Though I think I have to say the births of all my children would be the most amazing experiences of this lifetime, 2nd to that would have to be the 4 months I spent with my wife and older children when I was 37 years old in 1985 in Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal.
We had wanted to go into Tibet too, which was possible (if you could get a Chinese Visa then) and if you drove over by bus from Kathmandu to Lhasa. However, then a friend of mine from Alaska told me of a whole busload of dead people he had found on that 20,000 plus foot pass you have to drive over to get to Lhasa, Tibet from Kathmandu, Nepal. When I heard about the whole busload of dead people who couldn't breathe or survive at 20,000 feet and when the bus broke down they all just died there together, I didn't want to take my wife and children to Lhasa under these circumstances. Also, Lhasa is at 12,000 feet so if anybody in my family had trouble at 12,000 feet breathing that could have been curtains too for whoever it was.
So, my wife and I made the adult decision not to put our family through this potential death experience. IF I had been single I might have made another decision but as a result I never got to Lhasa in this lifetime or Tibet.
But, since there are many many Tibetan Refugees in Nepal and India I met hundreds maybe thousands of them in places like Dharamshala, India where the Dalai Lama lives during the month of January 1986 when I spent most of my time there at the Green Hotel in McCleod Ganj in Dharamshala, India at around 6000 feet altitude.
I spoke with many people who had a love hate relationship with India and I found I had this same sort of relationship with India too where you are amazed all the time at what can actually happen there but then there are all the people dying around you then too which is hard to get used to.
It's likely different now than in 1985 and 1986 because it is about 35 years later now. But, then death was everywhere because no one could afford to see a doctor but the very rich and most people (a majority) had never even been to the first grade in school. So, it was sort of maybe like it was 1000 or 2000 years ago especially out in the country except for the steam trains and motorcars and trucks and buses. Riding on a train pulled by a steam engine was an amazing experience then too.
But, I think the main reason why this experience changed all of my family including myself so much was because it was the most like actually going to another planet (Nepal and India) that I could imagine while still being on earth. Because nothing at all was really the same as the western world at that time culturally speaking. So, I had to be ready for literally anything at any time no matter where I was.
It's not that I was afraid for my life from anyone harming my family because people then believed in Karma. So, they weren't going to kill us. I was much more afraid around Tijuana, Mexico than I ever was in this way in India or Nepal.
No. That's not the problem. The problem is getting things like Giardia or Dysentery because you ate or drank the wrong drink or ate the wrong food and then possibly dying. That's the problem but I wasn't worried about anyone harming me because of the belief in Karma then.
Later:
It all started because I was working for CDF in California then as a Fire Lookout while my wife and I owned at least 2 other businesses. I realized that health care was amazing for my then wife and 3 older children with this job and the job was only from April to October of every year. So, the main reason we decided for me to work this job for 2 years was the health care because we couldn't afford to buy health insurance for everyone that including ears and eyes and teeth. But the CDF then covered all these things because it was a firefighting wing of CDF. But, I didn't have to fight fires only look for them as a fire lookout so the most dangerous thing I had to deal with was wild boars and lightning strikes hitting my lookout tower.
A wild boar mother attacked my car while driving up to the 4000 foot high fire lookout one night but at the time it was dark so I thought a bull had struck the side of my car. But, we were not allowed firearms to protect ourselves on that job so I wasn't allowed to have a firearm to protect myself. So, after the Wild mama Boar pushed my car off the dirt road onto the ditch I just kept driving because I didn't want to die from whatever it was that I couldn't see in the dark. It scratched the side of my 1976 VW Rabbit that I was driving that night to work. I had to stop and unlock cattle gates several times on the way to my fire lookout up on top of a mountain there overlooking the San Joaquin Valley. When I first came on duty in the spring of 1985 I could see the snow covered Sierras about 100 miles away across the valley.
So, when I went off duty in late October of 1985 just before I left one of the Tibetan Dieties came to me and told me I was going to India in December. I went home and told my wife and she said: "With what money?" I said I didn't know but that it likely was going to happen. She nodded her head because I usually know things before they happen.
