A SADHU STORY.

Pushkar, 07-03-1995. Again I felt restless this morning and went to the Brahma temple to have an early morning smoke with my new friend, the sadhu that guards the temple. He even serves me chai and chapatis. Told me this amazing Lord Braham story this morning. BRAHMA REACTED THE WORLD, BRAHMA CREATED THE HOLY COW, BUT FELL IN LOVE WITH HER, HE CHANGED HIMSELF INTO A BULL AND WENT AFTER HER FULL WITH LOVE AND LUST, TO ESCAPE HIM THE COW TURNED HERSELF INTO A BIRD, BRAHMA TURNED HIMSELF INTO A MALE BIRD, THE COW THAN TURNED INTO A TREE, BRAHMA DID THE SAME, THE COW TURNED HER FORM AGAIN AND EVENTUALLY WENT THROUGH ALL STATES OF CREATION, SPARING NO SACRIFICE BRAHMA FOLLOWED SUIT TURNING INTO ALL THE STATES OF CREATION AS WELL. I sat there stunned and my drugged mind desperately trying to understand the hidden message in his story, trying hard not to look like yet again a stupid foreign tourist......not even bothering to hide his triumph, he explained BRAHMA FELL IN LOVE WITH HIS OWN CREATION, EVERYTHING COMES AND EVERYTHING GOES, ONLY LOVE REMAINS, DESPITE THE INFINITE NUMBER OF LIFE FORMS ON THIS WORLD, AT THEIR BIRTH OF EXISTENCE AND AT THE MOMENT OF THEIR DYING AND ALL THE TIME BETWEEN, THERE IS ONLY ENERGY AND ENERGY IS LOVE.

A strange Sadhu .

Pushkar, 06-03-1995. It is early morning and Christine is snoring contentedly at my side. Despite the passion of last night and all the booze, charas and pot that came with it, I feel restless and ill at ease. I leave the bed quietly and dress trying to pick my own clothes out of a multitude of garments strewn all over the room. Pieces of left over food and empty bottles of Khazana Superstrong Beer, a french bottle of red wine we acquired mystreriously on the way home late last night. I leave the chaos and Christine stark naked asleep on the bed in the middle of all this, and walk the short distance to the nearby temple that is dedicated to Lord Brahma. It is only 06.00 h. in the morning but a shruffy looking Sadhu is already happily puffing away at his chilam, he probably wants to get stoned together with the approaching sun, not a bad idea and I join him. It does not take me more than 10 min. to realise the poor sod`s brain cells have been burned away by a life time of heavy charas smoking. His religious queeste for Lord Brahma came to bumby stop years ago leaving him with fried brains. I see his orange colored robes flashing through the temple when he gets up to boil some water for chai. I can see the orange color brighten up when he passes through the rays of early sunlight that filter through the holes in the roof. The shadows start to play tricks on me and I realise I might very well be a few mental levels higher as I originally thought. Pretty good charas this sadhu has got.

Christine in my bed, fast asleep.

Pushkar, 05-03-1995. Christine - my new New Sealand love - left me shortly after breakfast this morning. She wanted to go back to her room to pick up a few belongings. Still feeling pretty worn out from our nightly sexual conduct I wandered off to the main square to have a bangh lassie at my favourite chai shop. I have spent a lot of time at this chai shop since arriving in Pushkar, drinking luke warm chai and knocking down bangh lassies. It is a good chai shop with a great location on the main square, great spot for people watching while being under the influence of a relaxing spliff or assie. I`m not the only foreign tourist at this chai shop, the place is a real meeting point for the foreigners in Pushkar. Apart from a great location for people spotting, the also serve suburb bangh lassies. When late afternoon I return to my room I find Christine in my bed fast asleep. After chasing away the inevitable kids from the hotel from the cracks in my door, I take off all my clothes end join her in my bed.

A lady from New Sealand.

