India Round-the-World/John 7 of 7
India Round-the-World, July 2 - November 8, 1971
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30. [6:30PM 9/30] For my latest miracle I woke up the FIRST time during the night at 5:15, with a rousing hard-on after a vaguely-remembered dream of John using his hand on same. Hope John will wake up before 6, but he doesn't and I get up at 6:10 and shave with the VERY dull blade, and we're in to breakfast at 6:45, to the awful news that we'll both get only boiled eggs and potatoes and bread for lunch because they had no chicken at the market. John says then he'll have no lunch. Out at 7:15 and across for a taxi to Shalimar after Gulam runs about a kilometer to get one and we're to Shalimar at 8. It has two well-constructed pavilions in the midst of the fountains and loads of lavish flowers, but it seemed the step-design of Nishat was more successful. And I get absolutely hung up on the beautiful flower colors in the morning sunlight. The essence of Love seems to me to be the essence of GIVING, and I see flowers, suddenly, as GIVING their perfume and colors and shapes PROFLIGATELY to the air, just FLINGING out their gifts to the world at large, freely and fully, and it seems that FLOWERS are the essence (perfume) of love; complete giving. But then I draw myself back and see them TAKING: sunlight from the air, moisture from the sky, minerals and nutrients from the ground, and I figure if there's nothing RECEIVED, there can be nothing to GIVE in turn. But I think of the sun: it RECEIVES nothing from the planets (but of course it RECEIVED its mass, which it converts to ENERGY and gives), but it furnishes them with well-nigh LIMITLESS energy. I think of myself as an absorber again, sucking in sights and sounds and smells and tastes and experiences, and giving out nothing but WORDS from one end and SHIT from the other, never MIND any possible equivalences. But who knows, I may GIVE to the plants my appreciation (as the planters and gardeners gave THEIR efforts to putting the plants where they are), and THAT may be even MORE, since I can measure neither, than I GET from them. But this leads into duality again, and I'm looking forward to starting the Watts book. Out at 9 to Chushi Mant, or something, and it's on a high slope with a great view, but the plants are nothing much. It's now 10:20, I guy a Kashmir book, and we go to the tourist office to make sure we get back the 90-60=30 rupees difference between single and double occupancy of Buckingham Palace. I check bus station, no one there, then inquire and find bus DOESN'T go to Pathankot in one day, only to JAMMU, then onward the NEXT AM. Oh? Seems to be TRUE. JOHN, on his end, finds that there IS room on the plane for Chandigahr tomorrow, and I check to find there IS public transport to Gulmarg and we get back to the boat and John's lying on his bed wiping his eyes. I cuddle him and ask what's wrong and he's disappointed with himself for shouting at the airlines agent who in fact was trying to help him. He says he's very tired and KNOWS that the untrustworthiness of the Moslems in GENERAL sets him off, but he still sobs and feels awful. "Shall I leave you alone?" "No," he says with a choked voice, so I lie beside him and try to comfort him. Up to the roof then to the hot sun for two hours until noon, and I finally finish "Kadeth" after 11 days, another new record and immediately start on the Watts book. Then lunch is served upstairs and it's FOUR mutton chops and salty overdone cauliflower and potatoes, so it's a success. [7:25AM, 10/1] Then he says "Sure, he can get a shikara for seven bridges, for 20 rupees! I say 14, he says "I'm not interested, you can contract yourself." So we go and get one for 13, going through Dalgate, watching springtails flip themselves into the water, and pass people, bathers, stripped, chamber pot rinsing, dead sheep and birds, fishermen and drinkers, seven bridges, temples, rugs being washed, bolts of cloth, back at 4:30 (I forgot to mention the marriage launch, pointed out by people clustered on some of the bridges as the boat passed under, with instrumentalists playing for the dancing of a skirt-clad man with bright eyes who enjoyed our watching him so much that he came over to us, dancing and shaking his chest in my face, as he demanded money, which I first offered to him to be spurned, and then offered again to be taken, and the bright eyes followed us down the stream, in sharp contrast to the dull unsmiling face of the groom, going to meet his wife), starved, buy fudge and cookies and beer, back to Palace for ANOTHER hassle with shower, first doesn't run, second finally runs hot from COLD faucet, we have dinner of good but bony fish and get to bed at 9:15. (Also forgot to write about the passing of military convoys through the night, streaming north by the dozens, though no one seemed free to talk about them in any detail when we inquired about WHY and WHERE they were going.)
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1. Back to old habits, wake at 2, again at 4, and up finally to piss at 5, AGAIN very horny and determine to DO something about it. Move in next to John and cuddle five minutes warming us up, then reach down and he's hard. He moves my hand away three times but I insist and finally he comes fairly nicely, then turns over again. I play with myself behind him, still determined, and finally work myself up, saving "John, take it?" and he goes down to stroke lightly and it seems I come and come in an almost spasmless stream, very draining and satisfying. Then it's 5:50 and I'm up to brush teeth with my OWN toothbrush and packs things away and put out cookies, book and pad and pen, binoculars, sunglasses, wallet and ticket, toilet paper, aspirin and lip salve, each in a separate pocket, hoping I have everything. Breakfast is late, of course, at 6:15 and I grab toasts as they come off the fire and finish by 6:25. Kiss John goodbye and get out to their boat, and he shouts out "Have a nice day at the office," and I'm off. Manager gives one last word to give his boat's name to friends, and we wave goodbye without eyes meeting. Cab is 1.10 and driver "has no change," in furious anger DOES offer me one back, but I give two. The scene in the courtyard is a grand hassle at 6:35, and I debate pushing in front but get back in long line. For the next hour I have AMPLE opportunity to make the resolve NEVER to go to a Moslem country AGAIN. As the sun struggles to come up into rosy clouds behind the high Sankaracharya hill, and the slopes are tranquil in the early morning hazes, the tiny square echoes with shouts and curses from petty men, each thinking that HE should be first, deserves special attention, must be heard NOW. There are stacks of people standing on ledges and scales around the window, and every so often the SINGLE agent assigning seats clambers out and tries physically and logically to get the people into line. They don't go, but argue, plead, explain, smile, thrust tickets into his face, and want his undivided attention. I stand and watch in dazed amazement. Finally he calls two Tourist Police (nice name) shivering and snuffling in their khaki uniforms with short sleeves, and THEY begin ordering people off---except for the girl from the left side, except for the old woman who clasps her hands in TUESDAY, OCTOBER 19. Wake and eat and get a taxi to the train station, and this is one of the few transfers that work well: the train leaves precisely on time at 9:25, the seats are comfortable, and though there's air conditioning available, the day outside is so pleasant that the windows can be opened for a breeze and there's still pleasant cleanness in the air. Having finished "Kadath" long ago in Kashmir, I've been reading "The Two Hands of God" ever since, and I finally finish it on the train, writing in the covers, and here's what I wrote: "10/1/71, at 8:30, incredibly, we are the NEXT to last bus to leave. Onward at 1:15! Then a note from Kulu: the State house is filled to the 18th, the Gov't has a double room available for the 4th, which I reserve with the manager of the Travelers Lodge. Then for the trip down to Chandigahr: Manali at 5:30, Kulu 7:15, Dharmsala 8:15; Harsipattan 8:45; Sundernagar 9:50, Mandi at 1PM. Before that, on the way up: 5:50PM INTO Kulu, switched to bus #4658. The English film crew (at Udaipur) recommended we see Bundi, south of Jaipur, 14th century city on a hill. I wrote a note that John should read p. 80-87 for a capsule history of Hindu mythology. Then, on THIS day, I wrote about three ideas: A. "World-Cube" idea [could be MODELED] [This world-cube is for ONE person.] Each time UNIT for starting (1-d) [bright-dim spectrum].
Each space UNIT for starting (3-d) [White-black spectrum].
Each personality UNIT for starting (1-d) (IQ, height, coloring, #limbs, length of life) [rainbow spectrum]. Each STARTING cube goes THROUGH 4-d, 3-d space, 1-d time. Thus there are NINE dimensions based on sub-ideas:
1) Time is NOT infinitely divisible, there IS a BASIC unit of time, the chronon, LESS than which time duration NOTHING changes.
2) Space is NOT infinitely divisible, there is a BASIC unit of distance, the infitron diameter, LESS than which "It's the SAME place." Two infitrons can be SEPARATED by infinite numbers of measurements, but can't fill at finite box with INFINITE # of infitrons.
3) Characteristics of personality NOT infinite, your IQ is 142.875 OR 142.876, not BETWEEN.
B. "Person-Solid" would follow EACH PERSON'S hair, body, feces, urine, fingernails, dirt, tears, etc. around world, moving in halo around a statue it carves, etc. For ALL times for EACH starting cube.
C. "People-tree" would show how YOUR great-great---grandmother and MINE were the SAME, and how we are PHYSICALLY UNITED---for all time for ONE KIND of starting cube. N.B. Universe, of course, is all three AT ONCE."
