Though these are all true experiences, I am writing about it in a more legendary fashion and make it more comfortable to write publicly about supernatural experiences that actually happened to me and my family.
Note: A fire lookout with CDF in 1985 to 1987 was usually from about May through October. So, it was a seasonal job. So, because of this I could be in Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal from December to the end of April and return to my job in May 1986 as long as we had someone running our two businesses while we were gone which we did.
Begin:
It is 1985 and I turned 37 the spring of this year. I had remarried a lady in 1980 who had two kids a boy and a girl from her first marriage and I had custody of my son from my first marriage who was 10 years old then. My step children were 12 and 14 with 14 being the age of the oldest boy.
My wife and I owned two businesses but health care raising basically 3 kids either teenagers or about to be was an added expense so we didn't have health care insurance at the time. I had never had health care insurance most of my life and neither had my father because mostly except for whooping cough at 2 and childhood epilepsy ages 10 to 15 I had had excellent health since about age 15. Though surviving whooping cough and blunt trauma epilepsy had left me incredibly supernaturally gifted. It is the discipline I had been forced to attain which made me very powerful in mind over matter events in my life. My father hadn't allowed me to take any medicines to survive Blunt trauma epilepsy even though it could be said my fall onto the back of my head on a long hike with him had caused my head trauma at age 9. However, my father didn't believe in doctors much unless you broke your arm or needed stitches. His father was like this too. It was sort of a Kansas cowboy kind of way of thinking sort of like a modern day John Wayne. (My Grandad was from Kansas). And so my father was sort of like Grandad and even looked like him except instead of being a redhead my Dad had black curly hair but stood the same height as Grandad at about 6 feet 2 1/2 inches. I was almost 6 foot 5 inches and the tallest of the present generation and taller than all my cousins even though one was 6 foot 2 1/2 like my Dad who had been in the Navy during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis stationed on a destroyer near Cuba and the other I was raised close to and had atttended USC near where I lived in Glendale on a full Scholarship around 1960.
So, back to 1985 in April of the year. My father was dying and I greatly wanted to be with him for his last few months. He was dying of bone cancer and I didn't want the complete burden to fall on my mother as it was telling on her. So, my wife and I often argued about this because she wanted me to keep working supporting her and the kids whereas I couldn't deal with my father dying. Even though she had never lost a parent before either looking back now I see she was right even though it made me very angry. So, one day as we were arguing so she said,"You are going to take that Lookout job so we can have health insurance for all of us!" With that she took the clipboard with the documents she wanted me to sign and broke it over the top of my head!
I was sort of shocked to be so violently attacked! But I also knew in her own mind she was desperate to make me stay and take care of her and the kids rather than have me go take care of my father. So, I was very torn about all this. I finally agreed realizing how important this was to her.
However, she didn't realize that that moment of her breaking the clipboard over the top of my head was the beginning of the end of our marriage. But, I did. Though we lasted another 9 years from my point of view for our children, that moment was the point of no return for me when I look back now.
So, being a fire lookout on top of running two other businesses wasn't really a choice I would normally make. But, I did for the sake of my wife and family. A part of me thought this was a bad idea. Looking back now there were no good choices for me.
The main bad two things that happened were my father died with my mother alone and my son got Asthma from me being away so much and then teased by my wife and her children when he was not able to breathe rather than being helped. So they were laughing at him as he struggled for breath rather than realizing he had asthma while I was at the lookout. Another reason to eventually divorce.
But, that is all hindsight. At the time it was just my life with all the good and bad things in it just like all of your lives as you live them. The five years previous to the clipboard being broken over the top of my head had been the happiest ones of my life up until that moment of the broken clipboard.