Pushkar, 04-03-1995. We chat for hours while sipping at our bangh lassies and watching the chaotic Pushkar street life. Slowly the darkness is becoming total and before the hordes of stray dogs that rule the nights in indian cities, come out of their hiding places and will give us a hard time, we decide to return home. Home is my place and she coming along is no question but a fact acompli. I don`t need to invite her over and she doesn`t bother to ask. We roll and smoke spliffs from the tola of charas I have hidden in my bathroom. After a while we feel so stoned, almost like the walls of my room are coming at us and we hide under my single sheet that is supposed to be white but hasn`t been washed for so long, it has turned a dirty dark grey. We kiss and let our hands go exploring the other body. We are both hot to the touch and excited like 16 year olds, wanting each other badly. We feel like we are rolling around on clouds so stoned we are, and our minds are even higher, some place just before what is supposed to be heaven. We quite literally fuck ourselves to sleep. When I wake up she is still there and the kids from the hotel family outside my room peeping through the cracks in the door, trying to spot our naked bodies on the bed with the aid of the first morning light that comes filtering through the windows of my room.

Weddings in Pushkar.

Pushkar, 03-03-1995. Pushkar being a holy hindu village, it is small wonder that the place is highly popular among young couples about to wed. The idea is that the bridegroom will fetch his bride from her parents house sitting on his high mount and all dressed up in his best clothes. Mucisians have been hired to accompany him and people to carry these rediculous TL tubes vertically on top of their heads. A small boy will usually walk along side the horse carrying a ventilator that give some relief to the bridegroom from the intense rajastan heat. His relatives will en masse walk along as well and at the very end of this weird procession a noisy generator is dragged behing on a wooden cart to supply the electricity for the ventilator and the Tl tubes. That people don`t trip over all the electric wiring that goes hither and tither between the TL tubes and the generator is an amazing feat in itself... Just outside the village the young couples and their friends and relatives wait in the dozens for their turn. Puskkar`s small and already congested streets will have to put up with about 20/30 wedding processions every day.

Processions in Pushkar.

Pushkar, 02-03-1995. Just outside my hotel is a hindu temple dedicated to whatever god in the hindu panthenon of gods and deities. From the balconey of my room I watch, a bangh lassie down my throat and as spliff hanging from the left corner of my mouth, how the local vistors to Pushkar hire some of the numerous musicians that wait just outside Pushkar for customers, and under the accompaniment of extreme out of tune music set off for this temple. They pass underneath my balconey and I watch how their women folk dance in front of the temple while their men encourage them on. After the dancing they all enter including the musicians and their continuing out of tune music, lots of chanting sounds from the inside and the heavy odour of indian insence coming out of the temple in smoky walms invades my nostrils. Eventually it is all over, they all come out, the musicians get their pay and wander off in search of new customers while the devotees head off for the chai shop at the end of the street. This sort of processions go on all over Pushkar, at all the numerous hindu temples in Pushkar.

A bangh lassie in Pushkar.

Pushkar, 01-03-1995. The first thing I did last night after dinner was going back to my favourite chai shop on Pushkar`s main square and have a bangh lassie, a joghurt drink mixed with a heavy dose of mariuana. The bangh lassie quite nearly wiped me out but I kept enough grip on the situation, mentally as well as physically, to survive the experience. Staggering home after my bangh lassie I discovered quite a few familiar faces in the evening twilight of Pushkar`s colorfull streets, fellow travellers seen before on the Lonely Planet road in south/east Asia. Most of them seem to recognise me as well but being in a mental state quite similar to my own, we merely nod our heads at each other in mutual recognition....further conversation will have to wait untill another day, untill the time we have come down enough to chat and exchange our latest travel stories.

might is right on the indian roads.

Pushkar, 28-02-1995. Pushkar is one of these many holy cities in India, A jewel of exquisite beauty in the colorfull state of Rajastan. Leaving red haired Rona from far away Scotland to do her Vipassa meditattion course in Jaipur for the next couple of days, I set out alone this morning for Pushkar where at Hotel Surya - Surya being the sun god in hindu mythology - I got a huge room for only 40 Rp. The short distance from Jaipur to Ajmer offered me the sight of 4 busses tipped over on the side of the road, their drivers sleeping peacefully in the shade of their busses, waiting for help no doubt. I presume the passengers of those busses must have decided to walk the rest of the way since they were nowhere to be seen. Plus the sight of what looked like a major accident between two trucks. Might is right on the indian roads and trucks are the mightiest!!!

Jaipur`s fake gem industry.