Terrain is rather a bore, and we stop looking out the window after a bit, until we get into Bangalore about 1PM, and then we look at the hotel on the hill, the roads tunneling under the railroad tracks, and spires of temples through the city. Into a taxi to the West End Hotel, past the impressive administration building (Vidana Souda), and across the driveway and up the stairs into a high-ceilinged room with a ceiling fan and large white mosquito nets draped over the beds. There's a largish dressing room with a mirrored vanity, and then the commodious bathroom. We'd eaten the box lunch on the train, so we took a taxi out to the Mysore Government Museum, which had a few nice things, ignored the agricultural and industrial museum next door, stopped at a hill temple to see a black idol through grill, and for lack of anywhere else to go, ended up at the Arts and Crafts emporium which had huge things for sale, but nothing more attractive than three silver filament rings that I bought for Rita. Then John wanted to go back to the hotel and I didn't, so I took a taxi to the gardens (pass Cubban Park to Lal Bagh) and went inside, looking at a map to find my way around, and enjoyed walking along the decaying paths, the filling-up tank on a hillside overlooking waving islands of green grass, some trees in orange-red flower, and through the glass building with interesting maps, which I think I jotted down, but I don't see them around now. Down near the bandstand I sat on a bench and watched the people pass by: a girl who obviously hated to beg, children not sure what to do away from their parents, school boys holding hands, groups of girls shouting and looking around shyly, old people walking stolidly behind their children and grandchildren, and the gradual lessening of light and onset of coolness led me back to the street and back to the hotel, which is plunged in blackness, and candles are out and John's been drinking a good beer he found, so I sit and talk and watch the lights go on and off, on and off, and we have candles in the room, and then the lights are on for the rather awful dinner in the bare dining room, and there are a couple of old ladies eating alone in what looks like the extremity of travel unpleasantness. Loud Indian men too much present. We arranged a car for the next day with the tourist office in the hotel, and we prepare for a busy day tomorrow by going to bed right after dinner.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20. Leave the West End of Bangalore at 6:45 and drive to Sravanabelgola at 9:05, and we can see the figure standing on top of his hill for only about 20 minutes outside the tiny town. Through the narrow streets, from where the hill is invisible, and out the other end to a flagstone terrace where we walk up the sloping hillside on the slanting steps, upward and upward, to where the walls of stone were painted with red and white stripes, and into the precincts of the statue of Gomateswara, which is rather pleasantly proportioned and regally nude, with all these tiny people offering flowers and oils to his great toe. We climbed up to the roofs to look over the people praying and survey the statue from many angles, and then went around the bottom hallways, dark and smelling, to see many of the Buddha statues around with fluttering pieces of gold foil loosely attached. Looked and looked until we had our fill, then down to climb the Chandragiri Hill, and there was one temple with an elaborately carved little wall, a preview of the splendors of this afternoon. Then back to the car at 10:45, and we took off for Hassan at 11:40, where we stopped in the Rest House and had a beer and ate our box lunch on the porch on wicker chairs, in the shade out of the sun, and then left at 12:10, arriving at Belur at 12:55, glance at the entrance gate or Mahadwara, and off with the shoes and inside. The closer I get to the temple, the more incredible it is, and inside the Narasimha Pillar is being lit by another group paying to go through, and it's like an enormous licorice stick carved in the most intricate manner, and people pass time sticking their fingers through all the through-carved pillars and statuettes on the exterior of the column. The lights flicker over the ceilings and walls, and it matches the intricate limestone tracery of the King's and Queen's room in Carlsbad Caverns: everywhere the eye turns are intricate carvings and sheens from the black pitch-like substance in the light. Stone carved like lace, like the engravings on a US dollar, like the frosting on a cake. I buy a book and tour the outside of the temple looking at the carvings, reading "You look inside the Belur temple, outside the Halebid temple," and then I'm off to the side colonnades, where piece after piece are displayed which are better than many seen in museums, and there are a few cocky ones that I make sure to point out to John. The intricacy of the carvings are staggering, and it's with great reluctance that I leave at 2:05 to drive to Halebid at 2:25, and there the layers of carvings on the outside walls are even more incredible than the prodigies of Konarak. Fantastically intricate carvings in the niches on the outside walls make everyone thankful for the dry windlessness of this part of India; it would be a pity for these treasures to be eaten away by winds and rains. Each piece is more incredible than the next, and the statuary in the temporary museum thrown up in the precincts isn't as interesting, except for one or two exceptional pieces. There's a market on a hill nearby, and we want to wander around up there, so we see the sellers and the beggars, and one hawker with a knife which he slashes his arm with in order to prove his "sincerity" and then curses the people who don't give him enough money, but I think it's some kind of trick, since the blood looks awfully watery and phony. Cattle and dogs all around, and then back to the taxi to sink into the cushions at 3:35, then back to Hassan for strong coffee at a shop from 4:15-4:25, plagued by flies and the kids of the owner, and then back into the car and back to the hotel after dark about 6:30, and have dinner and pack for next day's leaving.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21. Breakfast and get a cab to the Indian Airlines office, but there's no car to the airport, so we have to take the cab there, and get onto the 9:25 flight to Trivandrum. Get a window seat on the right to look out over the mountains in the center, where Ooty is, but there are tumbled masses of rock and greenness and nothing much more, and then the clouds close in and the next thing we're over the ocean, coming down along the coast, flying over the sparkling water and the waving palm trees, to land in Trivandrum at 10;20. Very bizarre taxi ride to the suburbs of a ??, have to change money. Know there's nothing to be seen in the town, and get a cab to take us out to the Kovalam Palace Hotel, but it looks more like a castle on the Hudson than it looks like a Maharaja's Palace, and the two suites in the house proper are filled, so we have to take one of the outside bungalows, with a series of three doors: one to the lobby, one to our suite, and another to the bedroom. We're outside almost immediately in the gray day, out to the stone terrace overlooking the sea, and then down along the winding paths to the beach, where long stretches of sand are covered with dead purple-bottomed jellyfish, and they say that swimming is impossible at this time, and the waves look large, dangerous, and leaden. Along the shore to some rocks sticking out into the water, and we sit for a long period of time just looking out over the waves, seeing a long boat trying to battle the surf to get beyond the breakers out into the fishing waters, and we watch men in see-through undershirts mending their nets. Roam around the estates at the base of the cliff, climbing in and out of private gardens along the boulder-strewn seashore, and slip on the rocks and climb up the hill to get back to the hotel. Without the gray clouds, the driving wind that lashes the surf, and the purple jellyfish, it does look like it would be a pleasant beach, but we're rather saddened to find it impossible to swim and nothing else to do. The service in the dining room is pretty awful, and there are flies into everything, impossible to keep away from the food. Later at night the tourists from the house are eating in their corner alcoves, and we don't even have an urge to talk to them. I guess we read to pass some of the time, though I seem to remember sleeping for a bit, just to keep up the energies for the rest of the trip. By this time I've just assumed that I'll catch up on my diary when I get back to New York, because I've completely given up trying to keep a log at this point, even though the notebook is still along for occasional jottings. There isn't any need to buy postcards, since it's getting near time that we'd arrive before they did. The weather was a great down factor. From the constant lack of information about busses or public transportation from place to place, we didn't feel certain about any of our destinations, and we knew that we only had a few more days left in India before flying to Ceylon. I'd kept lists in mind constantly about the number of flights we had left, about the number of states in India that I'd visited, and the number of days left in the trip. I was ready to return home, and we were beginning to run into bad weather which would take the charm off the locales for the next few days. But we again noticed that the natives of Kerala were as beautiful and well-built as the natives of Orissa. Saddened to find that no one anywhere in Kerala seemed to know anything about any Kathakali dances anywhere around. So we had dinner and got into bed, not even able to hear the sound of the sea from our secluded position on the cliff.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22. Wake very early and the hotel taxi takes us to the bus depot in Trivandrum, where we get on a bus going north to Quilon. The road is inland from the sea, so there aren't any great views of the water, but the men along the road are many times shirtless, and it's a job to watch their thick hairy chests come and go out the window. Things are far slower than we thought, and there are lengthy stops in town when the vendors come to the window and hawk their merchandise: pink and green sweets, soggy things from jars, dried things on strings, and oranges and apples which we can buy some of. There are continuous strings of small villages along the road to Quilon, but afterward toward Kottayam there are more stretches of forest and river. Everything seems to be going smoothly when suddenly there are a crowd of kids around the bus, and traffic isn't moving anymore, and we're told by the bus driver that there's a student strike for some reason, and they're not allowing any vehicles to go through their village. This is a blow, and I try to find out something more, but no one will say anything. The kids are screaming and chanting something, and when we get out of the bus they surround us and shout things at us which we can't understand, and this just gets me more angry. The bus driver is standing off to himself in the doorway, and I lean on the horn to try to get his attention, but that and talking to him does no good. I start shouting that I want to go, and they make motions that I can walk if I choose. They're letting private cars go through, and I try to stop one or two of them to get a ride, but all of them are crowded with Indians, and the situation seems impossible. The sun gets hotter and the kids get louder and then there's a break in the détente and they're allowing the bus to continue, and I try to find out what changed their mind, but it's impossible because hardly anyone understands English well enough to keep up a conversation. Back into the bus and on the way, and again there are only the handsome dark-eyed faces in the crowds in the villages to relieve the boredom of the endless trip. We're getting into hills now, and soon the forest gives way to tea plantations, and the hills look like beautiful green bedspreads of the most intricate chenille, since each cluster of tea plants has a narrow pathway, perhaps for pickers, around it, so the mountains are covered with green blotches neatly surrounded with a dark border. Some of the trees are in brilliant yellow flower, and though as we go higher and higher it gets more and more cloudy, the hillsides are vibrant with color. Then it starts raining, a real mountain downpour, and we're obliged to put down the tarpaulins along the side of the bus, and children walking to and from school along the side of the road are drenched by the passing bus. Then it stops, the shades are drawn up again, and the air is fresh and green as we climb even higher, going into clouds for some sections of hill, watching the dripping of the water from the bright green leaves and the sodden flowers. Stop at roadside stands for refreshment, but in general the bus climbs very very slowly up and around the hillsides. I'd been hoping to get into Thekkady before dark, but it's not looking very hopeful. Finally we're into the little town of Kumili, and everyone gets off the bus, and we take our luggage off and try to find how to get to Aranya Nivas, and it turns out that the BUS goes up there, and so in the twilight we're up a narrow jungle road past side roads leading off to other small hotels, and pull up in front of a concrete building with courteous men at the front desk who say of course they have a room, and we feel enormous relief. Down the hall, around the corner, up the stairs, around the corner, through the door, around the corner, down the hall, turn, another hall, and we're finally to our room, with wooden shutters overlooking the forest at the edge of the lake, bare but pleasant, and I open suitcase to find to my great sadness that the rain of the afternoon had gotten into my suitcase, and the cloth paintings are quite wet, and some of the paint on other things has run. John's very disturbed, opening things up and unrolling them to hope to prevent damage, and I'm doing the same. When that's taken care of I insist on going down to the lake, but John stays in, and so I'm alone down the rocky path to the lake with the six or seven boats drawn up at the wooden dock, and I go out on a point of land and look at the water and the setting sun---behind thick clouds, and a stillness is over everything, and there are calls of waterbirds, and the lake looks more like the confluence of many rivers, because there are myriad islands blocking the view so that it's impossible to tell where the main channel is. Hope to see something of animals, but there're none. Back to the house in the dark and John's been talking to two Australian women who've been having a bad time with their Indian driver, who insists HE knows better what they want to see, and then we're into the dining room, large and quite bare, except for some flowers on each table, for a fairly good meal, and then we sit around drinking and looking out at the night, then up to the room to pull the mosquito netting down around us and fall off to sleep in the jungle silence. I finished reading "The Third Eye" before shutting off the light.