Note from Saturday September 17th 2022 : I thought maybe I should explain more about which Tibetan Diety came to me at the fire Lookout. The Highest Buddha to exist in a physical universe still who has given a vow along with his consort Nyema is Vajrasattva. One of the many forms of Vajrasattva came to me at the fire Lookout then in Summer or early fall of 1985 to tell me I was going to India in December. I went home and told my wife then that we were going to India in December. She was used to me being a precognitive in regard to Angels and beings like Jesus and Tibetan Dieties so this wasn't surprising to her. So, she said, "How are we going to afford to do that?" I said, "I don't know but I knew that he was speaking the truth when he told me this. So, the next week or two we inherited a sum of money and realized since we already owned a home and property that we now had the money to do this trip to India too. But, when I went to a travel agent they said the airline tickets would be 10,000 dollars and this made the trip cost prohibitive (we couldn't afford to go if the airline tickets cost that much).
However, then I was walking down Haight Ashbury with my family and a friend and my mother and she saw a deal in a travel agency of about 250 dollars for a week or two in Hawaii. This sounded like a scam to me so I went in with her to protect her from some scam into the travel agency (Global Travel II) then.
However, once I was inside I saw posters about the kind of tickets we needed to India also being advertised. I realized local universities used this travel agency for archelogical digs in foreign countries and realized this kind of ticket might work because I knew we could be gone for up to 6 months as a family. So, when I asked how much 5 round trip tickets to Kathmandu, Nepal would be he said quickly $6000. I think I had a check or travelers checks or some way to buy them on the spot so I did once I realized this was in our budget to travel now. We had bought Lonely Planet Travel guides to Nepal, Thailand and India for this purpose and realized our trip was now feasible so I bought the 5 tickets for my family round trip to Kathmandu, Nepal by way of Narito Airport in Japan, Bangkok, Thailand and potentially Hong Kong, but we never made it to Hong Kong because 4 of the 5 of us got Giardia coming home from India and Nepal and were sick coming home. I went to a foreign disease specialist in California and she said that we shouldn't use heavy medicines on our children because it might destroy their livers and instead should let the Indian subcontinent version of giardia slough off naturally within 6 months because it doesn't live well in California. We all became very skinny from the protazoa eating our food and I saw spots before my eyes in my skinniness.
The other thing an ayurvedic American Nurse practitioner said was that I got Hypothyroid from the damage that they protazoa did to my intestines from giardia. This also happened to my wife because we both within 20 years became hypothyroid and had to take thyroid supplements to be okay and healthy.
However, I wasn't diagnosed with this problem until 2006 and almost died from hypothyroid complications before then at around age 60. But, once this was diagnosed properly and I began to take Armour thyroid everything was wonderful again and my brain felt like it was 20 years old again for some reason. I'm presently 74 and still going strong today.
end note.
Vajrasattva told me that I would go to India in December of 1985. I realized that might be possible simply because my job as a fire lookout was a seasonable one from May to October usually. So, I wondered how all this was going to play out. I have always have this connection to God where God and Angels tell me things usually before they happen like this in order to prepare me for events to come.
To make a long story short I bought 5 round trip open ended tickets from Global Travel II in Haight Ashbury in San Francisco in early December of 1985 for around 6000 Dollars. The deal was that I had to leave no later with my family than the 11th of December so we only had 1 week to prepare to leave. If we waited any longer it wouldn't be possible to go that time of year because of Asian New Years Festivities and other holidays in Asia would begin and air travel on this type of ticket would not be possible. The type of ticket we were traveling on was designed for College researchers like Archeologists who go on digs for 6 months at a time in foreign countries around the world where they need a 6 month window or so between going and coming and some leeway in how the ticket could be used.
So, when I paid 6000 dollars for 5 round trip tickets it meant that within that 6 month period from December 11th 1985 and 6 months later I could with my family travel to Narito Airport in Japan, to Hong Kong (we never did that), to Bangkok Thailand (we did that going and coming) and to Kathmandu, Nepal. (we did that going and coming) so we were in India and Nepal for about 4 months and several weeks in Thailand as well. Because at that time the value of the dollar was 40 Bahts to the dollar and 20 Nepali Rupees to the dollar and 10 Indian Rupees to the dollar it wasn't very expensive to travel once we got to Thailand, India and Nepal. You have to understand that in Thailand a Baht is like their dollar, In India their Rupee is like their dollar and in Nepal their rupee is like their dollar. So, like for example it only cost about 5 to 10 dollars for the 5 of us to stay in Sweety's Guest House in Thailand per Day with maybe another 5 dollars for food too.