Even after we inherited some money we thought about buying more land but we already owned 2 1/2 acres and had built an A-Frame on it and had lived there from 1980 to 1985 when we moved to the SF Bay area and Bought another business. Once we decided we didn't want to buy any more property right then we tried to find out how much our trip to India would cost. It seemed cost prohibitive at first so we temporarily gave up the idea. Then in early December my mother and a friend and my family and I were walking down Haight STreet in San Francisco and my mother saw a deal of 200 or 300 for a week or 2 in Hawaii which sounded like some kind of rip off to me in a Travel Store and so I went in to guard her from being taken advantage of. But then I realized this was a special place where college professors and students from San Francisco traveled all over the world. I had heard of the kinds of discount tickets they flew on when doing archaeology digs around the world. So, I asked the man how much 5 discount tickets to Kathmandu Nepal would be? HE said 6000 dollars for 5 round trip tickets to kathmandu, Nepal going through Narito, Airport in Japan and Bangkok, Thailand with an option to go through Hong Kong if we wanted to. We could spend up to 6 months over there and these were open ended tickets not tied to any date except going. He said we had to leave by December 11th because the holidays would make it impossible after that for several months going. So, I bought the tickets on the spot for myself, my wife and 3 children and we left up on a JAL 74 7 in first class with discount tickets as far as Narito Airport in Japan.
We left December 11th 1985 and returned April of 1986 from Kathmandu, Nepal through Bangkok, Thailand and Narito, Airport near Tokyo, Japan.
We all became world Travelers for life after that experience and all my older children have been all over the world now including me since that amazing life changing experience that made us all "Citizens of the World!"
The biggest problem it created was that 4 of the 5 of us got Giardia which meant that returning to the U.S. we all looked like we came from a concentration camp in World War II we were so skinny from giardia and my youngest son brought back lice so I had to shave his head so he wore a baseball cap for awhile because he was pretty young to deal with lice at that point. It took us about 6 months to slough off giardia.
We went to see a foreign disease specialist when we returned and she said that we shouldn't take medicine for this as it could damage the livers of especially our three children. So, she recommended that we just let is slough off instead to protect their vital organs since we were already away from the cause of the problem in Asia.
The thing about India and Nepal is that it was like being 1000 or 2000 years ago if you get out of the big cities and into the country. They grow wild mustard too for mustard oil in small patches the size of most people's homes and yards here in the U.S.
So, it was very strange to see these patches of wild mustard growing to make Mustard Oil to cook with which would be unheard of here in the U.S. for the most part. Here in California there are acres and acres of wild mustard growing wild all over the place not cultivated but growing like a weed here in California every spring. So, it was very strange to see wild mustard cultivated all over like this for mustard oil to cook with.
Another thing that was amazing was that most people believed in "magical Thinking" instead of science mostly because they had never been to school. So, as a result magical things would happen all the time in India and Nepal because the people's hopeful belief systems created this spiritual magic everywhere.
We were treated like "Gold Plated E.T's by the natives of India who mostly were not educated. They thought of us as either magically good or maybe sometimes bad because we knew too much about how everything worked and were able to travel around the world like we did.
You have to understand that when a majority of people haven't even been to one day of first grade or socialized not to rape women that things are very different when life is like that everywhere.
Women out in the country would travel in groups of 10 or more so they wouldn't be raped by stray men not socialized through education not to rape them.
But, I was never in fear of anyone trying to harm me or kill me, even though in Thailand I caught people trying to fill up bottles of water with a hose that were supposed to be boiled and filtered water safe for use.
So, the danger was always food and water everywhere you went. So, as long as you were able to get pure food and water that wasn't going to kill you with dysentery or make you look like we did like you came from a concentration camp in world war II with starvation like Giardia you could survive this sort of thing.
But, you need to be psychologically prepared and well disciplined to survive something like this. So, I was very glad I was married and a father and owned businesses before I tried to go to India and Nepal because watching people die a lot is very hard on a person and was on my children too.
Just imagine the coronavirus every day which was like what it was like in India back then where people can die of anything without medical help all over and you see the dead often lying in the streets not picked up like here in the U.S.
and a culture where if you help someone you have to help them for life or leave them alone to die unattended in the streets.
So, there is a feeling of being very ALIVE in India because those who aren't already dead realize that every moment they have left is precious because tomorrow they might die!
Which is why most westerners who have gone to India have this Love Hate relationship with India. Love of the love for live and magic everywhere in people's eyes. Hate for the amount of death and disease and mayhem this all causes in people's lives there.
But, the love and zest for life of this people is amazing! And compared to them Americans are zombies sleep walking through life pretending they can never die!
So, if you are mature enough go to India sometime to see if it is still the experience I had with my family in 1985 and 1986.
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