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23. Wake and have particularly memorable sex before going down for breakfast, and we had trouble getting arrangements for the first boat, since they didn't want to send the boat out at dawn, only at 7AM, and we feared that the animals would have all gone away from the lake-edge by that time. But we had to let them have their way, and were waiting when the boat owners came down just before 7, and thankfully our boat was away first. Below the roof there was the noise of the engine, and so despite the fact that the owners kept insisting we couldn't do that, we clambered on top and sat on the roof for the rest of the trip. Shreds of morning mist were still left, and I scanned the shore with my binoculars, but there was nothing to see, not even birds. About halfway out we were pointed to a small deer at the side of the lake, and we looked at him for a long time, and then came into the large central section, where they SAID there were elephants on the further hill, but John insisted they were only rocks, but then we got close enough to see the rocks moving, and there were about six or seven adults and a small one moving over the hillside, but not close enough so that I could make out their eyes even with my binoculars. Then we turned to the left and made for a small island, and flushed a family of three, all of different sizes, which majestically strode up the side of the island, paused for a bit on the horizon, and then vanished onto the other side of the island. About this time the second boat was following us, and we could see them observing the other herd on the other hill, and then we went back toward the hotel, seeing absolutely nothing else on the way back, though we kept looking and fantasizing. Back to the hotel at 9, and then waited around for the bus to come up to the hotel, then down to Kumili, and then through a mountain pass and down onto the plain of Tamil Nadu again, and then we had even more delays. First there was a flat tire which took about an hour to change. Then there were stops every 50 feet, and after a bit I took count and we were going an average of 12 kilometers per hour, or a little over 7 miles per hour. We pulled into a small town where everyone seemed to be waiting to get ON our bus, and were told that we would have to wait for another bus to Madurai. Into a waiting chamber, reeking of urine, and sit down to read while someone asks John to share his beer with him, and we finish all we want and give the almost empty bottle to him. Kids screaming all around, women looking at us silently, men hustling something or other. We took turns going out to try to find out what was going on, and someone said you had to buy a ticket, and someone said there were no more tickets, so John decided to use the old Indian ploy: simply GET on the bus, and then let THEM take it from there. So we did, and there was a huge hassle, and John went into his "Oh, we're willing to buy a ticket, just tell me how much; yes, we DO have a seat; oh, you have a reservation, isn't that nice?" And on and on. At first I was embarrassed, then it became clear it was going to WORK, and I felt I loved him more than ever. Finally I got out of my seat to sit on the floor, and as a reward for my humility, I was exalted when the first person to get off vacated the first single seat in the front left, and I rode the rest of the way in that best of all seats. Got into Madurai about 3PM and rode all the way across the river to the new Pandyan Hotel, large and square and quite bare, far form everything, and we checked in and decided to get right out and see the Meenakshi Temple, since that was why we were here. Taxied there and inside the very colorful towers, and roamed around, climbing up into the tallest tower to be shocked to find a trapdoor over the stairway, and nothing to hold onto except the huge chess pieces on the very top of the tower. The view of the temple was rather dull, since all was roofed, with gold keys sticking out which marked some sort of symbolic flagpole, and the other towers around the square, the trees of the town, and the surrounding plains and trees and nothingness. Sat up top until we got tired, then into the museum to many interesting exhibits, and some wall pillars that sounded when struck with a mallet, and lots of "mystical" correspondences between colors and sounds and fates and body-builds, and looked at the people and wandered around staring at the rearing horses with the enormous erections, the delicate stone carvings, and then back to the hotel for an attempt at a drink outside, but it wasn't possible, so we had to go into the wicker bar upstairs to drink, the cynosure of Indian tourists who passed through, and dinner in the huge echoing restaurant with the tapestry on one wall and a mosaic on the other, and NO other diners. Up to the comfortably air-conditioned room, and probably had sex and went to bed early.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24. Breakfast, again alone, in the dim, smelly dining room, and decide to take our luggage with us to the train station. Wait for a terribly long period of time, between showers which leave the streets dangerous from splashes from the red mud that fills every rut, and finally the taxi comes and we load up and go to the train station, but there's been some confusion, so we have to buy tickets for a later train, at 4:25PM, scheduled to arrive at 8:40PM, and check the luggage in a triply-locked room, and then get driven to the temple again to see what we may have missed the first time. Also get to the museum in the temple, a grand mish-mash that I described at the top of the previous page, and we still have time to kill, so I suggest the Tirumalai Nayak Mahal, spelled Naick at the place itself, and we walk through the crowded streets, getting lost and starting down the wrong way a number of times, but our lack of any Indian language makes asking directions almost impossible. Finally get to the back of it and around to the front to find guidebooks which are just dreadful, and we have to "purchase" a guide, who takes us in to show how the place truly has no walls, it's a mass of pillars, cupola-roofs, open spaces in the center, and enormous "bath" rooms in the corners which contain half-Olympic size pools in the center of a wooden structure surrounded by crumbling carvings and statuary. It had been converted into some kind of office building, and temporary partitions made everything ugly. We saw all that we could, then got out to have trouble finding a cab, and then we got stalled in a street parade for a wedding (sort of like we'd seen one day in Benares, while looking for silks, with the bride on a horse and the groom with a veil on his face), with bands and marching units, so we went down very tiny side-streets, where everyone had to jump into doorways to avoid being crushed by our narrow tricycle, and got onto the main street leading to the railroad, where I'd heard there was a good restaurant. THAT restaurant wasn't there, but there was another which John liked, and we couldn't read the menu, so saying things like "chicken" and "tea" and "cake" we got something, which was terribly cheap but terribly inedible, mainly bones in curdled stews with a vile taste, but he felt great because he was eating "as the natives eat." Then to the train station, appalled by the number of people sleeping on the floor near baggage, greasy hot and tired women surveying domains of children, and it was outside this station that I witnessed one of the indelible sights: a tall thin man desired to adjust his skirt, so he opened it out flat behind him, exposing his hairy genitals, on the small side, brushed it back and forth, and retied it without getting any other startled look except mine. Finally our train seemed to be standing on the track stated for it, and I got on to read, enduring endless numbers of beggars and vendors outside the window, and the place started filling up gradually, until we were quite jammed in, and it wasn't even the lowest class. A poor village woman in her best green silk sari slept in the aisle, retaining elements of dignity I wouldn't have thought possible. Others stood the whole way, or slouched in the nearby john, which smelled impossibly urinary. The outside scenery of people washing in rivers, farming, waiting for the train to pass, milling about on the numerous platforms at the innumerable stops, soon palled, and I finished reading "Ayesha" on the train and started on "The Bad Popes" which would keep me for awhile. But then it got dark, there were no lights inside the area, and we got very tired of sitting on the wooden benches. Time stretched out interminably, we got later and later behind schedule, and at about 10:30 we pulled into Tiruchirappalli, and went straight for a cab, letting a lackey carry our luggage out for us and tipping him for it gladly, to take us to the Aristo Hotel, which $5 said was the only hotel in town, and I'd correct it by saying the town had NO hotel. We paid for the room in advance, got them to bring in a wooden frame seat for the Indian-style john, knew there'd be bugs through the open windows, and John had to have the fan on, so I moved my bed back into a corner and slept very soundly despite the discomforts: oh, yes, we were again the only ones eating, this time in a sodden courtyard area partitioned off by huge old raffia screens, at a kitchen-table type restaurant with awful food but good beer, for it made me dizzy enough to want to do nothing but sleep.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 25. Breakfast takes an age in the awful restaurant-annex, and then we take a cab to a large distance from the Rock-Cut Temple, which the driver says we can't get to because of the one-way streets. John buys shampoo and toothpaste here, on the way, and we get to the red and white stripes again to take off our shoes and get shown to the Pallava caves from about 800 AD, with badly scarred statuary, and then start the climb to the top, made interesting by many landings leading off into forbidden temples, people sleeping on the stairs, curio shops, and patches of bare rock to show that we really ARE on a rock. Out into the open air at the top, and the city is perfectly flat except for this rock, and we listen to the sounds of worshippers from below, watch the birds fly around the towers, and every so often remember one or another roach that we saw on the slimy stairs. Beyond the squares of the city can be seen a river and other temples in patches of green trees, but on the whole the view is rather monotonous. Down to the bottom but don't have the energy to go the three miles to the next temple, and we walk down and roam around side streets to see a section of artificial jewelry, and we decide to see what it's like to kill some time, and we go upstairs and get seated and sodaed and shown dozens and dozens of magnificent phony gems in rice, needle, oval, brilliant, square, round shapes, which are singly or doubly or triply cut, and we see the big ones for about $5 and the packets of tiny little ones for about 50 cents a hundred, and I decide that I want to make a kaleidoscope out of them, and select samples of the best colors and shapes for about 9 large stones, and then take the small packet of rubies, 100 of them, and leave feeling very pleased with the purchase. But there's still time before the 1:45 flight, so we taxi back to the hotel, and then find where the nearest post office is, because John wants to mail a letter and I want to buy stamps, so we walk an enormous distance there, talking about the trip to date, and then back to the Air India office where they furnish us with a car to the airport, but when we get THERE we find they can't change money for us. There follows a number of dreadful scenes, and finally John says that he's going to flush the money down the toilet, but of course he merely saves it for the Ceylonese black market. Lunch in the restaurant, and we're truly happy to be leaving India after so much difficulty, yet there's been no other country like it. Onto the plane and have a great view, since we both sit at windows at the front in the nearly empty plane, of the southern part of India and the coast of Ceylon, and there are tempting islands and green shallows that look great for snorkeling, and then we see the city of Colombo after about an hour and land on time at 2:55. Out into the spacious airport, and it's pleasantly clear and breezy here, and the introduction to Ceylon is pleasant because I chat with a guru who's traveling around the world, the inspection is cursory and agreeable, and we talk with a tourist agent who tells us where to stay and where to go, and we get into a taxi for the city in high spirits. The ride is over 20 miles and very slow, but there are some spectacular male specimens along the road, and the chatting about the government and the recent re-admittance of tourists is informative, and we finally get into the bustling capital and settle into the Ceylinco Hotel, with a grand room facing out over the ocean in full view of the constructions of two NEW hotels or office buildings, and the guidebooks look complete, and there's a south-seas pleasantness about the wicker and floral room and dressing room and balcony (with refrigerator). Down for lunch at a disreputable looking Chinese restaurant called the Nanking, and John spends most of his time around the corner in a curio shop cashing money. But the food's pretty good, and the assorted tourists and natives wandering past the busy corner give a good impression. I'm back to the room to read while John's out cruising, and he meets someone, finds him attractive, and says that "the docks" is a great area. Shower and dress for dinner in the rooftop restaurant, and it's very expensive, they don't have the exotic dishes of Celanese cooking that we order, and it's full of tourists, some of them cute. But we're drinking copiously---I guess we'd spent a lot of time in the bank getting our $250 back from the traveler's check incident in Delhi---and the room is comfortable and the country looks just great, so---we'd also walked a distance to a travel agency, and had all the deal with the American Embassy with red ribbons on an official document, too---we have plans for Hikkeduwa tomorrow, and we sleep happily.