So, the single most expensive thing on the whole trip was AirFare to Japan, Thailand, and to Nepal and Back which was 6000 dollars at that time.
When we arrived at SFO they put us on a JAL (Japan Air Lines) 747 in First class up high (which was quite a surprise for us at the time. Then we took off and flew 11 hours and the sun was still in the sky around sunset when we landed at Narito Airport near Tokyo Japan.
However, Japan was too expensive for us as a couple and their 3 children and they wanted 300 dollars to ride the bullet train into Tokyo at the time so we decided to hop on another plane to Bangkok where our money would go about 40 times as far as Tokyo because the Baht was 40 bahts to the dollar at the time.
We spent two weeks in Thailand, with most of the time in Koi Samed Island near Bangkok off the coast there and snorkeled and wind surfed there a lot during most of the two weeks there. It was unbelievably hot in Bangkok and this was just before Christmas. We couldn't believe how hot and humid it was there in December of 1985. Also, there were no mufflers on cars or trucks at all so the air was brown with gasoline and diesel Smoke. It was so deafening there that we finally got on a bus and went off the coast to Koi Samed Island and snorkeled and rented a wind surfer to cool down.
While we were on Koi Samed Island off of Bangkok, Thailand I prayed for guidance of what we were supposed to do next. I got it very clearly it was time to go to Nepal and India and to Bodhgaya, India to meet Geshe Lobsang Gyatso who we had met in Sant Cruz, California nearer to where we lived then. He told us he would be in Bodhgaya, India on a specific Date and that we could find him there.
So, we flew to Kathmandu Nepal and stayed and the Maha Laksmi Hotel there and stored some of our things we would only need in the Himalayas because we were going down onto the Terai and plains of India away from the Himalayas for now to meet Geshela by the River there which goes by Bodhgaya where Buddha became enlightened. We stayed at Magadh University housing and rented a horse cart to take us to and from the Kalachakra where 500,000 people were being initiated into the 4 day Kalachakra initiation by the Dalai Lama then which was almost Christmas of December 1985. Our Horse cart driver dressed sort of like Jesus and often wore an ancient hood on his garment. One night after the initiation he took us by his village where he wanted to buy food. There was no electricity there and everyone had something like Aladdin Lamps lighting food stores there. We felt transported to 1000 to 2000 years ago then which is an amazing feeling.
The feeling of India in 1985 was sort of like Going to a completely different planet than this one. Nothing at all was the same as living in the U.S. or traveling in the U.S. This was likely the most extreme culture shock I have ever experienced ongoing for months when we visited India and Nepal at that time of our lives when my wife and I were each 37 years old then in 1985. Our children were 10, 12 and 14 who were traveling with us through Japan, Thailand, India and Nepal.
After we landed in Kathmandu we rented a car to the border at Raxaul which was a little scary because of smugglers then but everything came out okay.
A Geshe like Geshe Lobsang Gyatso is an earned title which means bascially "Spiritual Friend" in Tibetan. It takes usually until one is in their 40s to achieve this title which I suppose might be a little like a "Doctor of Divinity" in the western World. However, we are speaking about a completely different culture there in Tibet and India. Geshela (Geshela is an endearing term for Geshe by the way.)
So, after we met Geshela in Bodhgaya at the 500,000 person initiation where Tibetans had walked 6 months from deep in Tibet even knowing that the Chinese would never let them return there to receive this initiation from the Dalai Lama at that time in December of 1985.
The logistical problem of 500,000 people being there for this initiation in Bodhgaya was something I had never seen before in my life because I had never been to India before. So, by western Standards what we were dealing with was very primitive in some ways maybe like one would expect to see 100 or 200 years ago in some ways. Only the very richest 1% to 4% of the people had cars or motorcycles there for example and most walked or took buses or three wheeled motorized vehicles to get around there or even rickshaws. We rented many three wheelers and rickshaws for us to get around too while in India many places we visited. So, the most common forms of transportation would be: Bicycles and walking and buses.
Our first bus ride in India was almost fatal me for at least me because when we got on the bus I thought "Oh. There are all these seats in the back of the bus. But, the road had potholes in it and when we hit the potholes my head literally hit the ceiling of the bus several feet away and I almost got a concussion. We quickly moved forward so we wouldn't be catapulted into the bus ceiling and either die or need to be hospitalized.