It was a watershed moment. The previous summer I had gone down to Palm Springs where Dad had decided to have his bladder and one of his kidneys removed because his prostate cancer had spread from his prostate into one of his kidneys and into his bladder so he was to have his prostate, his bladder and one of his kidneys removed. I remember him in the recovery room being wheeled along after this operation he was white as a sheet and my mother and aunt and I were scared to lose him and he looked like death itself. When your father has always been a larger than life John Wayne figure in your life your balloon pops when you see something like this and you will never be the same as long as you live. My biological son went with me for this. And we went to Six Flags on Interstate 5 just passed Los Angeles on the way up the Grapevine and we got on the biggest roller coaster and my son realized just as we were about to go down the first run, "I want to get off!" and I said to him, "We can't!" When we got off I realized my heart couldn't take this kind of stress anymore and I almost passed out. This was the first sign for me of aging and possibly leading to heart problems in the distant future. I was 37 and didn't want my father to die and didn't like what my father dying was doing to my son by giving him asthma from the shock of my father dying.
So, the clipboard over the head made me decide to stay married for then and take this new job for the health care it would give my family on top of the two businesses we already owned. You know how life is if you are in your 30s or above. Life isn't good or bad but usually both most of the time. So, if you are grown up you just have to find a way to make the best of it. With this thought I tried to discipline myself for this lookout job and being away from my family 3 days one week and 4 days the next alternate weeks. And I had an alternate fire lookout the other half of the week I had off duty.
I worked for the CDF in California doing this. I was at Call mountain Lookout which is ten miles from the nearest public paved road up 10 miles of dirt roads over cattle ranches until you get to the 4000 foot altitude Call Mountain.
You are about 40 feet off the ground in a lookout tower with window in all directions to look for fires. You have a device in the center of the room to plot directionals of the fires you see so you can estimate direction and distances when you radio in fires. Most fires are intentional control burns but you still have to report them the 12 daylight hours you are on duty and then you are on standby the 12 night time hours if you are needed. So, you listen to your radio 24 hours a day of the chatter that is a little like listening to police radio except this is all mostly fire engines talking with control stations or lookouts. It is run in a very military manner and very efficient. Sometimes you will hear radio traffic between spotter planes and ground units as well if they are on the right frequencies.
You are completely alone at that lookout 99% or more of the time except for the radio and the telephone. You have to be someone who is comfortable in nature to do something like this. I was always comfortable in nature and usually preferred being alone in nature to just about anything then except camping out or traveling with my family someplace fun. However, now from the perspective of someone retired this isn't something I would ever choose to do now in my mid 60s. (Being at a lookout for 3 days one week and 4 days the next).
The wife and kids sometimes came to the lookout with me for visits during the summers and the boys would create strings from the edge of the lookout and run model planes and super heroes down those lines for fun and games. And the views there in all directions were spectacular unless clouds obscured the view which was fairly seldom. If you wanted to go to the bathroom you had to go down 40 verticle feet down an internal wooden staircase and out through the garage which protected whatever vehicle I was driving in, (my VW rabbit or my 1974 International Harvester Scout II). I would check the weather to see which vehicle I needed that stint because if it was raining or misty the roads up there were clay and would turn to slippery snot and be very dangerous in anything but a full 4 wheel drive.
My single most dangerous experience was one night when I had opened and drove through and closed one of the many gates I had to pass through between cattle ranches on the dirt road heading up to the lookout. I had just closed the gate and it was dark heading up to the lookout and all of a sudden something I couldn't see ran into my VW rabbit front bumper and drove me off the road. At the time I thought it might be a Bull or something like that that might have been let into this area to breed with the cows so I just kept right on going because I didn't have a weapon nor would I have been allowed to use one because of agreements with the ranchers with the state government even if I had been allowed to bring one (which I wasn't). So, I kept my rabbit going even though it had been thrown into a ditch. I heard a little scraping on the side of my car but soon drove out of the dirt ditch and back up onto the road and went on my way and served my duty at the lookout. ON my way down several days later I saw the carcass of a huge female boar almost the size of my VW rabbit. Even her babies nearby were about 200 to 300 pounds already and I would say the female boar was about 700 to 1000 pounds maybe even heavier than my car. When she had hit my car she ripped her lower jaw off and so couldn't eat or drink water. The babies held back because they didn't know humans and were waiting for their mother to get up but she was dead. I was amazed I survived the whole thing in the end. This was likely the closest thing to buying the farm while I was working as a lookout between 1985 and 1987.