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 26. Leave most of our suitcases with the Ceylinco, and get a taxi to the train station, where I buy the tickets while John goes across the street to buy some drugs in the drug store. When the train comes in there's a huge rush for seats, and I bounce into a ladies-only car and bounce right out again to the giggles of everyone, and John manages to get a seat right in the crowded middle of a compartment, and I think it better to stand at the door, which is monopolized by two skilled door-standers, and look outside. The concrete walls of Colombo are soon passed, and we're barreling down the coast, looking out over the waves, cutting off areas of huts and boats and palm trees from the mainland with the iron fence of the iron horse. There are lots of clouds in the sky, but every so often a silvery-gold beam of sunshine picks its way through the misty labyrinths and lights up a section of the ocean or beach. There have been lots of rains recently, in fact the rainy season isn't over yet, and many of the flat fields bordered with squares of palm trees are flooded over completely, and we see the India-familiar sight of boards stretched across a moat to a floor-sodden house. The two buys get off and John joins me in hanging out the doorway, and many people wave to the train in general, and only later to us in specific, and we get happy looks from people hanging out the other windows, some of them walking whole car-lengths, certainly knowing the route, since at times I have to duck back to avoid an embankment or a series of telephone poles. We pass a luxurious resort area which isn't open yet, and at the start we saw the Victorian masses of houses around Mount Lavinia. It gets gradually darker and the train becomes later and later, and even at the end there aren't enough seats for everyone in the train. Into the town of Hikkeduwa and the station is almost deserted, but we get someone with a car to drive us to the hotel, and it's a few minutes before any human person violates the expanses of clean whiteness and green palmness of the mint-new hotel on the beach. Then finally a clerk comes and gives us a room, but sadly it's right next to room one, which contains the only other guests, and we hear them talking and singing away in their room until we decide we've had it, and ask to be moved further down the block, please, Again it's like India in that we have practically the whole place to ourselves, and the bartender mixes whatever drinks we want, and we sit out on the deckchairs overlooking the ocean, sitting in the cool evening breeze, just relaxing and feeling comfortable. Wine for dinner and a very good chef makes the evening very pleasant, and we're out to the shoreline to watch the waves come in on the regular beach, and feel very close to each other in the tranquility of the Celanese resort. To bed fairly early.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27. Wake practically at dawn, and out to look at the beach, but we're sorry to see that the clouds are still in place, the breeze is quite cold, it feels like it's going to rain, so we don't seem to have a chance to explore the Coral Gardens that the hotel is named for. Watch an early boat going out with snorkelers to see what they can see of the bottom, but they report that the water's filled with sand, they can't see very much, and it's quite cold. Loaf until breakfast, which is great, and then it starts to shower very lightly, so we put on our rainsuits and go out onto the beach. The sand is beautifully smooth and abundant, and there are dozens of kinds of shells, large and small, in the dunes, so we walk slowly along, looking at the latest abundance thrown up by the waves, and watching tiny fish darting about just off-shore in the waving greenery of sea-lettuce. Out over fairly sharp rocks to tide-pool areas, and there are many kinds of fish which are hard to watch from above the surface of the water, but it's nice to know they're there. Dig down into the sands to find different kinds of shells, and begin to form a collection in my pocket. The crabs are a delight to watch, in their appropriated shells, and though they seem to have gotten the prettiest ones, they hang onto them with dear life, and the one I finally took after trying and trying to pull him free died inside the shell, giving out a terrible stench when I opened the bottle that held them all. But I wanted the shell, even though I felt somewhat guilty about the need to take the squatter's life as well as his home. John finally got into the habit of looking for shells also, so the two of us spent most of the afternoon idly bending over looking at our feet, then surveying the palm-fringed sand beaches, looking with appreciation at the well-built adult men we saw on their labors, and looked with apprehension at the kids who were eager to sell us shells, guidebooks, guide services, and possibly even themselves. One of the older ones was quite devastating, but still terribly young to have as a sex object. In for lunch, which was again copious, and with the lack of exercise we found it somewhat difficult to keep moving. I sat around reading "The Bad Popes" in the lounge, except that there were some few shouting children, so I went to the room to escape them. The room was pleasant though somewhat damp, and the rotating screens that looked across to the ocean were very pleasant through they were always salty-wet with ocean spray. We may have had a nap in the afternoon, and I recall an exhausting sex session when there was nothing left to do. Two sexy guys were visiting from a small hotel across the street, and though John talked to them (from New Zealand?) it was obvious they were straight, though they were pretty to look at. Looked at the dinner menu early so that we'd be able to tell them what to cook for the evening, and it seems it was something special like duck, which was very tasty, though we saved one of the two bottles of wine we ordered for dinner in an excess of luxury for the surroundings. Though the water in the shower was only air-temperature, it was just possible to shower without feeling numbed with cold and pain. Dinner was extraordinarily pleasant, except that the large table with what looked like two married couples and their four children were noisy and raucous through the whole thing. We tried to ignore them, and they certainly didn't look at us for a moment. Though it was certainly pleasant down here, it looked like the rains wouldn't let up, so we planned to take an early train back to Colombo tomorrow and get up to Kandy, and look into Anuradhapura and Pollonaruwa for the rest of the week. Again to sleep with the wonderful sound of the ocean in our ears, and probably another bout of sex that left us absolutely limp for sleep.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28. Up early and tried to get a car, but there seemed to be no way of calling one, since there were no cab companies, let alone trying to get one. Finally decided that we'd have to walk into town, and John was feeling very weak, so I had to carry everything while he kept his mind on the mechanics of walking. Pass lots of school kids loaded down with books, and some few busses passed on the road, but there wasn't much in the line of traffic. Got to the station in plenty of time, and I sat down to read while John looked at the people, and we settled on first-class accommodations, which made it far better than yesterday: we each had about 16 seats to ourselves, in the car with two others, and everything was padded and lit and shining in the morning, and later on the sun came out to brighten up things considerably. Read and looked out the windows at the expanses of virgin beach and unruffled plates of water in the yards, and got into Colombo about noon. John wanted Chinese food, so we asked around and were told to go to the Park View Hotel, and it was an old English-type thing with a dining room on a huge enclosed porch in the rear, and while we sat there is began to pour rain on the tropical vegetation around the porch, hanging in enormous planters, fanning up from the ground, festooned with vines and lacking only chattering birds to complete the picture. The Chinese food was fairly good after we sent back one dish, whatever it was, and we ate no rice at all, which was grainy and foul-smelling. One of these days we went to the museum, which was sort of fun in its awfulness and English-village quaintness of having the local collection of junk from the landed gentry around, everything covered with dust and very sad-looking, except for some great sculpture collections from further north. Then back to the train station and again get a first-class seat, this time in the last seat of the observation car, and we felt perfectly regal looking at all the peons dashing past on the platform. They looked at us and we looked at them, and in some cases we had by far the better view, for the young men of Ceylon were for the most part well-muscled, clear eyes, and handsome. The train started precisely on time, and we rolled east through fields which were more water-logged than the coast regions, and we hoped they could save some of their crops. Boys in bright orange bikinis were diving from railroad bridges, and we waved back to them as enthusiastically as they waved to us, fantasizing about finding some in Kandy and setting up house with them. Took off into the hills, stopping more and more frequently, and up and up toward the clouds. "Bible Mountain" stayed in sight for a long period of time, and the landscape was quite Italianate with its abrupt hills, patterns of cultivated land and wild forest, tumbles of clouds that permitted the sun through in De Mille-ian streaks of glory, and other peaks that vanished into the low clouds. Through about a dozen tunnels on the way up, also, and sometimes we could see rushing waterfalls down the sides of the cliffs we were laboriously climbing. There was a curve through a switchback, and the same scene was repeated from a higher altitude. It got gradually darker, and again we were thwarted when we wanted to see a city by daylight first. Long waits for trains to pass in the other direction in stations with a dozen people in view, and then into the busy town of Kandy, and a number of people hawking cars, and we decided to go to the best: The Queen's Hotel---anyway, we couldn't resist the name. It was on a London-looking corner on a street with picturesque shops and stores, across from the main square and looking over the lake, and we went in to find a room, large and moldering, overlooking the traffic on the square, where we had to run the hot water for about 15 minutes before it turned body temperature. Showered and down to drink in the crowded lobby, and it looked like any seedy English movie set with tourists all around. Drink and in to dinner, which is English and not too bad, served with panache if not taste, and then we're out to wander around the lake, and John said he met a boy who propositioned him, who was waiting for him outside, so I went out to speak to him, and he was very young, but terribly eager, so I chose to remain naive and he stayed outside to wait for John. I went out to price cars cheaper than the guy in the lobby, who insisted he had some other people to share a tour with us, but we got it better outside. To bed with earplugs to keep out the sounds from outside, and dogs barking.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 29. By this time my head was in a whirl from counting the number of flights, major stops, countries, days left in the trip, and our load of souvenirs was getting bigger and bigger. I finish the involved negotiations to get OUT of renting the car the more expensive hotel desk got for us, and get INTO the car we'd ordered last night. We leave pretty early at 8, after breakfast, and drive into the jungles around the city, then find there's an accident that makes us turn around and go through some country areas which are quite pleasant. Pass factories that they want us to tour, but we want only to go to Anurad. Drive and drive and stop at a tiny rest house past Kekirawa for our box lunches, buying three beers, and they take off to their lunch as we sit in the deserted guesthouse, eat, and read through the "China Today" red magazines which we've seen everywhere, later comparing notes on the factory workers, teachers, doctors, surgeons, who all got inspired from the saying of Chairman Mao in the Red Book. They may have something going. Finally get up to Anurad about 4:30, and start right in with a tour of the town, not hitting the hotel until after we're finished. They wanted us to see the town tomorrow, obviously to keep us out another day, but we wouldn't allow it. I jotted some scrawled notes down on the map in the order we saw the sights, and the comments have to supplemented by the REGULAR stuff in the guidebooks. "(1) Pacina Tissa Pabbata, grassy, three-foot brick walls outline area. 2. Toluvila Ruins: Pillars are like tombstones. 3. Lion Pillar is TINY. 4. a stray old stupa gate. 5. Jethavanaramaya: Lighthouse like, only 150 years old. 6. Nakha Vihara: lost in forest. 7. Twin Pond: Nearer, larger one is lovely turtle-filled oblong; further is more square, green opal, and here, as I recall, we meet an old French couple and a sexy tall Frenchman in shorts who seems very friendly and agreeable, and we talk of the possibility of seeing each other later. 8. PERFECTLY preserved stairways around tanks. 9. Mounds of ruins, heaps EVERYWHERE, and DUNG heaps, and concrete cattle-watering stands. 10. HUGE nameless column area. And here the real charm of Anuradhapura hit me: acres of ruins, some uncovered, some still under hillocks, just as they are, lasting from over a thousand years ago, without any plans to make into huge tourist centers, without much reconstruction, just as they've been passed down to the present time. A remarkable feeling of antiquity PRESENT today. 11. Ruins, pillars, dressed stones. 12. Samadhi Statue: AWFUL in reconstructed profile, lovely full face. 13. Ruins, and a tank in the corner of the road. 14. Abayagiri Dagoba: another ruined lighthouse. 15. Ratna Pasada: but there are columns EVERYWHERE, 8-10th centuries AD, ACRES of them. Good Entrystone. 16. EACH column had Buddha's footprint embedded IN it! Foundation supports by the HUNDREDS, completely DWARFS Mycenae and Corinth. 17. Lankaramaya: BEING renovated. 18. Thuparama Dagoba 307-267 BC, capstones, Buddha's footprints, columns, bricks, FANTASTIC inscription blocks rubbed almost CLEAN. 18a (17) Lankaramaya, "may be Vattayamaniabhaya's bell-shape" from 89-77 BC. "John, do you like this?" "It makes a nice park." 18. Thuparama, next to heap which WAS "Padalanshana Temple, one of the Four Stupas REPAIRED by Mihinda IV, in 956-972 AD!! And WHY aren't these guard stones in a museum rather than being REBURIED in the ground as they FALL? Only CAPITALS remain in Thuparama, and lots of fragments of pillars in a NEW "old stone base." And prayer rags fluttering on lines like wash. Pillars like lotus stumps, slantwise rising. 19. Ruvanveliseya: All reconstructed, very smooth, bricky. Like a browsing cow patty. 20. Royal Pleasure Gardens: Another huge bricky dagoba (Dakkhina Dagoba). 21. Brazen Palace: A forest of palms chopped off at 10', a tottering set of "thousand-pins" and 36 taller ones in center, supporting a funny little locked wooden thing. Dog growled imperiously from steps -- I throw a rock at him. 22. Sri Maha Bodhi Tree: "It's awful, they just let dogs DIE, they're lying all over the place." There was a dead pup, lots of plaster Buddhas, a silver-painted fence (locked) OUTSIDE the golden fence, inside a concrete fence with newly swept sand to walk on. Praying women, crows, and a DYING dog on a step. Thin, scraggly, new-looking tree, IMPOSSIBLE to see trunk or roots, five feet ABOVE you. 22. Isurumuniya: LOVELY view of lake, VERY high (30 feet?) above valley. Museum (which we saw the next morning, since it was closed for the evening when we passed it): odd that tiles, rice-sifting bowls, lamps, home statuettes and sacred images get the SAME IMPARTIAL widely spaced display cases." John's weary but I'm elated, and we get to the Newararewa Resthouse about 7, find the rooms quite acceptable, and when John showers I wander down to the lake and watch the clouds changing just before and after sunset, listening to cows being driven back and forth on the road, and then in for John to buy a pair of silver necklaces and an "old" brass plate. Drink and in to dinner, which is pretty good, and sit around reading before it's time to go to bed, and again there are KIDS!