Jaipur, 27-02-1995. We took the superdeluxe bus to Jaipur but it took as long as the odinary bus which costs only half of what we paid. An expensive hotel at 200 bloody Rp. but it is our last night together. Lots of filth, beggars, people sleeping in the streets and local shitheads trying to get the western tourist to come along to a gem shop. Jaipur is reknowned for the fake gem industry. Some local, usually well dressed and speaks good civilised english will try to befriend himself with you and invite you for a chai. It might take only a few hours or maybe a few days but eventually your new friend will start talking about this aquintance of his who happens to have a gem shop and contacts in the west where you can sell your gems with a major profit etc etc. I am sure you start to get the general idea.....if you do not you will soon be in the possession of some beautifull pieces of glass that has cost you your complete holiday budget and are worthless back home. If you meet these people and say no to them they will try to work on your conscience with remarks like "why you not like talk to indians'? "you`re too proud to our people"? "why you come to India when you don`t like to talk to us"?
and more of the same shit...

Stray cats in India.

Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary, 26-02-1995. With Rona off to the nearby city on a shopping spree, looking for souvenirs for her many friends back in Scotland, I have the day to myself. Having the day to myself means I can also be more adventurous and explore the more remote areas of the sanctuary, the areas where most visitors never go. The reason most foreigners and indian holiday makers never go there is because they nearly always like to take a guide and the guides can`t be bother to go to all the trouble. Show the visitor the nearby lakes and some birds, the sand snake that lives near the park entrance and "Oh, look ,sir, a wild cat". Probably a stray cat from the city that decided life for a cat can be much more tranquil in the sanctuary than in a dusty and chaotic indian city where the crazy motorised traffic is major indian-stray-cat-killer!!! I`m lucky today and spot a magnificient brown fish eagle.

Birds everywhere.

Keoladeo Bird Sanctaury, 25-02-1995. We still wander around the sanctuary using the crappy rusty bicycles from our hotel. The binoculars they rent out are in no better condition and look as though they were already in use by the english colonial army, luckily I`ve taken my own pair of binos along on this trip. We see wren sitting quietly on a branch just above the water waiting for their dinner. With their blue/orange-red colored plumage and big long beak they are easy to spot. Once they spot a fish they dive in and spear it with their long sharp beaks, coming out of the water and landing again on their branch fish clamped tightly in the beak. The3 whole process takes only a few short seconds, the poor victim fish never really has got the slightest idea what has happened. Apart from dozens and dozens of different bird species, the bird sanctuary also abounds in stray dogs and cats, mongoose and jackal are plentifull. The gracious black ducks can be seen in flocks of hunderts either flying overhead or paddling on the numerous lakes. The screaks of the rose banded parakeets compete with the sounds of babblers, shrikes and asorted water fowl, mynas are present wherever I dare to look. One more day here and we`ll be off. If I wanna see birds then it will have to be wild city birds, Rona told me this morning.

Paper money in India.

Keoladeo, same day. Since we`ve started to talk about banks in India, let us not forget the india rupee....Now money is dirty and I mean that literally being passed from one hand to the next etc. But I`ve to as yet find a country where the local paper money is as dirty as the indian rupee. The rupee seems to last much longer as our own...notes that would have been taken out of circulation back home will still change hands many times each day in the streets of India. Needless to say that indian money can feel a bit sticky and look tatty. However dirty it might be, everybody will accept it as legel tender unless it is ripped. Even the slightest rip and you could as well use it as toilet paper. Never mind when a Rp. note has a whole in it the size of you fist, pas de problem. They staple the notes together at the bank and rip them loose again when the need arises.

Banks in India.

Keoladeo, 24-02-1995. After nearly a whole week together full time we spent some time apart today because Rona had to change money at one of the banks in the nearby town. Now banks in India can be a tricky thing. The are usually two guards around in the lobby, dressed in a colonial looking cacky colored uniforms, epaulletes and all that, armed with enormous ancient looking muskets. They seem to spend most of their working time sitting around smoking beedies non-stop and drinking chai. The office itself is stacked bottom to ceiling with files and paper work, the law of dust rules in these places!!! A bank might be a bank but In Indian banks it is not all that unusual they tell you to come back later because the bank is out of money. A bank in McLeod Ganj told me to come before 11.30 h. in the morning otherwise they would have run out of money....And even when they have money and no other customers, you still might have to wait a considerable amount of time before they find it. If these musket armed guards don`t scare off possible bank robbers, then the total lack of booty surely will.

HER SCENT.

Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary, 23-02-1995. HER SCENT LINGERS IN THE AIR AFTER SHE IS GONE AND MY BED IS COVERED WITH HER HAIR, DRIED SPOTS IN THE LINEN ARE A CERTAIN PROOF OF OUR NIGHTLY SEXUAL CONTACT. Still half asleep I try to figure out where the hell she is. Ha, I can hear singing softly while taking a shower. Like last year the abundance of bird life in the sanctuary is astounding, birds everywhere, bold jackals crossing the road in front of our bikes, mongoose, swamp deer and nilgai. Water turtles sunbathing on dead wood sticking out the water. We see the heads of two baby owls curiously eyeing us from the safety of a tree burrow. We see herons fishing in the numerous lakes and a bewoldered sand snake surrounded by hordes of park visitors, flash light bulbs going off like mad and I can only feel sorry for this poor creature.

A luandry wallah stealing Rona`s underwear.

Keoladeo Bird Santuary, 22-02-1995. Like last year when I was in Keoladeo, the abundance of birdlife is astounding. Especially so to Rona who has not yet before been here. I also introduce her to the bird watcher`s parlance. The hotel rents out bicycles but warns us to be craefull with rickshaw wallahs, they get less income because the hotels rent out bikes and will therefore sometimes puncture the tires of parked bicycles. They forgot to warn us about there very own laundry wallah who early this morning stole Rona`s knickers that were drying on the washing line outside our room. maybe they should warn us too about the new cook they have in their restaurant`s kitchen....the stupid idiot served me an egg dish for breakfast with milk coffee. He had first boiled the egg and then tried to fry the hard boiled egg.......needless to say I send that dish back to the kitchen. The milk coffee was good though.

Rona`s promise......

Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary, 21-02-1995. Though our train to chittogarh was sort of in time - that is always a surprise in India - it just went into the wrong direction and we ended up in Jaipur instaed of Chittogarh. According to the railway personel on duty in Jaipur, the engine-driver of our train was new on this stretch so......well we are in India after all...Fortunately it`s only a "4 hr" by bus to Keoladeo, as they told us. I felt like kicking some indian railway personel ass but Rona`s sunny look on things - and her promise if i keep my temper under control, we`ll have a quicky in the room before dinner - saved the day and we eventually got to the bird sanctuary late afternoon. There are several tourist hotels near the sanctuary, all with a garden and restaurant. Keeping things simple we took the very first hotel we saw, Hotel Pelican for 120 Rp. for a double. The moment I locked the door Rona took off all her clothes and made good on her promise, I did keep my temper under control, kicked no indian railway personel asses and didn`t complain about the 4 hr. dusty bus trip to Keoladeo.

Bed bugs and a crazy monkey.,

Kota, 20-02-1995. Kota is just a small city but convenient to pass the night before moving on to Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary. The town even has got a small zoo, big enough to while away the hours untill darkness will decend upon the indian sub-continent. At the zoo we watch in amazement how a wild monkey keeps jumping on the back of chital deer and trying to ride them. Whenever the chital goes wild and throws the monkey off, he`ll disappaer in the tress just to repeat the attempt. Despite the hefty 250 Rp. we pay for our room we soon after retiring, find out the bed is alife with bed bugs. Following up on some old chinese advice I picked up in Malaysia we leave the light on and sleep with a T-shirt wrapped around our eyes, apperently the light keeps the bed bugs from coming out of the matress. It worked!!!

Happy Rona.

Ujjain, 18-02-1995. Though Ujjain is one of India`s holy towns, no way you compare it with the status a town like Varanasi has got on the must-do list of many foreign travellers. Yeah, by no stretch of the imagination is Ujjain anything like Varanasi at all...still the place has got charm and after the night of GREAT sex me and Rona had last night, we feel like we walk on clouds, no matter the numerous questions like "where you from"? "are you married"? How old you"?.....we ignore it all and make a day excursion to the Kaliaday Palce just 8 km. out of town with a ungainly and overcrowded tempo. The dust is everywhere and we wear charves to protect our faces. However a small hill just before Kaliaday Palace was too much for our poor tempo so we all had to get out and do the last 2 km. uphill by foot. Considering things between me and Rona are all like Numero uno and can only go better, rona keeps in good spirits probably remembering/reliving our night of sharing pleasures.....even the constant attention begging of the indian males that were with us on the bus, can`t keep her from being happy and cocntent!!!!!

Peepholes and fried children.