In the fall I saw a Western Bluebird which I had never seen before which is a brilliant colored multihued blue bird I guess native to the western United States. I saw man deer and herds of wild boar as well. When I was on standby at night I made sure there was a tree nearby to quickly climb because a herd of wild boar will almost always be fatal unless you climb a tree or have a gun in those parts.
I found my senses changed and reminded me at times of my vision quest of no water and no food for 96 hours (4 days) in 1983 which was 2 or 3 years before then. My senses from not being around people 3 to 4 days at a time changed a lot. I found I started to pick up on the minds of deer which were very different from the minds of predators like raccoons or wild boar.
The minds of the deer were in a mode from being vegetarians which is sort of like "You can't see me even though I'm hiding in plain sight." Whereas the minds of predators whether they are hawks or raccoons or mountain lions is sort of "Stay still. It will all be over fairly quickly". So, I became aware of how different species protected or fed themselves by the way they ran their psychic senses. Animals are very aware of things like this all the time. Because if an animal isn't completely tuned into it's surroundings 24 hours a day it is soon a meal for something else.
Other senses opened up as well. Sometimes I prayed both Christian, mystical Christian and Tibetan Buddhist. One day I think it was in September or October of 1985 after having worked there 3 or 4 days a week since about may 1985 one of the powerful forms of Vajrasattva came to me and said, "You are going to go to India December 10th". I went home and told my wife about this and she said, "Where is the money going to come from?"
I realized before I go here I need to share about August 1985. My father passed away in August I think it was August 11th. The day before he passed away it was night fall and Dad's Brother who had passed away in 1942 came to me and walked through the lookout. I said, "Uncle Tommy! I haven't seen you in years! What are you doing here?" He didn't say anything but just stood there for me to see. I realized he was coming for my Dad.
Since I had a telephone at the lookout I called my Dad at home in Yucca Valley about 400 or 500 miles away. I said, "Dad. Tommy your brother is coming for you." Dad said, "I don't feel very well right now son. I ate too many raisins with some rice. We'll talk later. 5 hours later Mom called me to tell me Dad had passed away in an ambulance on the way to a hospital. I thanked Tommy for showing me he was coming to take Dad to heaven.
I got some time off to go to Yucca Valley for the memorial service and my dealing with my Dad's body. Mom had put his body on ice and so when I arrived I drove to the crematorium so I could witness my father's body being cremated. I opened the cardboard containers they cremate bodies in and said goodbye to my Dad. His eyes were flat and not round and his steel blue eyes were open and I found this disturbing along with the fact that my father was very thin and under 100 pounds when he died. I was used to my Dad being at least 170 pounds because he was 6 foot 2 1/2 inches so this was difficult for me. He had his clothes on as I pushed him into the furnace to burn up. I did the same for my mother in 2008 and watched her go up the 1 foot chimney from the crematorium. My father's ashes are on Mt. Shasta just above Horse Camp. My mother's ashes are where John Denver crashed his plane into the ocean. We chartered a yacht and my son put her ashes in the ocean at this location because Mom wanted to be in the ocean and she really loved John Denver's music.
When I got home from my experience with Vajrasattva (maybe I should explain who Vajrasattva is).
In the Tibetan Buddhist religion Vajrasattva and Nyema are the God and Goddess of the physical universe. They usually are in Yab Yum in states of bliss if you see pictures of them. Their vow is to not leave the physical universe until all beings in the universe permanently leave their suffering. So, they wait for all of us to become enlightened before they go into the formless realms at the next stage of existence.