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 30. Wake for sunrise over the lake, watching the people wash and swim, nodding and smiling to girls pedaling past on bicycles, and in for a great breakfast of French toast. The car's waiting for us and we go into the museum, and then take off cross-country for Pollonaruwa. Decide to drive around most of the ruins, and I make notes in the guidebook that I bought beforehand: "3. Largely weed-overgrown, but pool had NATURAL ROCKS in center, a great idea. 4. But looks like a big brick kiln. 5. Big oblong thing, clumsy floor plan. 5. INNER walls filled with trash, looks like. 6. Very roughly carved lion sits between poles in CENTER. Yep, set on grass and covered with corrugated tin, making building platform lumpish and off-center. 7. Only pillars left on hilltop dry in lake. 8. Big klutzy thing, more fortress than palace. 9. Only good up to floor level. 10. Not seen. 13. "Circular building with conical roof," dwarfs again, one Buddha broken. Guard stones and PERFECT moonstones are best preserved! 14. Six stories, only brick detailing left. EMPTY but for Buddhas. 15. Not much left. 16. Three Buddhas inside. 17. Lovely CARVED stone pillows. 20-22. Passed all these in the car, much the same, not very interesting after what went before. 24. Replacing TREES with bricks, from bottom up. 27 is a stupa. 26 like an old brick factory, but big and on a nice hill. The next is "badly worn." 28. Really a CATHEDRAL of brick, headless and plasterless Buddha. 29. Very few traces of paintings indeed, about four square inches. LOVELY faces, and they're the SAME face! GREAT "squashed" look to cushion under his head. Fairly naturalistic feet, lower one more FORWARD than the upper. Very much a man-in-the-moon face, large nose, small eyes HIGH on the forehead. 30. (About 500 feet across at top) literally a brick MOUNTAIN, overgrown and sloped and having a brown monkey tribe, with a tiny thing on top, about 80 feet over plain, above ALL the trees! 31. Quite small, only 20' across, other mounds much smaller. 32. not much of a "triple-bend" with a bricky-loincloth crotch. Paintings are VERY faded, but lovely muted browns and yellows, and bits of green. HUNDREDS of dwarfs, cute, squashed, comical pudgy figures, like obese Rockettes holding up the roof, some more or less human, would make a VERY funny photo study; lions below are VERY handsome. 33. Ruined and mutilated. 34. Lingam of polished marble, 5' high, 8' across (round). In the photos: on the Hatadage I point out a duck frieze, on Rankot Vehera I point out that it's clear to a certain point, note that the Kumara Pokuna is the Royal Bath, and that at 34 SOMETHING (lizard?) leaped off pillar with TREMENDOUS crash as I enter at 11:45. 12 has a lavishly carved TENDRIL pillar. 4 has a HUGE old tree growing in MIDDLE of some little bricks. 35-36 are big brick nothings. Then we drive to Sigiriya, where we surprise a huge black snake that curls across the road away from us, and there are foxes on the roadside, we stop to look at a termite colony, and see elephants walking down the roads lugging grasses for their masters. Sigiriya is one of the best places yet, looming up against the sky, and we meet Gilles coming down, and he offers to go up again with us, and the photographs tell the tale of climbing better than I could. Notes from folder: Council Hall is IN the rock in the west. One of the "ladies" is missing above the forehead, one only head and hands, another WITH attendant, and four more mutilated ones besides the ones pictured are a complete catalog. There's a LOVELY view from the top---a metal signpost yodels to staff in the wind. Limestone flakes, white on top, brown below look like FINS 5" high. Sheer walls become LEDGES for everyone to scramble everywhere. At last, something ELSE in the world looks like Macchu Picchu, pools QUITE deep, walks leading to the precipice. A place Paul MacLean would NEVER see because of the height. Up a SHEER rock face are old handholds cut. Stairs VERY close, for smaller feet; it's VERY dangerous, a person could KILL himself easily at Sigiriya. Slant-rock-bottomed pools. Delightful time roaming over the top of the fortress, watching Indian ladies holding onto edges of their saris while clambering up the sheer rockfaces, bracing winds blowing from the sun-side, and we ramble down a different way and stop in for a cold beer which is very pleasant, introducing Gilles to our drivers, and then start on the long journey back. We get angry with each other because they want to stop on the way for the night, and we just want to keep on going. Transfer to the Hotel Suisse, pleasant on the other side of the lake, but it's busy with a dance that evening, and we're out for a walk after the pleasant dinner in the pleasanter dining room, wading across an inlet-stream to the lake and getting leeches on our feet which bleed through the evening, and get up to the three-bedded room to walk about in the nude, and Gilles seems interested but not at all making the first move. We read for a bit, then get to sleep. John goes to sleep right away, but I'm conscious of Gilles on the other side, and I toss when he does, and the air is tight with the tension. Finally, I decide to bring it to a head and get up to look out the window at the rising winds, and he takes the hint, comes over to stand behind me looking out the window, and he reaches his hand to my back and I reach around and find that he's getting hard behind me, and we step into each other's arms and start kissing. I ask him if he minds if John joins us, and I go over and poke him, asking rhetorically "Are you awake?" and he wakes up and utters a startled "Yes," and then says "Oh, YES," as he sees what the situation is, and we get involved on Gilles's bed, sucking each other and kissing. He doesn't like to suck, but he seems interested in bodies and likes kissing and necking, and he's quite hard. Maybe he doesn't want to come, either, since he enjoys being sucked only up to a point, and then he seems to get uncomfortable, but finally we decide to make him come, and he does so with pleasant vibrations, and I'm tired, so I go across the room to sleep while John and he continue to neck for about another hour, and it's a VERY nice evening.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 31. [The last day of OCTOBER! ONLY ONE WEEK TO GO!]. Wake and neck and play with each other again, and decide we'll share a car and see the sights of the hill country toward Nuwara Eliya, and rent a car from the portico and check out of the hotel and drive up into the hills. The day is cloudy most of the time, with periods of bright sunlight to punctuate the day, and we take box lunches along as usual. Up winding roads with striking bridges over large waterfalls, and at one place we stop and take our shoes off and go wading along the rocks to get vantage points out over the drop, luxuriating in the foliage and the moistness and the verdancy of the jungle. Up further we pass a tea-house situated in the middle of the tea plantations, so we stop and go out onto the porch overlooking brilliant yellow blooms and have tea, enjoying the silence of the hills, the clarity of the air, and the pleasantness of the company. Continue upward into the clouds at some points, and get to the Grand Hotel, which we prowl around a bit, and then climb up terraces behind into the rice fields, getting all muddy with what smells like shit, too, and sit on a ledge looking over the lake and have lunch, talking about his experiences in Burundi with the handsome natives, about his only single prior homosexual experience, and how he likes the idea of being able to do whatever he pleases. We chat about Paris and Burundi and New York and our trip, finish eating, and walk a long way back along the road to get to the car, and the driver shows us a few more of the "bright" spots, and we stop in a shop in town where John bargains for a lot of saffron for gifts, and we start on the way down, relaxing in all the greenness of the hillsides and misty-distanced mountaintops. Very rich territory laid out in tea fields, white plantation houses on hilltops, little villages of cheerful people with colorful skirts. Back down to Kandy and want to find still another hotel, and try a few that seem too expensive, or that won't put three in a room, and finally we find the Castle Hotel, up a steep drive in back of the city that's like the hill-roads on the island of Hong Kong, where all the rich people live in seclusion with spectacular views. There is a room available in the Castle Hotel, but it's the third room, not one of the two front suites, and it had three huge beds which we push together for a playground, no hot water in the tub, so they have to lug it in from the hall, and an Art Nouveau dining room that opens spaciously into a living room with bookcases and stuffed birds and indirect lighting and large comfortable sofas, and this looks out over a glass wall giving onto the terrace, and we're drawn into the twilight over the terrace onto the clipped green lawn, with the entire city, lake, and Temple of the Tooth below us, and the sounds of drums and horns from some ceremony float up to us on the pinkening air from the sunset. We're absolutely delighted with the location and the host, who's kindly and aloof at the same time, and we almost slide down the grass slope to see a closer view, and Gilles shocks me by sliding into my arms for a long series of kisses, and John and he and I make a messy kissing threesome right there on the lawn. Most pleasant. In for more play between baths, and then to dinner with the French couple and most of the conversation in French, and the food is pretty good, too, and we find that Lawrence Rockefeller has reserved the whole place when he comes next summer. Out after dinner to bask in the view, and then in to have extended sex, where each of us come, and maybe Gilles comes twice, and we're sorry that it all has to end tomorrow, when we are rather appalled to think we'll be in ATHENS after tomorrow evening! Bed early. We also stopped for my SECOND visit to the Peradeniya Botanic Gardens, and I can't imagine when my FIRST one was, except it was probably the same time that I visited the Temple of the Tooth early in the morning before taking off to Anuradhapura. Here are the notes from the Kandy map: "Temple of the Tooth: offer flowers and money, fold hands in prayer and bow, or bow to floor, touching forehead, and hand over baby to priest who lays him momentarily at the foot of the shrine. Behind doors with only the betraying glitter of gold and rubies and sapphires and emeralds to speak of fortunes within. Reed pipes and Kandyan drummers keep up a constant tattoo, and all the beautiful boys smile shyly in welcome. They show me four massy gold cups, about a kilo each, and a smaller chalice and a round cup cover, and then I give 2 rupees. Art is more like Orissan Jaganath than anything else. The Gardens: there's a summer house and a bridge at the tip, a Royal Palm avenue, 50' tall, planted in 1950, there's a lovely rockery, a larger cabbage-palm avenue planted in 1905, INCREDIBLE Canarium roots, and EVERYTHING is wet and shiny and blooming (except orchids in the back 3/4 of Orchid House) and fields COVERED with delicate thistle-like pink flowers with tiny yellow-white specks of pollen at EACH tip. Birds and crows and power mower sounds. Parcel-shaped Dipterocarpus Zeylanicus proudly marked "Ceylon only." And Glanier Unijuga. Fern garden, central potted leaf area, bamboo, pleasant and woodsy. Another AGREES it's found in India and Borneo, but says "Native to Ceylon." Tree with REDDENING leaves is Elaeocarpus. Pink flowers are Kopsia (5 petals). So we drove back, and though the orchid house was closed for the evening, we still drove around and the driver crushed a number of leaves to let us smell this and that and the other, and saw pulpy orchid-like flowers on trees and were pleased with the top. Kandy is definitely one of the places to come back to sometime!
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1. Breakfast early after seeming to be awake many hours of the night having sex, and again the servants and host are the epitome of charm, and he even gets out his Rolls-Royce to drive us down to the train station, where we're appalled to find we've brought along Gilles's shaving kit, or something, in our bag, and so we telephone to the place and tell him to pick it up, and we leave it with them. Again get first class seats in the train that's just about to leave, and we share the observation car with only a woman passenger. The ride down seems quicker, because there's nothing new to us on it. Into the bustle of the city again, and get a taxi back to the Ceylinco Hotel, where we pick up our luggage, and I get to the stamp shop in the same building to get one of each of many lovely things, and we don't have much money left to change back. Back into the cab for the long ride out to the airport, and he thinks he knows a shortcut, because the traffic is so heavy on the main (and only) road between Colombo and the Negombo airport. But then he gets lost, and keeps asking directions, and going in the wrong direction, and he seems to have the same trouble we do: not being able to find anyone who knows where what you're looking for IS. We get hotter and hotter under the collar as the time for the scheduled departure nears, which is 12:25, and finally it's something like 12:30 when we get there, and I've planned with John to pay off the driver and take care of the luggage while I dash inside and demand that they hold up the plane. Horrified to find no one at the French UTA desk, started shouting for help, and someone at the next desk tells me quite calmly that the plane's been delayed until 5:30PM! I sag in utter defeat, and John comes bustling in with both suitcases and a distracted frantic look about his face, and I tell him the news and we both slump into chairs to return to equilibrium after the awful rush. Unpack our suitcases right there and repack from the excursion to Kandy, and find we'll be treated to lunch in the restaurant, so we have quite a bit to eat, about the most expensive things on the menu, which don't cost very much, and then we try to price cars to the beach at Negombo, but they're charging something like $8 for a 15-mile trip, and we don't see the reason for it, so in a huff we walk across the grassy area in front of the terminal and change into bathing suits and lay out on the grass in the blazing sun, HOPING they'll get annoyed with us. I can't take much more of the sun after about an hour, however, and I go inside to inquire about retiring rooms, and one person refers us to another, and we get passed around and around until finally they have a place for us, and we pass through the debarking area, through the souvenir shops, none of which have any books at all for me to read, and up some stairs to two fairly nice rooms which the flight crews use on layover, and the showers are almost the most luxurious we've seen, but there's no air conditioning and the sounds of the airplanes, none of them ours, outside is deafening. Sleep for a bit and neck with John after his shower, and then down about 4:30 to wait for the plane to arrive. There's a crowd by now waiting to get on, and when the flight DOES land just about 6:30, at sunset, a number of rather humpy people get off to stretch their legs, and it seems the flight started in Tahiti, and some poor saps are flying all the way back to Paris "today." Many of the humpy guys are Greek sailors who'd made the headlines we hadn't seen, from a burning freighter on which the Captain ordered them to battle the blaze (to make sure he couldn't be accused of negligence, so that the company could collect their insurance) for seven full days, and they told tales of not being able to sleep, someone being washed overboard, how the smoke was everywhere, how they hardly ate, only battled the blaze until they were dead on their feet, and then had to escape in high seas in tiny boats that almost capsized, and now they're flying home. I was almost prostrate with fear about the flight, and I kept thinking to myself that these poor guys have ALREADY been through a catastrophe, so it would be too MUCH for something to go wrong on this flight and cause them MORE trouble, but I still fretted through the whole flight. It was quite dark when we took off, and our seats over the wing may have been stable, but we could only see strips of light over the wing from the cities below, and then we were over the ocean and flying blind. Above the clouds there was a moon lighting the cloudscape below, and the flight was quite smooth, but I felt that I had to ENDURE dinner and drinks, and then read for a bit, and time was turned back, and we flew on and on, landing in Karachi and getting out to a smoky wet smell in the air, and there were military personnel all around, and we got into the fairly nice reception area and sat listlessly on a seat, looking at the people flocking into the curio shop, which I searched for something to buy, but decided not to buy anything, and looked at the sexier of the sailors. Back on the plane somewhat late, and flew off again, and flew and flew and flew. The sailors were noisy, John went to sleep, the woman across the aisle seemed terribly nervous while trying to keep her upper-class cool and makeup, and I tried desperately to sleep, but couldn't. Time dragged on and on, and we crossed a number of time zones, making things worse. We finally landed in Athens, seeing the lights of the city beneath the full moon, at 3AM, and as everyone predicted there was a hassle because the Greeks had lost their passports when the ship went down. We got through customs and were flabbergasted to see John's friend and his wife waiting for us, and though they tried to make us feel easy "We were at a party, and it was just over, so it was the easiest thing in the world for us to drive over and pick you up," they indeed seemed as tired as we were. There was a nice board of accommodations, and they avoided all the expensive ones and tried the cheap ones, but they either didn't answer or were full, or didn't fall into what they thought we should pay, and finally they ended up calling the Diomia, quite in the center of town, and they had a room for us. Drove through the quiet streets at a great speed, the wife impressing us as being enormously practical and great for the lovable guy, and got into the hotel about four, making arrangements to meet them at noon tomorrow, after we "see" Athens. Collapse into bed, relieved that the longest flight is now history at last.