We noticed that people around us often were dying from various things as safety for human life often wasn't a concern for most people we met then in India. So, we had to be very careful in order to stay alive then.
Here's an example. We "my boys 14 and then 10 would often ride on the roof of a bus with our luggage. No one would stop us from doing this. However, then there are power lines and tree branches just a few feet higher or even with the tops of buses. So, if you weren't paying attention you would be completely swept off the roof of the bus by phone lines, power lines or tree branches. So, most of the time I wouldn't do this even when it was too hot to ride inside of the not air conditioned buses because I didn't want myself or my boys to die.
Another interesting thing was trains. When you bought a train ticket it wasn't really for a seat on the train it was to be able to hang onto the steam engine train on the outside and you could also suffer the same fate on top of the train from low hanging branches or devices stationary next to the train or from things along the outside of the train or even another train passing by might kill you too. When I first tried to ride on a train I remarked how cheap the ticket was until I realized this about riding on trains. Later I realized that scalpers who want a cut of all tickets buy all the compartments on board trains (at least they did then).
However, Later after Bodhgaya and the Kalachakra 4 day initiation I found out about Scalpers buying up all the compartments on board trains and Geshela's Tibetan Translator for English (Geshela spoke and understood English but most people couldn't understand him because of his very thick Khampa Tibetan accent on the English. However, we could understand him because he was one of our spiritual teachers and so figured out how to understand him better despite his thick Khampa Tibetan Accent. He had traveled with the Dalai Lama while they were strafed by military aircraft from China shooting at them and killing some of them while they tried to escape to India from Tibet along with the group accompanying the Dalai Lama to India.
Geshela's English Translator helped us rent a compartment on various trains from the scalpers to travel from Gaya to Varanasi and after staying in Varanasi a while we then also went by train compartment as a group from Varanasi to Agra where the Taj Mahal which at that time and visited the Taj Mahal. Then we went to New Delhi where my step daughter got sick from Deli Belly. When we sent Geshela's translator to the pharmacy (since then there were no prescriptions in India and everything was over the counter) he brought back something that she took and it almost killed her. So, we got on a train towards Dharamshala because I sensed that whatever was making her ill was tropical in nature (Deli belly) which is sort of like Montezuma's revenge that you can also get in Mexico or near the border there.
I was right! Both my stepdaughter and my youngest son bot well from Lady Dolma a Tibetan Herbal healer in Dharamshala at 6000 feet elevation which is the altitude where Dharamshala is in the foothills of the 20,000 feet to 29,000 feet Himalayas. From Dharamshala you can see many snow covered peaks from 15,000 feet in elevation to 25,000 feet by the way.
However, at altitude in 6000 feet in January of 1986 we encountered another problem which was the cold. The Hotel room then we rented at the Green Hotel didn't have heating at all. But, in order to sterilize water by boiling it so we didn't get sick from drinking it we bought a kerosene cook stove which doubled as a heater for our large hotel room there too. Outside there were large apes that that people told us sometimes ate children. But, these were actually less scary than the mobs of smaller monkeys because they were much more excitable and would attack people if they felt threatened as a group. So, I tried to avoid these smaller monkey families because of the danger they could potentially be to human beings once they got riled up about one thing or another.
In Hindu Temples for example, men would have 6 foot long bamboo poles for hitting monkeys so they didn't bite people there. But, there is this contradiction where Hanuman is a Monkey God in Hinduism. So, they protected the monkeys until they were violent. In other words it was sort of like the Brahma bulls wandering in New Delhi (one of which almost gored me in an alley). In other words I'm walking alongside of a Brahma bull and I guess I was too close so it tried to gore me with it's horn but I had fast reflexes then so I grabbed the horn and the horn threw me against a building instead of killing me by ripping my guts out. So, other than a black and blue belly from the initial impact I was okay.
So, monkey family groups are also dangerous but if you avoid them and don't try to feed them or play with baby monkeys you can avoid death or going to the hospital from being bitten many times.
However, my wife then and i got a lovely photo of her giving the teenage monkey by itself a Campo Orange soft drink at Royal Chitwan National park on the Terai of Nepal where Rhinos and Tigers lived then along with large anaconda types of snakes and an alligator type of creature called a Gar with a very thin mouth and set of teeth.
The Gar (Nepalese alligators) didn't bother the elephants who bathed in the river though because they were just too big but it could be dangerous for people who went in the river there. The elephants in Royal Chitwan National Park my family and I rode on as they would give you rides if you paid for them there.
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