting and reading and writing this morning, and John decides to go pick up his incense burner and coat at Bodhnath, and he goes off even after it starts to rain hard, and I congratulate myself on AGAIN deciding to stay in JUST as it rains. Do a couple hours of writing 234-241 from 9:30 to 11:15, and read more of "Moon is a Harsh Mistress," and my cold's still pretty bad, spitting into a glass so I don't have to swallow the junk, and John puts up with it all. He's hungry so we're out to the Park Restaurant for lunch, laughing at the distorting glass that lengthens first the head, then the torsos, then the legs of passersby and cows, and the cows wait in the same lines for busses, endure kicks to be scratched under the chin by teasing kids, and we wait ages for the food to be served. But it's very good when it comes, and we're amazed to find TWO good restaurants in town. Finish at 2 and bicycle to the crowded square to mill around with the peasants before the reviewing stand, and then we're pushed back from the center of the area, then to leave room for the band, then against the side for the motley "VFW" as John puts it, then AGAINST the wall, then out from BEHIND the group, then ONTO the wall, then BACK from the wall to allow women in front, then back AGAIN, each time the cops get piggier and the crowd gets uglier and John and I get more pressed and more angry, and push comes to shove and we're almost trampled and my shower thong pulls through and I throw it at a cop. Tense! Then we're back more, and I push HARD against pushy Nepali, and finally the Chief of Police sees his error and puts us with OTHER tourists on a high stand TOGETHER and we watch all the diplomats enter as the clouds clear and it gets hotter and hotter, then the people come out to greet the crazed dancers who seem to be against the cops (and who blames them?) and riots break out here and there, and more people are pushed and trampled off to jail, and there's an irate letter in the paper about cars being pulled off the road for the cortege, and the whole thing is VERY stupid. FINALLY, the bands play and the horse guard comes through and the big floats come around so fast we can BARELY get a glimpse of the tiny bewildered faces of Ganesh, Bhairawa and Kumari, since they're surrounded by men who seem to be, only literally, hangers-on. [6:25AM, 9/16]. Then diplomats get BACK into cars and it seems to be over, but we sit for a long time on our temple and watch the myriad people go by: Nepalis in formless veils and gowns, Indians in their distinctive saris, and Tibetans with their broad flat dark faces, overloads of gold in ears and nose, with the fuzzy red felt blouses and matte black shirts. The parade of people is quite extraordinary, and we feel that only in a FEW places (Times Square, Copacabana Beach, here) could on sit for HOURS and not tire of the cultural display. Tired finally and decide to find Yak and Yeti, and ride down long road to huge palace all lit up, and tour the splendid white dining hall, and sit down across from Boris and some American party and have each two LOVELY bloody marys and dry martinis, and we have the borshches, which are tasty and I have the good stroganoff and John has the pork schnitzel and we agree it's great food, though with the tip the bill comes to 140 rupees, by far the highest yet, over $10 even at the highest POSSIBLE average exchange rate. But it's pleasant with the intimate fireplace and the perfect servants and the endless portions. Home at 10 and bed quickly, too drunk to think of, or want to, smoke again, pleased with Nepal.

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 5. [6:30AM, 9/16, STILL 12 days behind. How awful, and this book won't even LAST to write about YESTERDAY.] Up and eat, making some kind of remark about how Nepal makes John feel asexual, and aside from a few good first morning sessions, and an afternoon one where I jerk off on Monday, then do John on Tuesday, we don't have sex again until NEXT Sunday, for what hopefully will be the low point of the trip. Decide to go to Bhatgaon, so we ride out toward the airport on bikes, have someone finally tell us that we turn right on the dirt road for Bhatgaon, then assumed the WIDE road is the way and get way out into the country for another pleasant ride, and I intuit we're near Surya Vinayak and we are, so ride up side road and park in tiny village and climb the old shaded stairs to the temple that seems to have been taken over by a family with an endlessly squalling baby. Out back into the mossy dim sunlight and scrabble up the hill for a ruined temple with a red-stained lingam on a crest overlooking the entire valley over to Bodhnath, and then climb higher hoping for a better view, but the crest levels out, I get all hung up in huge spiders' webs, there's lots of butterflies in the dripping heat, and I see just a hillside on the other side and start back down. John's come up part way, third eye on his forehead from bell-ringing ceremony in temple ("I may have been married to him") and we're down again to cuddle lambs and ride across awful rocky path across river and uphill to Bhatgoan, incredibly foreign with chilies and corn drying everywhere and VERY narrow streets. Find a square with Nyatpola and climb up to see fabulous view against tranquil green hills and watch an obscene guar ogling a defenseless goat. [Fabulous carvings, HUGE place, used for drying chilies, LOVELY view of hills from top]. Up a goat trail to the Durbar Square and have four Fantas for lunch, then look at the Golden Gate [Garuda there, Kali not; not so hot.] and the Picture Gallery [fabulous, dizzying multiplicity of arms and flowing, flaming monsters and fucking] with some fabulous tantric paintings in a great collection, and see the intricately carved Royal Bath [NO, this is in PATAN!], where the stone is so magnificent John's sure it must be bronze, and the naga heads and hands of Buddha are painstakingly done. Find our way out the RIGHT way this time, past the deeps green tank [huge and BEAUTIFULLY green, with sea waves rippling in sunlight] [the old Lion Gate is dwarfed by NEW lion gate in front of Picture Gallery. The old is near the main CITY gate. The Palace of 55 