Indore, later same day. The cheeky hotel boys just grin when I point out the big peepholes in the door of our room. "No problem, sir. Good for ventilation" waggling their heads the way only indians can do. while I wonder whether to wring these waggling bloody heads through those holes or just knock their teeth out, Rona turn to me smiling and whispering in my ear "don`t worry, we`ll make passionate love tonight but with the lights out". Fair enough, we take the room. Not that the rest of Indore is much friendlier....we have dinner at a nearby restaurant and order fried chicken which is named on the dirty menu as "fried children". After 15 min. we see a boy rushing into the restaurant and on into the kitchen carrying a life chicken in his hands, our fried chicken? Or was it fried children, the boy???>??? Anyway, at least it is fresh for sure. After dinner we go over to the bus terminal, we wanna know about the bus tomorrow to Ujjain. the wallah at the information desk totally ignores us and when, after 10 min. of trying to get his attention, bang the desk window, he points at a sign above him I hadn`t yet seen. Handwritten it says "chai brek, officiel not on duity". I get the idea and we wait for him to finish his chai, we do nothing neither does the "officiel on chai brek", he just looks at us and ocassionally sip from his cup of chai and we, we just look at him and wait for him to finish the bloody chai. Eventually we get our information.

A bus trip with thin shit.

Indore, 17-02-1995. A long and boring bus trip through dusty country side and with frequent stops because at least half the passeggers aboard including the driver suffer of heavy attacks of the shits, they need to relieve themselves which means right next to the bus at the side of the road, in full view of whoever wants to have a peak. But this India where these things are really quite normal. While the thin yelowish colored shit spurts out of sick indian asses, those lucky enough to be healthy have a smoke. Beedies for those who are poor, a rolled up tabbaco leaf that has to be conctantly lighted and is bound together with a thin thread. Some have a quick sapati, the indian version of a pancake/slice of bread. Some stray dogs from the nearby village wander over and have a good snif at the heap of human faeces left behind. Everybody aboard and off we are untill, twenty minutes later the whole process repaets itself.

Begging kids dressed in dirty rags.

Ajanta Caves, 15-02-1995. Yes, these Ajanta Caves are fun and surely worth the time we invested visiting them. We took a Tempo - a sort of small truck converted to a bus - from Fardapur to the caves, passing small little settlements with huts made out of grass and boughs. I couldn`t see any electricity or running water for that matter. How these people survive out there in the middle of nowhere..I`ve no idea. The parking space at the caves is full with indian tour busses unloading well dressed middle class indian families, no western tourists around so we`re instantly in the middle of their attention. The souvenir wallahs at the entrance do a thriving business selling quarz stones but when we climb up the hills behind the caves we find these stones by the hunderts just lying around....Local children follow us up the hills, by the dirty rags they wear I judge them as not to belong to those middle class tourists, probably from one of these hamlets we passed on the way. Persistent little buggers they are demanding Paisa each and scaring off the rich birdlife with their rowdy demands.

Crazy waiters.

Fardapur, 14-02-1995. Fardapur is just a small hamlet with one main street and a few dusty paths between old wooden houses with corrugated roofs, stray chicken and semi-wild dogs populate the place and the locals seem to survive by selling chai and bananas to the passengers of passing busses. However, Fardapur is also the nearest habited village with a hotel, to the famous Ajanta Caves. Arriving late afternoon we - that is miss Rona from Scotland and me - take a room in the hotel and disappear in the hotel`s dining-room. The waiter lingers around our table obviously hoping for a tip. It seems a bit of a competetive thing among the waiters in this dump, the other two waiters hang around in the background too, who is gonna be the first to rush over when I ask for the bill and will thereby get his dirty hands on my tip. We`re the only customers....we chat amicably and I gesture to the waiter to come over telling him to bring the used dishes to the kitchen. Big disappointment on his face and with the used dishes in his hands he storms over to the kitchen. I gesture again and inmediately the other two rush over pushing each other out of the way And the empty bottle of KHAZANA super strong lager beer of the table. While they`re busy trying to figure out who is responsible for the broken bottle I leave some smelly indian Rp. notes on the table and we leave the place trying hard not to burst out laughing........

Rona, a redhead from Scotland.