For me, finding out about Vajrasattva and Nyema was amazing for me because in western religions it is sort of less scientific about stuff like this than Eastern Religions. So, I found the stories about Vajrasattva gave me more of a conceptual useful way of thinking about God as different Buddhas at different stages of enlightenment throughout the universe.
Because of the way life works here on earth already the Tibetan Buddhist way of seeing all this was much more scientific and less mythological than trying to make sense of Christian texts like in the King James version of the Bible that likely had gone through 20 to 30 translations to get to the English one we read and through the minds of thousands and thousands of conceptions that likely had nothing at all to do with what people actually thought then.
Though to some degree this is also true of Buddhism, there is a lot more scholastic work done on ancient Buddhist texts without trying to bring it through Aramaic to Greek, to German or Latin, then into Italian, then into French, then into English etc. etc. etc. And with each year change and translation losing something meaningful along the way of the way things actually meant.
For example, I lived through the 1960s here in California. But, when I hear people try to talk about what the 1960s were all about who actually were not there and over 10 or 12 years old they talk like fools about it. They talk like it is or was a cartoon or something. Everyone didn't have long hair or smoke marijuana or go to college or demonstrate or die in Viet nam or get Assassinated. Just a few people actually did those things. But, when people talk about it they think they know what happened in the 1960s but it usually isn't anything like it actually was to actually live through it. The same is true of the Bible or Buddhist scriptures. We weren't there unless we are reincarnated now and remember our experiences then somehow. Otherwise, we can't know what it was like to know Jesus then or what he looked like. And even then, without an education how would you process that kind of experience? Without radio, without TV, if you couldn't read or write or even see without glasses very well then. So, only if you were within about 100 feet or yards could you even see or hear what he had to say. (if you could hear and understand his language). And the same thing could be said for when Buddha was actually alive too.
I have written before about how my experiences in this lifetime often remind me about what the prophets say in the old testament. My experiences have often been like that too. So, God isn't a book that I read. God is written in the hearts and lives of all living beings all the time. I suppose the book would be better than nothing. But, best of all is to have a constant conversation 24 hours a day with God like I do in my life constantly with God and his angels and Jesus and Saint Germain. Getting to the point where I was accepted as one of them was very terrifying and difficult sort of going through boot camp especially from ages 9 to 15 or 20. But, eventually I learned to do God's Will and be trusted with the Supernatural gifts that he warned me he would kill me if I misused them.
At that point I sort of wondered why God would gift me so and then kill me after giving me these gifts? and I felt victimized by God. But now, I understand. Those who are given much is much expected from in return.
So, this blog is one of the ways I serve God so his people don't go extinct here on earth or on other planets they colonize. This is how I see the whole thing now. So, though the Bible is God's word it is also so twisted from translation it might confuse more people in some ways than it saves.
So, I think meeting a man or woman of God is much superior to reading the Bible. Because if you meet a man or woman or child of God you experience God directly in them. This is one reason why the bones of saints are put in the altars of some Catholic Churches around the world. In Tibetan Buddhism they actually have you eat (like the body and blood of Christ) parts of the remains of Tibetan Saints if you are an initiate like in eating their ashes in little rock like things because they believe you are the next saint coming here to earth as an initiate and empowered. And I have to admit your body becomes more of a Temple for God and Buddha to work through when you do this.
I was raised a Christian (a Christian Mystic) but I also have realized I likely am a reincarnated Tibetan Tulku as well. So, since the early Christians all believed in reincarnation and it was only removed from the Bible by Justinian and Theodora when they put the pope then in prison I see myself as an early mystical Christian and also a Tibetan Buddhist too. I see no conflicts at all in this as it is perfectly natural to me in my stage of development as a Christian and Buddhist Adept. Also, 25% of the Buddhists of the world also believe in God.