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2. Wake quite early, about 8:30, after under five hours sleep, but we feel raring to go. Breakfast in the tiny Diomia restaurant, continental at last, and then I leave my sandals to be repaired and we take a cab to the Acropolis, where John is astounded by the number of buildings still there, and I give him as much as I can remember of the history of the place, supplemented by the guide that I couldn't resist buying. Stay up there for about an hour, and meet someone we'd met earlier on the way down the steps, and then into another cab to go across the car-filled streets to the National Museum, where there's more cruising than even in the Metropolitan, particularly by a terribly sexy kid with one of the nicest displays in his rubbed blue jeans that I've ever seen. Go quickly around the classical Greek statuary rooms, and John's impressed for the first time by Greek statuary, and we marvel at the smooth delicacy of many of the tomb-plaques. Then we still have time so I stumble across the prehistoric rooms, which I don't recall having seen before, and the Sesklos and Dimini styles absolutely captivate me from the FOURTH MILLENNIUM BC, and I dash out to get a book about that, too. We're feeling quite sated with culture as we taxi back to the hotel, picking up my shoes, and there's the wife waiting for us. Into the car and pick up the husband, and then again through the crowded streets south toward Sounion, stopping at a Turkish restaurant just near the airport---where conversations stops completely when a plane roars overhead---where we have fabulous appetizers which I recorded somewhere and have since mislaid, great food, and good desserts. Into the car again, and they're sad that the colors aren't as nice, and there are only spots that get close to the emerald and sapphire colors that I recall so vividly from the first bus ride down this peninsula. Sounion is jammed with tourist busses, with commentaries going in a number of languages, and it's very windy and chilly, so we look around the ruins, going close to the edge to look down into the sea, despite the cries from our hostess, and then into the coffee shop to have some pastries and coffee to warm up, and we're not down to the rocks at the base as we went before. John and George (and Ellie? Leotzakis)(I wish I could remember his name) kept a steady stream of conversation about the musical efforts of modern Greeks, about teaching techniques in universities, about festivals and orchestras and recitals and dictionaries of music. Finally back into town about sunset, and they leave us off so that we can change and eat, and they're meeting us later to take us to a night-spot for a Greek Piaf-type folk singer. They recommend some hotel restaurant where we go to eat in white-with-gold-trim splendor with loads of American tourists whom John seems to enjoy at this point, which seems to show he's homesick, too. The food isn't bad, and we're joined by our hosts at our table when they arrive early to take us out. Trouble finding a parking space, but we're into the place which looks like nothing so much as the Bitter End in the Village: a large, barny structure with raised platforms at the sides for tables with a view, and crowded little tables in the middle with hippy-type longhairs sitting around in their colorful "uniforms," and the menu is even very like a pub in the Village, with sandwiches and drinks, and I wanted to record some of the funnier names and transliterations, but I guess I didn't. There are a few preliminary acts, and many people join us who are friends of our hosts, and John enjoys meeting many people, but I'm actually felling asleep on my feet: I'd debated about coming here, but finally decided to do so. Her singing is throaty and breathy as all good chanteuses' voices seem to be, and she puts much spirit into her songs, and the reception is good, but our appreciation is affected by not knowing the words. Then there's another amateur guy with a guitar singing anti-government songs coated in sugar, and we don't get any of this, and then she's on for another set, and about midnight I'm dying with lack of sleep and finally they take us back to the hotel, and we ask to be wakened at 5:30, to get to the airlines bus in time, since the taxi fare is astronomical to the airport.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3. Wake in a foggy funk, pack, dress, lug the suitcases painfully to the bus station at Pan Am, and find a bookstall with a selection of English paperbacks that allows me to get "The City" by Simak as something to read on the flight. Onto the bus and it's still dark out, and ride to the airport through the brightening dawn, and then the awful hassle of getting suitcases parceled out at the doors, since there seems to be no baggage handlers anywhere, and finally we get a cart for our bags and wheel them inside to the enormous lines for the flight. Get our seats next to one window on the left, and then go for breakfast, and when there's still time before the flight, I go to a post office and buy lots of stamps of Greece. The plane is absolutely packed, and I'm telling myself that this is the last flight before the last flight, and count ahead the number of waits, takeoffs, flights, and landings on the hops between Athens, Rome, Madrid, and Lisbon. Into the air away from any sights of any kind, and the clouds come in immediately to hide anything which might have been visible from the air. Read and have breakfast on the plane (so I guess we didn't eat in the airport) and then we have to circle over much of Italy before coming down, and I look out the window over the Appenines and see the seaport of Ostia and then the mists over Rome, with St. Peters dwarfing everything else in town, and tell John to look out the window, but he doesn't want to be disturbed from his book: he doesn't want to see it from the air. Fly lower and lower and the views are quite spectacular, and we land and get into the terminal where I find I can buy a very nice selection of stamps from their post office, and then cruise a pretty man who seems to be interested, but when I go into the john he refuses to follow me in, so there's nothing to do but go back into the plane. It's clearer over the Mediterranean and we fly over Sardinia, and the island looks like a dream, and sadly just as we hit the coast south of Barcelona, the clouds come back again, to stay until about the center of the country, which is dry and rocky and not terribly interesting. The airport isn't too near Madrid so there's not much we can see from it, and they don't have any stamps for sale in the airport, either, so Spain is a sort of waste. Getting very impatient to be finished with the flight, and we're on for the last 50 minutes to Lisbon, but again the airport is so far from the center of town that all we see are university stadiums, many large buildings which look like schools or hospitals, and lots of suburban apartment houses in modern curves around grassy drives, and what looks to be a zoo. Down into the clear air and we're safe in Lisbon at last! John decides he wants to splurge on some fancy hotel, so we get recommended first to the Avenida Palace Hotel, which is second best, they say, and they tell us to stay away from the Ritz because it's too expensive. But in the middle of the taxi ride we decide to see the Ritz anyway, but the looks of it put us off, and the prices DO seem too expensive, and we can't stay for more than one night, so John says we should go on to the Avenida Palace. So we do, looking at the busy streets lined with trees, and we're out into the courtyard and the fading splendor of the lobby is pleasant, and we're shown to a suite which John falls in love with: French furniture, tapestry on the wall, marble bathroom and everything. So we settle in for 660 escudos per day (about $35?) and relax on the beds for a bit and look at all the maps we got from the city. John just wants to walk around, so I swallow my desire to "do something" and we go out to stroll, hitting the Praca da Figueira first, and finding the bread and garlic soup irresistible, so we have that and an omelet for lunch about 3, and then wander toward the Castello section, getting lost in the charming streets up to the top, marveling at the blue tiles on the walls, the winding streets, the quietness of the neighborhood, and the blueness of the sky. Finally find the road around the base of it, and then around 3/4 of it to enter through the gate, and pleased by the white deer, peacocks, ducks, chickens that infest the gardens, and it's peaceful and tranquil in the shade of the old trees. The guidebooks in the vaulted Gothic souvenir shop aren't very good, so we wander around the place without a plan, going up to the walls to look out over the pleasantly hilly city overlooking the harbor and the river with its enormous bridge, and climbing on top of the highest roof to have an unobstructed view of the surroundings. Wander down through the Alfama district, going through tiny narrow streets surrounded by white houses and elaborate wooded window screens, looking at kittens and dogs and children enjoying the many steps, and walk by way of the docks back to the hotel, and decide to have dinner in the hotel, which isn't a very good idea, and then we're out to the central promenade to see what nightlife is like, but there doesn't seem to be much activity, and later John meets someone who says that there's a great danger of plainclothesmen on the streets, that the bars have all been closed, and the atmosphere of the city is pretty awful for anyone who wants to practice his homosexuality openly. To bed on the too-thick mattresses with the luxurious drapes keeping out street noises.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4. Up for lovely sex and breakfast in the large dining room, ordering extra beside the continental rolls, and listen to the conversations of the tours around us. We get directions to go to the Gulbenkian collection on the subways, and so we're out to the Restoradores station and it's pleasant and well-marked because they have so few lines, and the cars are quiet and clean, not too crowded, but we're not there during the rush hours. Out to the further reaches of town, to an area that looks like it might have been bombed at one point, and wander slowly over to the museum because it's before opening hour. Admire the exterior and the plantings, and then inside its cool, spacious, gracious interior to be drawn every which way by good exhibits, and before a half hour is over we're convinced this is one of the great collections of the world, it's most notable characteristic being the excellent CONDITION of each piece: the paintings look mint, even the Egyptian pieces are unmarred for the most part, the silver shines, the rugs have no bare spots, the china and ceramics are for the most part unscratched, cracked or glued. The funeral statue of wood from the 11th dynasty is FANTASTICALLY preserved, in PERFECT condition; a wooden statuette from the 18th dynasty is one of the FEW with a missing hand; an alabaster bas-relief from Mesopotamia from 870 BC is unbelievably preserved, and if he weren't so incredibly rich, I'd suspect that the pieces were forgeries, except that the GENERAL quality of the collection was so fine. Piece 264 HAS to be a vaginal symbol from Turkey. 345 is exquisite: though many of his areas of display don't particularly turn me on: Turkish temple lamps, jars and pottery and dishware from various cultures, it has to be admitted that the samples shown are extraordinary. In the guide for European art I made the following notations: "LOTS from Hermitage, LOTS from the Rothschilds, which also leads me to believe in the authenticity of many of the pieces. The condition and quality of everything is almost too good. NO sign of age, fading, or dimming. The Rubens "Flight into Egypt" has a VERY strange inverted moon in the water. The Rembrandt "Pallas Athena" came from the Hermitage to Gulbenkian! And the next one features a LOVELY russet robe. The Bugiardini is very strangely PURPLY. I get some translations, but for the Raped box I only draw its shape: "esmalte" is enamel, and 740 has BEAUTIFUL enamel colors; "laca, madreperola e ouro" is lacquer, mother-of-pearl, and gold. 772, from the Russian Imperial Palace and the Hermitage, is a beautiful samovar set in Empire style in gold plate. 782 came in a perfectly fitted elaborate case. 787 is a fabulous HUGE jasper with reds and greens. But the Degas self portrait is not NEARLY as nice as the one at the Met, Stanislaus Lepine is not very interesting, 848 is a Manet of a cute kid studying cherries, "As Bolas de Sabao" is soap bubble, and "Inverno" is "Winter" by Millet, very soft and gray. Monet in a still life has a fabulous peach bloom in his glint of china. The Renoir is poor and pastelly. In his French school paintings Gulbenkian FRAMES them in the SAME fabric as the walls, and it looks like a mistake. There are two Turners, a fabulous ship breaking up in a storm, and "Quilleboeuf" with fantastic filmy waters and air; and the Burne-Jones has lovely ropy-colored dresses. He's allowed his Guardi's to go dim, strangely, and they're rather solemn rather than glowing, but his 876 has fabulous details of golden boats. But the piece de resistance are the works of Rene Lalique: a FABULOUS collection, ABSOLUTELY fabulous. 896 is a woodland scene, 922 has an INCREDIBLE opal, 944 is a phantasmagorical lady-dragonfly with eagle talons, 947 has aquamarines highly carved into jousting knights! 949 has an opal an inch long, 952 has a cock with an amethyst in his mouth, 961 is "The kiss," 965 is a fabulous crystal mosaic and diamonds, 966 has an inch-and-a-half stone, We have lunch downstairs in the glassed, woody restaurant, next to two rather pretty dancer-types who are very interested in showing off, but won't look DIRECTLY at us, and then back to the exhibits, staying until about 4, then wandering around the streams, pools, copses, and gardens surrounding it, seeing the rather awful statue of him backed by an eagle or a hawk, and just as we leave there's a fabulous young man walking a dog that wrecks our day. Subway back to the hotel and wander the streets for a bit, then ask the people where we can eat, and they recommend the Escurial Restaurant. Also, during the afternoon we went to visit Joao de Frietas-Branca at his offices in the National Opera House, and we were shown through it, modeled exactly after Naples and quite lovely, and he volunteered his car for our journey tomorrow, which we thought was very nice. Walk around to the restaurant and it's New York plush, with prices almost to match, and the garlic soup isn't nearly so nice, but the meal is pretty good and we leave with a good opinion of the cooking, though we want something not quite so elegant the next time. Back to the hotel almost falling down with fatigue and wine, and bed.