Aurangabad, 13-02-1995. Rasta-Hair-John left today, pity he was a nice travel companion though with him out of the way I can concentrate on this scottish lady we met the other day and is still hanging around the area. Rona, a redhead with a hard body and a nice personality...GOOD combination!!! Once John was on his bus I took a rickshaw to the Ellora Caves some km. out of town. These caves are cut out of bare rock hunderts of years ago by people who obviously knew what they were doing considering the primitive tools they had at that time. Not that the quality of indian tools has gone up much since them, or maybe better put: the locals lack the cash to buy good tools in this country. Anyway the Ellora Caves are built in respect to Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism. Nice to see that three different religions can peacefully co-exist....

The inner workings of the Osho Ashram.

Aurangabad, Before we left Pune Rasta-Hair-John decided to take one of the many discourses at the Osho Ashram in order to associate himself a bit with what goes on their. He took an introduction at the Osho International Comune and joined their meditative dancing. "Funny monkey sounds they make" he said when we met later on in the day. Apperently 21 people are in commant of the Ashram and all the expensive courses done by volunteers who get no pay, the aids test fee plus the 20 Rp. a day to get inside the Ashram. All this money goes to these 21 people..... Whatever happens to this money is an open question that nobody can answer and is kept in big secrecy. All sort of intrique seems to be going on. People who have convinced themselves that they are very happy and benefit greatly from what they learn from these costly discourses. Whenever I have contact with them I can`t but wonder about this intense tangible feeling of self-deceit that radiates from this facade that hovers around them, and around this whole damned Ashram!!! I dutch sanyassin I met in Colombo told me he got expelled from the Ashram for beating up his korean girlfriend. The poor chap goes around on crutches and is in such a bad physical state he can barely lift his arms. His korean lady is now romantically involved with one of the infamous 21 sanctum sanctorum group.

Stoned cockroaches.

Aurangabad, 12-02-1995. Since Rasta-Hair-John was getting low on charas, it was my turn to make a score. Not all that difficult in Pune. Whatever these sanyassins might be, they do have a keen business mind....We found an aged sanyassin hanging around the Osho Ahsram who toke us back to his place, a dirty and dingy hotel room, smelly like hell because nobody had bothered to clean his toilet for the last 100 years or so. Sitting down on his bed, the only furniture in the room and with a single blanket full with jumping bedbugs, we had ourselves a little chilam party checking out the quality of his dope before buying a tola. Having to put up with arrogant cockroaches was ineveitable, these little bugs were so bold they shamelessly scurried over our feet and even jumpen into our laps. Maybe it were the abundant charas fumes that got to their little bug minds, got them stoned out of their insect brians, made them brave like a sioux warrior about ready to attact general Custer and his army of Blue Bellies. I decided to let these little critters get away with it instead of swatting them to a bloody pulp.

KARMA!!!

Pune, 11-02-1995. Walking into the railway station this morning to have breakfast in the station`s refreshment room, we saw a local - or what was left of him - who had the nasty "luck" to have been hit by a train lying on a strecher blood dripping on the ground underneath. No sheet covered this mutilated body, cut in several different body pieces, eyes wide open in horror. And nobody passing it gave it as much as a second glance - if they looked at it at all. KARMA!!! All this before we had our breakfast.

Important sanyassins.

Pune, same day. We wander around the Osho Ashram and I wonder about all these folks dressed in long purple colored robes. Apperently they belong to some sort of brotherhood dedicated to something or other. They look funny in their long purple robes though they try hard to look important. One after the other they enter the Ashram late afternoon to discus matter muy importante, or so they tell us. We have a look at the Osho statue inside the Ashram - a stone Osho himself sitting on a rock and life size, black colored - many sanyassins tell us how they have recently "seen" Osho. They too revel in self-importance and we slowly get the idea we don`t belong here. Wait a minute, was that not the reason I left Pune five years ago? Despite these sex crazed female sanyassins from all over the place!!! Osho here and Osho there, even while we had sex they were still talking about this Shit

Osho, a shrewt businessman.

Pune , 10-02-1995. Back in Pune. I was here five years ago when Osho was still alive and giving his nightly discourses at his Ashram. However, Osho has left this world and his body soon after I left. Not that I had any special love for Osho or any bad feelings for that matter. I did come to his discourses but the contents did not mean much to me. I remember how they taped the discourse each night and sold the tapes at the Ashram the next day and popular they were....While I was there Osho decided to enter his next period of silence - he would never talk again in his life since he died soon after - . Not that that stopped him from giving his nightly discourses. He would sit there on stage and look at all his sanyassins and they would look at him in awe. They taped these discourses too and sold the tapes the next day, tapes with the ocassional cough and that sort of stuff. Really funny, shrewt businessman that Osho!!!