So, when I came home that day in 1985 in the fall and told my wife we were going to India on December the 10th as told me by a form of Vajrasattva she said, "Where's the money coming from?" She didn't question what I said because I often know things before they happen. And so she just accepted this about me.
So, the next month when we suddenly inherited some money we didn't expect we at first talked about buying more land, but realized we didn't want to have to pay anymore land taxes than we already were for the 2 1/2 acres we bought in 1980 when we built an A-Frame on it and home schooled our kids there from 1980 until earlier that year when we moved down from Mt. Shasta to buy a business on the northern California coast so our kids could go to a good public school there.
But, after realizing it wouldn't be to our advantage to buy more land because of having to care for more land than we already had we started thinking about going to India. So, we went to a travel agency but they wanted so much for the air fare that we didn't see how that would be useful. Because we still had to hire someone to run our two businesses while we were gone. Then my wife's sister said she would run our businesses for us. So, we realized we might be able to make this work. Then thought, we sort of gave up because we didn't know how to make it financially work. Then one weekend my mother was visiting from wherever she was living then (likely palm springs at that point) and we walked by a travel agency on Haight STreet near haight and ashbury where the 60s all started. My friend used to be a writer for the Berkeley Barb in the late 1960s and we were all sort of walking down memory lane and talking about how things had been during the 1960s when we were all young people in their teens and early 20s. My mother saw a deal in the window for about $275 for one week in Hawaii. My father had passed away about 5 months before and so she was very unglued still from that.
So, I accompanied her into this travel agency to inquire so she wasn't taken advantage of. As I walked in I realized this wasn't an ordinary travel agency but was specifically for College professors on sabaticals and graduate students traveling the world who have a lot of time but not a lot of money. So, it had been set up for that. So, as long as you didn't need to be date specific you could travel all around the world on discounted tickets that were left over on flights around the world. So, you could usually fly within a week of when you wanted to and pay 25% to 50% of what most other people were.
So, I asked a travel agent how much it would cost to fly to Katmandu, Nepal? He said it would be $6000 for 5 open ended tickets for 6 months and we could travel through Narito, japan , Bangkok, Thailand, Hong Kong and Katmandu round trip. So, only Hong Kong was optional on this trip to make it work going and coming. We wound up not going to Hong Kong as this whole thing unfolded. So, right there I wrote a check for $6000 for 5 tickets for myself, my wife and our three children. (She had told me she wouldn't go without the kids) because what if we died over there? She didn't want our kids to be orphans. She thought if we died we should all die together. This was her thinking and I couldn't talk her out of this.
So, we had less than one week before we had to go to avoid the holiday traffic. So, we had to leave on December 11th (Remember, Vajrasattva told us we would leave on December the 10th? Well. We wound up leaving on the 11th. No other choice.
Though I realized I was on a mission from God this didn't mean I didn't have conflicting feelings about all this too. What about my mother while we were gone? Why was I taking my children over there? What immunizations did we all need and how much was that going to cost? And many more questions. But, we rode over to japan the 5 of us on a brand new Boeing 747 owned by Japan Air Lines in First class. I thought to myself, "Wow God! You are really amazing!"
By the way the whole point of Forcing Christians to believe that reincarnation wasn't true was so Kings and Queens could terrify their people regarding going to hell and force them to work like dogs for them until they died. Also, Kings and Queens often taught they were Gods and Goddesses sent by God to rule them so to uneducated people were terrified of being tortured and killed in this life and also in the next. So, this is the really horrific side to Christianity that most people don't want to talk about in your history classes.
People who believe in reincarnation don't worry about this as much because they always have another chance to make things right.
I was thinking about sharing straight from my journal of what I wrote then but maybe how I see things now is even more important.