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5. Up early for breakfast and down for the car which is waiting for us at the agreed time. Drive north through the dock area of the city and past factories and industries, and then into the countryside where the people still look like Italian peasants, the villages are all white and closed up facing on narrow streets, and pony and oxcarts become more and more the mode of transportation. Through picturesque cities with elaborate churches, and finally get into the town of Tomar after stopping at a marvelous Estalagem (inn in the country?) just to look at the dining room, and drive around quite a bit, behind sheep herds, before finding the road up to the convent itself. It's perfectly deserted, and we go into the church part to look at the wooden paintings in the process of being restored, and finally the driver rustles up a guide who takes us around the place, with the incredible spiral staircases in the corners, and tries to tell us the story of the place as well as we can understand it, and we get a good long look at the Manueline carvings on the famous window, and views out over the town under the sparkling-clear skies. Into the car again and drive toward Fatima, hoping to see some signs beforehand, but it's gone back to the point where Cova D'Ira is the main part, and the Fatima signs aren't too well placed. Then into the main area and it's too artificially laid out, and when we get to the parking space and look over the plaza twice as large as St. Peter's in Rome, we get the idea of more a commercial venture than a place of quiet piety. The tiny chapel is crowded with praying, crying people, and the holm oak likeness to the one which was torn apart by worshippers looks terribly out of place, and the woody spring from which the waters flow tempts me to take a drop on my tongue, but nothing happens but a slight heart palpitation. Get tired walking around the immense areas and go to the Hotel de Fatima for lunch, across from a boy who keeps looking at us with fabulous green eyes. The wine is tasty, the driver helps us drink it, the fish is pretty bad, and we're out to the car and the driver takes us to a place neither of us had heard about, the Monastery of Batalha, and we figure it's a recent construction, but are amazed to find that it's actually from the 13th century. The heat and dryness has kept it PERFECTLY preserved (fit for the Gulbenkian collection), and we delight in the perfect proportions, the immense simplicity, the unity of design and coloring under the gold-dust sunlight. We're greatly impressed, and I pay $4 for a book that captures part of its excellence. Then drive to the coast at Nazare, stopping on the cliff to look down at the beach, and then stopping at the beach where he tells about the legendary seven petticoats of the women, and even speaks to one who shows us one or two. The beach is spectacular, even with the boats idle on the shore. Drive down to the city along superhighways, and the view gets rather monotonous but it will reminds me of Italy, though not so emphatically hilly. Back about 6, tipping him generously, and I get the idea that I want to go to the Luso Restaurant for the dancing, but it's just a tourist trap. The ride up the hill in the tramway is fun, however, and we take the opportunity to check out a gay-bar listing, but it's not there anymore. Eat a fairly decent meal and watch the singers and dancers for both shows, and then out at midnight to look over the city from the park at the top, ride the tram back down, and cruise the streets a bit, but we don't find anyone we feel we can trust, and no one can take us home, and so we get back to the hotel and sleep all by ourselves; but what a DAY!
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6. While John does some shopping, I try the local post office for stamps, and she says I should go to the special place for them, and take bus and walk a good distance to get there, and get shuffled upstairs where I just stand behind someone who wants one of each, and I indicate, in French since they don't speak English, that I'd like one of each, also, so he can take care of us both at once, which he does. But even THEY don't have certain values of the commonest issue, so I can see how rarities are created. Back to the hotel and we check out, leaving suitcases there, and taxi to the railroad station to get to Estoril, and the cars are quite comfortable and not very crowded, and we see lots of the town from the train along the river, and then along the coast past pretty little towns until we get to the resort area of Estoril. Walk to the Hotel Palacio, enormously impressed with the elegant public areas, the huge pool, and the small but pleasant rooms, and we take two singles since they don't have a double, but it has a door between which we open, and we even sleep in separate beds that night because they're so small. Then out to see the town, walking across the enormous park to the tourist agency, and there's nothing of interest dosing tonight, not even a good American movie at one of the three houses, and we decide to have lunch at one of the outside cafes we see across the park from the hotel. The food is very tasty, and when we're debating about a wine, a crotchety old fellow looking somewhat like James MacAndrew tells us what to get when what we SHOULD get isn't in stock, and we start talking, while watching the pretty people moving past, and we automatically assume we're all gay, and talk quite openly, and he tells us where the restaurant and bar is in Cascais, and he invites us back to his place for I forget WHAT reason, and he lives in the corner suite of the hotel just down at the main intersection, the Arcade Hotel, and he has some nice paintings by personal friends, a great view over the street (oh, he asks us back for a drink, of course), and tells us the tales of the old woman living along in the dismal-looking chateau right at the edge of the surf. We talk for a long while, then down to walk along the beach to meet the managers of the bar we'd talked about, then continued the walk along the narrow beach, much like Nice and Valparaiso in that all of the sand has been swept out to sea, leaving only pebbles, rocks and boulders to stand on while getting in to swim, and the cloudy skies and coolish wind make even walking slightly uncomfortable, and we walk all the way down to the rocks at the edge of Monte Estoril, which seems like it might be a cruisy area, but we see nothing. Find a hotel we'd stay in if we weren't in the Palace, and then walk all the way back to the hotel along different sets of side streets, sorry that there isn't more to do. So we relax in the room and get to the train that takes us back to town for the concert at Tivoli, which we get there just in time for, and have the first box alone with Joao. The Tomas Marco "Anabasis" isn't very memorable, the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto was played fairly well for someone so young, and the Sibelius Second Symphony was well done. Out during intermission to meet many friends of Joao's, but no one was cruising. Then into his car for the ride to his house, and his wife is charming, and his guests are talking away a mile a minute. There's nice brandy to sip before dinner, and the chicken and rice is tasty, and then we have TWO desserts, a chocolate mousse that remained more of a soup than anything else, and something else which was good. Sat around and talked more after looking at their house, and then the two friends volunteered to take us back to Estoril, so we said goodbye and drove back with them, John getting ideas about the tour that he's begun thinking about for Dance Theater Workshop, first stop: Lisbon! Back to the hotel quite late, and get into our separate beds, no trouble sleeping, though this is the next to the last night to sleep before the flight to NYC.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7. [THE LAST DAY AT LAST!] Since it doesn't look like there's anything to do in Estoril as long as the weather's so bad, we pack up and check out and catch an early train back to Lisbon, checking into the hotel again, this time into a regular room, still looking over the Avenida, and then go through the list of things we might see today, since we're now museum-going for the last day. Some OTHER evening we walked up to the Cathedral de Se, at the top of the hill where we were staying, and looked at the fallen interior and the loads of Neolithic remains in dusty cases in the roofed back rooms, and now we wanted to see the other cathedral near the castle. Walked up in that direction and got lost a couple of times, then found it and went on a tour through its musty corridors and walled-up storage areas, and then went across the street to a tiny candy and coffee shop to have a sandwich and some soda, watching the tourists and regular inhabitants watching us, and saw the old houses that the guidebooks talk about, but without the INDICATIONS that they're special, there's nothing to look at. Look out over a few Miradors for the view, then take a taxi to the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, and there's a service ending with the local language, and the church is quite impressive, but the museum in the back really takes the cake for quantity of fragments, pieces, remnants, chunks, clothing, lamps, dolls, toys, bricks, carvings, and quantities and quantities of junk with no better place to be displayed than in the antechambers of the church. Out and go next door to the Coach Museum, and some of them are quite spectacular with their enormous wheels and upholstered insides, and then we walk along the great distance to the Museum of Antique Art, which is rather misleading, because it has just about everything inside. These are the notes I wrote in the guidebook, which I could only get in French: "Unending stream of Christs and Marys and angels and saints and worshippers. A VERY graphic Circumcision painting; finally a SECULAR painting, a great rape; a glass case with a roller shade INSIDE, a not very good Breughel; good beasties in the Rickaert "Temptation of Saint Anthony"; lovely male bodies in the Coecke van Aelst "Descent from the Cross"; "Temptations of Saint Anthony" is not the best by Bosch, very nice Mabuse triptych; a poor Isenbrandt, a huge poor Holbein, a good Durer "St. Jerome"; and a LOVELY "Salome" with a GREAT head of John by Lucas Cranach. Poussin didn't do a very good Plague, there's a poor tiny Raphael. The Gulbenkian room has a Cranach that's poor and green, needing cleaning BADLY, a pretty necklace on one of the paintings, but it's STILL the best of the lot. The torso from Pharos is yummy, and the Ostensor of Belem is ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS, with far more detail and color than the reproduction in the book, or any book, could possibly show. That exhausted both the list of museums and our patience, and so we went back to the hotel and probably went over to sit in our favorite spot, the Restaurant Suica, which we were told was gay and ended up the best place to sit and watch the passersby that we'd found yet. At one point John went off to get a haircut, and came back with it cut short and STRAIGHTENED, and he looked the worst faggot who ever existed, but it didn't help when he wrapped his jacket around his head, and though I later regretted it, I followed him back to the hotel that time at a distance, because I said I didn't even want to be SEEN with him. It was cruel, I realized later. Another time I was sitting there alone and an old man with a penchant, he thought, for "getting in" with people did a sketch of me, which was absolutely dreadful, and I glanced at it and merely left it on the table, and he later retrieved it when he was sure I wasn't going to give him anything for it. There was absolutely no pressure to buy anything, even when the coffee cup was sitting empty in front of you for an hour, and the subway entrance there seemed to be the gathering spot for some rather pretty people, some of whom certainly looked as if they were gay, but there was never any overt cruising. Looked through the paper in desperation to find what to do this evening, and we found that "Death in Venice" was playing at the Satellite Theater, and the hotel called to find that it started at 7, that is WASN'T dubbed, so we caught a bus up the avenue, as directed, and walked to the theater to be quite early, but it was all reserved seating, so we got some not too bad seats by getting there a bit ahead of time. The movie was fairly good, and we got out at 8:30 to try to find a place to eat. John wanted to go into a place that looked like a dump from the outside, and we walked in to find it jammed with people, terribly noisy and smoky, and I couldn't believe he wanted to eat there, but he did, finding the only tiny empty table and wanting to sit down. "Do you REALLY want to eat here?" I almost shouted to make myself heard, and he shouted "NO!" and stormed out. I was dazed, and then followed him for a couple of blocks before I could catch up (when he WANTS to walk fast, he surely can), and then whirled him around and asked if he wanted to EAT. He shouted something like he didn't want to eat with ME, so I stalked down to the Picque-Nique and had a broasted chicken that was underdone, and got back to the hotel room to fret about him until he got back, but we had to our and made up before getting into bed, and it was one of the worst moments, surprisingly, on the entire trip for us.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 8. I wake about 6AM and wait for John to wake, which
PAGES MISSING
After all the agitation of waiting for that fateful last plane flight, and the terrible clouds that we went though that necessitated flying with the "Fasten Seat Belts" sign on for the last four hours, barely leaving me time to shave after it was turned off before we landed, the landing itself, even with the wait for the ladder that never came to the back door making us traipse all through the plane toward the front---just as we had to walk the length of the plane to GET to our seats---we were hit by the fresh clean air of New York, and after quickly getting through the immigration formalities, where the woman EVEN said "Welcome Home" to us, with great effect, and easily through the customs inspection---they looked only in the larger of the packages to find my moldering books, and that was it---we were out to a cab to enjoy the red-rimmed clouds in the perfectly blue sky while the sun set and we sped along an easy Atlantic Avenue even just before 5PM. Finding that John's apartment was in great shape, that he didn't have to worry about the letter from Arnie saying that he couldn't be found to pay the last month's rent; drinking cold water from the tap, going to the john in a john that flushed at John's, walking through the crisp cool air of Brooklyn Heights to the Mexican restaurant, where we could eat the lettuce and drink the water and the beer without worrying about it, and then back to John's for sex (interrupted by Arnie, who rang the bell downstairs twice, then came upstairs to get the hall door, and Norma even said he had the keys to the apartment, so he might just as well have come right in! And to sleep in a familiar bed, knowing that it won't be changing again and again (except to my OWN tomorrow night). [No, this isn't working out right. I'd wanted this to be the first page of the CURRENT diary pages, but I can't NUMBER it, because it's going to be an unlabeled regular diary page, and as such will have to come AFTER all the transcribed notes, and thus the pages I'll be GOING to type from Monday, November 8 to today, Saturday, November 13, and beyond, will have to be UNNUMBERED pages, with unnumbered labeled pages between, to be caught up in the series when I finish transcribing my notes. Now to DO them.]