A piss outside the police office.

Solapur, 09-02-1995. When John tried to pay for our room this morning the receptionist told him "already paid, sir". So we shalood off to the railway station and sitting in a chai shop nearby waited for him to realise his mistake and come after us. We didn`t have to wait for long, a very nervous and hyper active receptionist on a rusty old indian bicycle soon showed up, parked his crappy bike in front of the station and hurried inside not realising that we were watching his every move from across the street. We let him search the railway station for us while finishing our chai before we took our packs and went inside ourselves. We found him on the platform and though we had his money already in our hands, he went bazooka angry threatening to go to the police and demonstratively marched off to the railway police office with us in hot pursuit hoping for more free entertainment. Instead of going inside the police office he had a pee outside - no wildplassen fees in India where people often even have a crap in public - We eventually gave him his money but not after we hassled him a bit more. We were fully aware - as was he - that had he really gone to the police, they would have listened to his story, asked us the western tourist, politely to pay the man his money and then - as soon as we would be out of earshot - hassled him for some baksheesh.

wrinkled and sagging old tits.

Bijaspur, 08-02-1995. We are still not done exploring Bijaspur and surroundings. Though Bijaspur is apart from the Golgumbaz mosque a pretty dull city as chaotic as any other indian city. Being mostly a muslim city I have noticed one thing I noticed before in other indian cities with a muslim majority. In cities where the hindus predominate it is not all that unusual to see old women with their saris dropped to their waist, two wrinkled and sagging old tits daggling on their chest. By the amount of dirt on these women and the worn-out quality of their saris I would guess these women to be homeless or at the very least poor as a churh mouse. The reason they walk around half naked...maybe the intence heat of the Indian plains. In muslim dominated cities I have to as yet see this, I presume the muslims are a bit to touchy about this subject, too preservative on matters of the naked body in public.

The Golgumbaz Mosque.

Bijaspur, 07-01-1995. Bijaspur is mostly a muslim city with the gigantic Golgumbaz mosque as its main attraction for tourists. It has one of the largest domes in the world plus the Wispering Gallery. To get to the Wispering Gallery one has got to go up a small winding staircase that ends at the galley at the top of the dome. The echos of the gallery have to be heard to be believed. Unfortunately whole busloads of local tourists and their children scream at the top of their voices hence the nickname "The Bedlam Gallery". A cultural music festival set among temple ruins and taking place at night, offers free and interesting entertainment. We hired a treewheeler rickshaw to get there and found a quiet place on top of a wall with great views of what was happening on stage. The joint we smoked up there got us in a relaxed mood and made the whole experience even more intence.

For railway personel on duty only.

Bijaspur. 05-02-1995. Leaving Badami by rail we - that is me and Rasta-Hair-John - saw a sign on a bench on the platform; "for railway personel on duty only". On the bench an indian - was he a railway employee? - was fast asleep. Hahahahaha. That short of shit makes for beautiful photo shots!!! Half an hour after the train left with us aboard, John went to the toilet and came back 15 min. later with a crazy grin on his face pushing a half empty sigarette pack in my hand and wispering in my ear to smoke in the toilet. After having kicked the indian off the toilet where he was having a nap - believe it or not, this is the "real India", remember!!! - I smoked the nice little joint that was inside the sigarette pack. Needless to say, I returned a bit later - leaving the toilet to the patiently waiting indian outside to continue his nap - bearing the same stupid grin and enjoying the rest of the train trip in a VERY relaxed and shanty mood.

grass smoking sessions.

Badami, 04-02-1995. The mosquito clans were out en masse last night in my room so I ddin`t get much in the way of sleep. Still I woke up feeling pretty well and to the persistent knocking on my door. My neighbor in the hotel, the bloke I smoked a joint with last night, John from Whales, rasta hair to his hips and working as a garderner back home, living with a woman 5 years his senior who has two young kids from a former boyfriend. He also told me he has been coming to India for several years now. We took a local bus to Aihole, yet more hindu temples and statues of hindu gods. A flemish couple joined us but seemed incapable to tolerate the locals`constant selling technics. We left them to the indian businessmen, maybe they will eventually be able to sell them a huge and useless carpet or else the plastic junk the indians themselves seem so keen on. Returning to Badami for dinner and more grass smoking sessions in my room.