So, we landed at Narito Airport the day before we left at around Sunset there at Narito. So, I think we left on a Tuesday and got there the previous Monday. So, we left 9 am about Tuesday and got there about 5 pm Monday. I think that's how it worked. We left at about 9 am on December 11th 1985 from San Francisco Airport on a Japan Air Lines 747 in First Class with 6 month open ended discount tickets. However, this was the only time in my life I ever flew in first class with discount tickets just so you know this isn't usual or an every day experience even for me.
So, at this point I felt we all were very blessed by the Grace of God to be sent on a mission from God. However, there were times 2 to 3 months later in India when I thought we might never get out of there alive. So, it is relative to whatever you are experiencing right then.
And I had many many past life experiences especially throughout Nepal and India all during the next 4 months.
The culture shock wasn't too bad in japan because technologically it was similar to the U.S. except everyone spoke Japanese and seemed a little formal and sort of robotic to me. So, this was difficult coming from my culture in California. East coast U.S. and west coast are very different in the U.S. as to their culture and mores even though we fight together against all who attack our nation in a war.
However, Thailand sort of scared me when taxi drivers drove us across Bangkok at about 90 mph at 1 am when we arrived there. They conveniently could speak English when it was to their advantage only. But, they took us to a good guest house and we were happy there until about 5 am the next morning when the sounds of millions of cars and trucks without mufflers woke us up. As the sun rose the air was brown from car and truck and diesel smoke and deafening. We couldn't understand how the people put up with so much loudness and smoke.
Also, even though we had flown about 20 hours so far without sleep on two flights one from San Francisco to Japan and then we hopped the next one to Bangkok. However, we knew then we were in Asia because of all the guys dressed like they were from Saudi Arabia and that unmistakable sound of people coughing with what might be TB or just a really bad cold or flu. This was our introduction to Asia in the flight to Bangkok then in December 1985.
At Sweety's Guest House we met many westerners including a lady from Seattle who was a nurse traveling with a German fellow who was a carpenter from Germany somewhere (Hamburg?) They were going to travel a month or two together. She told us the first week anywhere using the Lonely Planet Travel guide you have to watch out being financially taken by vendors who at that time didn't have fixed prices and got whatever money they could for anything. But, if you don't know the value of whatever it is in local currency you are likely to pay 10 times too much for everything.
You have to have the right personality traits to be a good haggler and strangely enough my 10 year old son was the best at it. But, then again he was very cute and shy so maybe the people were just entertained by a western 10 year old because maybe they hadn't seen one before. Because most people aren't white there.
So, I wound up hiring a local college student to haggle and to travel with us to help us survive better there. It was actually worth it to do this then in 1985.
Though after a few days he told us he was Muslim and had studied Arabic as well as English in Cairo we were a little worried about someone he knew possibly kidnapping us for ransom. We trusted him but weren't as sure about people he might know.
Strangely enough it wasn't a Muslim but a Sikh extremist with a Mercedes and a pistol who tried to kidnap my boys when we weren't with them. Luckily, the 10 to 20 Tibetan Boys all pulled their lock blade knives on the gunman and Mercedes and they were forced to drive away empty handed. This was actually in Dharamshala, India where the Dalai Lama lives. This happened about a month after we were in Thailand.
However, Sikhs generally speaking were some of the most similar people to people in the U.S. that I ever met in India over there because they are highly educated and very scientific in their approach to life. They also believe in the Muslim, Christian, Tibetan Buddhism and most other religions and are very progressive both religiously and scientifically in their thinking in general. However, people in the U.S. get nervous when they see the Turbans they were from boyhood to manhood.
When I looked up the correct spelling for Turbin which is (Turban) for westerners at least I found this little ditty about the black turben: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-8UWw5dSfs
So, while I was on Koh Samed island with my family not too far from Bangkok in the ocean. I wasn't sure what we should be doing next because this was God's trip we were on after all. What did God have in mind next. So, I prayed and realized after Koi Samed or Ko Samet (same thing) we needed to go back and gather our things at Sweety's guest house and fly to Kathmandu, Nepal. So, after an amazing time at the island renting masks and snorkels and eating garlic fried prawns freshly caught in the ocean we packed up after several day of fun sail surfing and snorkeling and climbing coconut palms and eating fresh coconut milk and coconuts and went back and got our stuff and flew to Nepal.