Windows: 25 on one side on top, 10 on other; how to get 55? The Batsala Temple: nice carving, rather like Krishna Mandir; the Barking Bell: high, whining bell, chained; the Pashupati Temple: woman holding herself "spread"; fucking with huge POLE; woman forced to go down on a man; woman pulling two cocks; woman entered from below, two people holding up legs; monkeys feeling monkeys.] and up and down the roads in good time to find how we went wrong and get into the Indira for dinner again, intrigued by boar, but it's 3/4 fat, though tasty sauce, and different maitre d' demands we order something else, and have the good mutton, and then we're out to the streets again to look at the people and watch the dancing for the festival, all awfully ragged and listless, and sit on the street across from the hashish house and finally decide to go up. Flabbergasted to find a gum-ball size of hash for 5 rupees and a pack of pollen grass for three rupees, and we're directed to Rainas for a pipe. Buy it for twenty rupees and then he gets out the embroidery and we look at stuff for $80 and somewhat less, and it's fabulous, but who wants a shawl for $100? Buy a ring for Rita for 10 and then downstairs and home to find that we've left the pipe under the pile of sewing, and I fuss, but we smoke the old stuff again in the wooden pipe, taking care to have glasses of water nearby to drink from so as not to cough so terribly much, and we spent a lot of the evening just sitting on a crate outside a store watching the world pass by: beautiful pairs and trios of boys holding hands and shoulders and arms and waists, and people NOT holding hands look ALONE. Tourists and sherpas in their brown dirty clothes and Tibetans and children of a family ALL wearing the same pattern of cloth, and kids and dogs and wandering cows and endlessly ringing bicycles and pedicabs and people and hawkers and kohl-eyed kids. The works!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. Make a LIST of things to do on Manaslu paper, as I jot down what we've done for the past week, since it's all beginning to run together and I'm over a week behind NOW. Then get out and get TO them, making reservations for Pokhara and going from RNAC to photo shop to Everest to get student discount for a ridiculous 10 rupees each for "one day service," and John buys student ID finally at my urging, and we pick up pipe and I look at impractical but beautiful chess sets, then on to Kathmandu tours to find that the ropeway is only for FREIGHT, there are tours to Dakshinkali for animal sacrifices, it's not possible to combine tours for Nagarkot and Changu Naryan, the trip to Daman must be overnight because of its length, the road to Kakani is no good, and the rates for the trip to Tibet. So we reserve seats for Dakshinkali tomorrow, which she says she hopes she'll get more people for (and we hand around note in hotel, but it does no good), and I figure things are again under control. Pay the rupee to enter Durber Square and get a great tour through the narrow regions of the old palace and the white empty rooms of the new (only 200 years old) white palace, and look out the royal windows with their dark carvings and get to the roof for the towers: high for Kathmandu, round-topped for Patan, with a balcony we look out from for Bhatgoan, and skewed to the side by an earthquake for Kirtipur. Look out over city and see Balaju and other places, but still clouds lock in the views of the far snow peaks. Down finally and eat in the Primula de Restaurant, with lots of flies buzzing around and awful newsless papers to read while waiting. I'm still feeling awful, my throat's sore from excessive dryness when I wake up in the morning, I'm spitting up great quantities of mucus, and I'm just starting to get a dry cough. Back to the room at 3 to write 242-250, at least getting only SIX days behind, and then I want to smoke hash and write about it, and John starts by saying he won't smoke, but then he does, and we have awful time keeping it lit, but finally get enough and I lay down and he says he wants to go out for a ride. I'm content to lie still and get to feeling somewhat sexy and tease myself into a finally feeling erection and come with much fluid that I suck off to dry faster, then curl up and doze off until John comes back in about an hour. Up and read part of "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" and then we're out to the Yak and Yeti for only ONE drink this time, and no soup and I have the steak and onions which John thinks is canned and might be, and he has the brains which he raves about. This time there are some cute single fellows laughing and talking to an Oscar Wilde type who comes in to eat alone later, and we conjecture we may have FOUND the local gay bar. Back to the room and I'm just not sleepy, and I'd planned that "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" would BREAK the previous record of eight days to read one book ("Red Planet" between 7/26 and 8/3) but I get into it and FINISH it tonight, so it EQUALS the record, and it's a strange thing that BOTH eight-day books came at the turn of a month, which means that I'm busier then, or I'm too bored to READ them, or something. Get to bed rather late, fagged out by too much (John went to square and came back at 1AM with lots of tales) smoking, rather thinking I've got to stop. Cancellation of tour tomorrow causes depression, too, and I'm starting to get just a bit TIRED of Kathmandu with no views. [With the space available, here's the letter from the Embassy of the United States of America: "September 7, 1971; Union of Burma Airline Office, Kathmandu: Dear Sirs: Please do not send any American to this Embassy, since we do not write student reduction letters for them. Our new regulations says that we can not verify student status or their occupation. Thank you very much for this courtesy. Sincerely yours, B. Lama, Consular Assistant." What with the letter starting out dated in August, then crossed out and the correct date below, my giving the incorrect address of the Union of Burma Airline Office, rather than the Royal Nepal Airlines Office, and the horrible grammar, it's a wonder it was accepted by anyone at all.]