TRIP ITINERARIES
Not Entered
TRIP SUMMARY
Many items are immediately obvious: though all our planning was affected by two seeming opposite point of travel-view (John's of in-depth seeing of a few places, lingering where desired; mine of quick scatter-shot seeing of many places, sort of cataloging places I DON'T want to go back to), the final trip was between both of them and satisfactory to both; true, the amount of time spent in Kathmandu grew to be excessive, and Manali, though charming, was a BIT overstayed; in return, I thought the southern part of India was taken much too fast. But the sweep through Khajuraho, Benares, Agra, and Jaipur and Udaipur, which even I thought would be fast, turned out quite perfect for both of us. We know now that we made even too MANY plans, and that John's original idea of pinpointing a few spots where we would stop to "catch up with ourselves" is a better one than my "let's get an idea where we're going to spend each day." Though we're glad we had the advance reservations in Taipei, we hardly needed reservations anywhere (though I would have loved one in Pathankot, but that's precisely the type of place that's out-of-the-way and VERY difficult to predict.). And we could hardly have been required to go to the airlines offices more frequently if we had NO previous airlines reservations. Since they will CERTAINLY be changed along the way, we might as well leave them all open. Our togetherness was another surprise: though we did have a number of very short blowups: about money in Kota Kinabalu, the morning of Takarazuka in Kyoto, the evening in Lisbon after the movie, we spent ALL our time together except for the picturesque parting in Srinigar for my bus ride to Manali, and on the whole enjoyed it very much. We got much less sex than we'd hoped for, and I guess we shouldn't have been surprised that most of our encounters were with other tourists, especially Americans. But then we didn't find the natives that attractive, except for the rare muscle-building Japanese, a few pretty Thais, and the Orissa and Kerala Indians, who seemed completely sexless. Only in Ceylon did there appear to be a welcome convergence of attractiveness and availability, and of course the male splendors of Athens were almost too much to be borne. Still, New York is the MOST physically attractive and CERTAINLY the most available city, still. I loved the opportunity to read all the Heinlein books, and a following trip might give me the chance to catch up on Lovecraft, say, or Asimov, or Arthur Clarke. Mailing things was a universal drag, though I was so pleased to see that ALL the stuff that was mailed back (except for the stuff from Hyderabad, GOT, and I must remember to take the receipts to the Redi's). As for the locales, the BEST places, which we'll certainly return to have to be Hawaii, Japan, Bali, Nepal, India, and Ceylon. Places certainly NOT to return to are Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, and Lisbon. That leaves a few borderline places that we might try different AREAS of, as Brunei. India was undoubtedly the best of the best, as proved by the thought that the next "India" trip will spend HALF the total time in India. Certainly Taiwan was one of the worst, though the East-West and East-Coast highways still sound alluring, though we'd fly to some of the entry cities next time, surely. India has the best tourist facilities, followed by Japan and Bali (though there are too few books of places like the courthouse ceiling for my tastes), and Borneo was disliked particularly because it did NOT have any tourist leanings. But probably the next "long" trip will be to Africa, so we won't have to worry about India for a while. I've said it often enough in words, and probably in writing, but this seems the place to say that, though the United States still ranks first in quality of people and scenery for sheer touring delight, India will have to be placed second until a complete trip to Russia or China might show that THEY might be the more interesting country. For the number of cultures, physical types, languages, religions, climates, terrains, degrees of friendliness, attractiveness, the Indian subcontinent is far richer than either of us had expected. From the time it took me to finally cover the last month of the trip, and by the difference in quality of "remembered" glories as opposed to "recorded" glories, I can only hope that I'LL FINISH keeping the journal on the trip, and then type it all up quickly and be DONE with it, rather than holding it over until the middle of the FOLLOWING year. Now I have to find a place to STORE all the stuff that I got from the trip, a truly amazing quantity of paper and books and receipts and brochures and folders. But John's apartment is more thoroughly changed than my closets, with his coconut hanging, his Burmese lacquer tray, his Balinese flower bowl, his Balinese mirror-basket, his Buddha, his Nepali incense burner, the Indian wall-coverings, the Kashmiri shawl, and his Nepalese shirts all taking up space in his apartment, and I have to add the framed Orissa paintings and the Indian Liberty toilet tissue box. For his first trip across an ocean, he stood up to it very well, and happily retained an urge to travel somewhat equal in intensity to mine. We were both sick far less than we'd thought we'd be, using hardly any of our medications, and we have more colds and headaches in New York than we had on the trip: the one serious mishap was my toe-crunch in Java, and that caused me no serious trouble after the first few days of discomfort. As to food, the Indian out-back meals were far hotter than I'd like, and the culinary delights that stand out are few: Clark's Hotel in Benares in general, particularly for pheasant, the Yak and Yeti in Kathmandu in general, particularly their flawless drinks and beef; the Jesselton Hotel in Kota Kinabalu for endlessly inventive Chinese dishes, and a few of the Japanese meals. As for hotels, the Grand in Taipei and the Raffles in Singapore and the Imperial in Tokyo no longer deserve to be called great (not to MENTION the horrible Strand in Rangoon), but the Peninsula in Hong Kong and the Taj Mahal in Bombay surely do qualify, and one would have to add the Hotel Palacio in Estoril. Museums were widely varying, from the horrors of the Salar Jung in Hyderabad to the splendors of the Chinese National Museum in Taipei. The Gulbenkian stands out brilliantly, and some of the tiny ones in India are models of the home-grown, locally-donated dust-collectors. Some surpassing days stand out in relief: the trek into Borneo, staying at the Catholic mission; the day of the cremation in Bali; the fabulous day at Konarak; the day in Belur and Halebid; the day in Sigiriya and Polonaruwa; and the day to Fatima and Tomar and Nazare. Some days were not up to that quality, but what would be the use of naming them? We're still talking about the trip with glee, and will continue to talk about it until the experiences of the next one overshadow it, but I'm sure this will RECUR until the next trip we take to India to REPLACE this as a topic of conversation. From a fear of over-expending at the beginning, we ended up with more money than we thought we'd be left with, even after spending lavishly in the last third of the trip. John bought too many souvenirs, in my book, and I bought too many books and saved too many papers, in his ideas, but we both are delighted with what we brought back. For the first time, I began only dully to miss New York, and the trip could have continued essentially indefinitely, as far as I was concerned, and it produced a surprising alternative for places to live: Madras in my opinion, Jogjakarta in John's. Our rainsuits held out very well, we felt we were lugging around too much weight most of the time, and delighted in the "excursions" with minimal equipment. The weather, ranging from the cold of Manali to the heat of Khajuraho, was never unbearable, and though we were sorry to have rain in Ceylon and not see the peaks from Kathmandu, we felt we weren't cheated by the weather, except by the typhoon on Sun-Moon Lake, but that just makes another topic of conversation. So this LAST page completes the 394 pages of the trip diary for our 18-week trip during the latter half of 1971. It can be summarized as the trip that taught John and me that we COULD live together, COULD argue and make up and not feel badly about it, COULD agree on an itinerary and follow it to whatever extent it seemed expeditious, changing it as we went along, enjoying it always, taking the good with the bad, supporting each other when we felt awful, taking turns defending ourselves against those who seemed to be against us, taking advantage of whatever came along, providing an enormous fund of conversation to tide us over until the NEXT looked-forward-to trip.
JOTTINGS (Thief of Baghdad; Calcutta Museum)
Couldn't resist the beauty of Fairbank's "Thief of Baghdad" names: Defile of the Dread Mountains of Adventure; the Hermit of the Defile; the Valley of Fire; the Valley of the Monsters (slits throat of dragon: ooze); Cavern of Enchanted Trees (kills bat, no goo); Old Man of the Midnight Sea (A boat on silken billows); Bottom of sea, in iron-bound box, a star-shaped key (sea-spider killed in ikky smoke); sirens lure to castle; climb to Abode of the Winged Horse (and flew off on it) (others get flying carpet, magic crystal, magic apple) and, at last, the Citadel of the Moon! Unicorn Dwarf tells him of the magic chest wrapped in a cloak of invisibility.
Second Century BC sculptures, as I guess they must, resemble Assyrian in gray stone and harsh outlines and rigid modeling. Christian carvings because of floral halos and simple serene faces, and these have the ADDED charm of not caring for perspective: heads float above other people, people of different SIZES rather than foreshortened. There ARE nudes and cocks and public hair, too. And Buddha is the flowing-haired MAN, not yet god-like: though with a halo in SOME. Good studies of musculature and anatomy. Fabulous 3-D modeling in some, GREAT Greek style! Maitreya is a very MASCULINE MANLY incarnation. Nice! Alexander's invasion of India brought Greek sculptural attitudes, hair treatments (with the Greek headbands, too), and they brought Atlantes, garland bearers and Corinthian capitals. Upshi's VERY voluptuous as early as 2nd century AD! Bupta Buddha TERRIBLY bland, 5th century, almost monkeylike. BIHAR Gupta pillar has all male gods with ERECTIONS, nice, 5th century. Medieval sculpture is AWFUL, but for what comes from Konarak and Khajuraho. Halebid, in Mysore, put in lots of tendrils and lacy filament clothing. Some are FANTASTIC!
Heraclitus railed against "gross superstitions like astrology and astral theology and the ubiquitous Hellenic psychedelic mystery cults with their hedonistic phallic-pharmacopeias." John Wilkerson, "Heraclitus in Ephesus: In Today Out Tomorrow?" Center Report, Volume IV, Number 4. Let's have MORE!
"These elevators are monitored and your words and acts are being recorded." Sign in elevator on West 38th Street (south side, 100s block, from my Census work).