Here is what Bangkok looks like today:
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So, as we flew out of Thailand towards Nepal we soon saw the Himalayas which are unmistakable. It was then about the 17th or so of December. The kids were kind of sick with realizing that Christmas wasn't going to be what it is in the states. But, for us as parents we knew what they were seeing and going to see would permanently change their lives forever as well as our own. (And hopefully by God's Grace we would all survive it).
If your plane landed almost anywhere in Nepal or India in 1985 pretty soon (unless you checked into a 5 star hotel) you might think you landed on another planet. You likely wouldn't believe completely that you were still on earth it was so different then to the U.S.
Cars mostly are Asian or unknown in the U.S. or they are European cars and trucks. There were very very few American Cars and trucks there because they are too expensive to operate mileage wise in most countries because the price of gasoline is much higher generally than here.
There weren't really any familiar products there then. My 10 year old longed for doritos corn chips and mayonaise and ketchup and mustard. He was lost without these things then. Luckily, we didn't have cell phones or computers or smart phones or Ipads then. In 1985 I'm not even sure about ATari's yet:
MY boys and my stepdaughter spent a lot of time mastering Asteroids and so did I on one of these though then:
Cars mostly are Asian or unknown in the U.S. or they are European cars and trucks. There were very very few American Cars and trucks there because they are too expensive to operate mileage wise in most countries because the price of gasoline is much higher generally than here.
There weren't really any familiar products there then. My 10 year old longed for doritos corn chips and mayonaise and ketchup and mustard. He was lost without these things then. Luckily, we didn't have cell phones or computers or smart phones or Ipads then. In 1985 I'm not even sure about ATari's yet:
MY boys and my stepdaughter spent a lot of time mastering Asteroids and so did I on one of these though then:
You basically hooked one of these up to a television and put it on the right station and played away to your hearts content either with Asteroids(my favorite) or tanks (okay) or one of the other games available then.
These are some of the things you will see in Kathmandu, Nepal today:
We crossed many suspension bridges like this especially on a 50 mile trek into the Helambu region of the Himalayas near Katmandu and the 20,000 foot pass with a road over to LHasa. It is also near the Mt. Everest Region. All are near Kathmandu relatively speaking.
When we were there you could buy the best meal you could think of cooked western style with cakes and ice cream and everything you could think of for 5 people for around $5 to $10 which was really great. Because even then in the U.S. that meal would be $50 to $100 then in the U.S.
But, remember this was 1985 and 1986.
We stayed near Boudanath Stupa at the Snow Lion Hotel. The owner's son we hired as a guide for a week up to 10,000 in elevation up into the Himalayas. We hiked about 50 miles and hiked up and down about 5000 feet in elevation and across many suspension bridges. Most of the bridges were okay. But you had to watch out for old cross pieces of wood. Also, in a wind they were a little scary at times so it was good to hang on to the wires going across for balance especially wearing a 50 to 100 pound backpack.
One of the places we stayed at about 9000 feet in elevation it took us a few days to reach on foot and then it snowed on us during the night. The people in the city have to walk a few days to get there as there were no roads or airports nearby then in 1986. The don't really heat their houses but only build fires to cook with so you are only warm when a cooking fire is going on. Also, they don't use chimneys but only let the fire out the eves of the houses. So most of the ceilings are sort of black from soot. Copper plates were used so they don't break and most Sherpa homes at this altitude had large wooden Buddhas because most of them are Tibetan Buddhist.
Potatoes are now a staple throughout India and Nepal and are usually cooked in mustard oil and curry as a spice. There also might be mo mos (potato or sheep or Yak dumplings) which are very popular around all people who are Tibetan Buddhists. If you get down into the plains of India Dahl Baht (lentils) is also popular with rice and chapatis. All these things are staples along with Chai tea which I first tasted in India in 1985. The other thing I loved there were and are Yoghurt Lassis and Mango Lassies which is a sweetened yoghurt milk drink you see all across India and sometimes Nepal too.
One of the most amazing true stories I experienced was while I was in Himachal Pradesh state in Dharamshala, india. The picture below with the Himalayas snow capped in the background is how I remember Dharamshala, india. it is at about 5000 feet to 6000 feet in elevation along a foothill ridge of the Himalayas. Behind Dharamshala are a line of 20,000 feet plus peaks of the Himalayan range.
One of the amazing experiences (there were many of them) was that I met Thubten who had been a tibetan Buddhist Monk since he was a child. He was a student of Geshe Lobsang Gyatso who my family and I met in Santa Cruz, California while he was there helping Lama Yeshe who helped establish a retreat center in Boulder Creek to pass on and reincarnate as a Spanish boy who has since been recognized. Geshela had told us he would be in Bodhgaya on a certain date so we met him there. However, we didn't know about the Kalachakra Tantra initiation bestowed by the Dalai Lama to hundreds of thousands of people there. So, Geshela convinced us we should also be given this Empowerment as it is one Tibetan Buddhists all want before they pass on. So, we literally met an older man who had walked out of the Kham area of Tibet that Geshela was also from who had walked 6 months to get to Bodhgaya to get this initiation before he passed away so his soul could go to the right place. I admired the devotion of such people. All 5 of us in my family received this 4 day initiation from the Dalai Lama. There were hundreds of thousands of people in native dress also receiving this initiation. However, we didn't know what it was before we received it. How magical is that? We were just trying to meet up with our old Lama friend from Santa Cruz.
Later Geshela took us to show us where Buddha first taught Buddhism in Varanasi 2500 years ago. He became enlightened at Bodhgaya and then traveled to Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares) and taught the first Brahmin monks who became his first students of Buddhism there in Sarnath. My family and Geshela and his translator from Darjeeling all traveled by train there.
We took the train from Varanasi to the Taj Mahal and then to new Delhi and eventually to Dharamshala, India where the Dalai Lama lives.
There we met Thubten who had been working recently as a Mountain Climbing Guide for westerners. He spoke really great English from being around so many english speaking clients climbing for several years. He told me stories of Drukpa Kunley that made me laugh so hard I fell down because they are very Zen stories mostly told by men to other men to bring them into the Dharma of Tibetan Buddhism. However, 20 years later I discovered Drukpa Kunley was a real person who lived in Bhutan which I was completely amazed by because I thought he was fictional. It turns out he was a real Crazy Wisdom practitioner of Bhutan. (Crazy Wisdom is the Wisdom Beyond all Logic).
Later, Thubten got permission for us to meet Ling Rinpoche who had run Tibet for the Dalai Lama until he grew up. We didn't understand what we were going to see. But, often Tibetans can be mysterious and it is always an adventure and very precious to know them when they are devout. So, eventually after hiking up into the himalayas out of Dharamshala for several miles we came upon a slate roofed stone house or hut. We opened the front door and two monks greeted us. On a table was an unmoving Ling Rinpoche. He wasn't moving. I asked how long he had been there? They said about a year sitting on the table like that. I asked if he was coming back? They said no. But, I could feel the heaven realms coming back to earth through his body in the Maitreya Mudra teaching position. I was experiencing something completely unheard of in the U.S. and most of the rest of the world. My father had passed away about 5 months before. So, what I was experiencing here was something different than death because he was projecting the heaven realms back through his body to us here on earth. I was moved in a way I had never been before in my life and had to go outside and cry for about 20 minutes or so. Because I knew I would never be the same again. I had entered into a whole new spiritual paradigm because of this experience.
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