Rosenthal - Bután;Himalaya Mountains Region;India del Norte;Los Angeles;Ca;Montañas del Himalaya

ALSO BY CHUCK ROSENTHAL

Loops Progress
Experiments With Life and Deaf
Loops End
Elena of the Stars
Avatar Angel: The Last Novel of Jack Kerouac
My Mistress, Humanity
Never Let me Go (a memoir)
The Heart of Mars

ARE WE NOT THERE YET?

TRAVELS IN NEPAL, NORTH INDIA, AND BHUTAN

CHUCK ROSENTHAL

Copyright 2009 by Chuck Rosenthal. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by What Books Press, the imprint of the Glass Table Collective, Los Angeles.

Portions of this book have appeared in altered form in the following publications: The Yetti Listener in The Pocket Field Guide and Why India and China Wont Take Over the World in The Chattahoochee Review.

Id like to thank Shanna Hughes, our yoga instructor and guardian angel, as well as the thirteen students who helped make the four months of travel miraculous: Steve Abate, Anda Corbescu, Kimberly Dawson, Daniel Fericks, Colin Griffin, Tom Klepper, Bernard Lee, Sarah Ray, Marlena Rosenthal, Joey Spielberger, Casey Stock, Holly Strasbaugh, and Chelsea Windlinger.

Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data

Rosenthal, Chuck, 1951- Are we not there yet? : travels in Nepal, North India, and Bhutan / Chuck Rosenthal. p. ; cm.

Portions of this book have appeared in altered form in the following publications: The Yetti listener in The pocket field guide and Why India and China wont take over the World in The Chattahoochee review.

ISBN-13: 978-0-9823542-0-9

ISBN-10: 0-9823542-0-7

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9845782-4-5

1. Travel writingHimalaya Mountains Region. 2. Himalaya Mountains RegionDescription and travel. 3. India, North Description and travel. 4. NepalDescription and travel. 5. BhutanDescription and travel. 6. College studentsTravelHimalaya Mountains Region. I. Title.

DS485.H62 R67 2009

915.49604

2009924547

What Books Press
23371 Mulholland Drive, no. 118
Los Angeles, CA 91364

WHATBOOKSPRESS.COM

Cover art: Gronk, untitled, mixed media on paper, 2009
Book design by Ashlee Goodwin, Fleuron Press.

ARE WE NOT THERE YET?

TRAVELS IN NEPAL, NORTH INDIA, AND BHUTAN

For Gail, my Diosa.

IN EARLY SEPTEMBER, 2006, poet Gail Wronsky and I traveled to North India and the Himalayas with thirteen college students, including our daughter, Marlena, as part of the Travel Abroad Program for our university. Via Bangkok, we traveled to Kolkata, trained to Varanasi and Sarnath, then based in Gangtok, the capital of Sikkim, taught and jeeped throughout the eastern Himalayas: Rumtek, Pemayangtse, Darjiling, Kalimpang, the Chinese border, and much more. We traveled to Kathmandu in Nepal, through western Bhutan and, finally to Delhi. All in all, we were there almost four months.

Sikkim is a tiny, Himalayan state, once a kingdom, sandwiched between Nepal and Bhutan on the west and east, Tibet (China) to the north, West Bengal and Bangladesh to the south. It was an adventure sometimes hilarious and often perilous. We learned a lot about the religions and politics of the Himalayas, a region beset by the threat of China, the rising economic power of India, and political unrest everywhere.

If the politics was a bit of a revelation to me, the religion was not. I began studying Buddhism as a graduate student in philosophy in 1973 and have continued a private practice since. I was well acquainted with the Mahayana Emptiness School and Zen, as well as the six major philosophical schools of Hinduism. I began serious study of Tibetan Buddhism and the religious aspects of Hinduism and Islam, as well as the history of India and the Himalayan region, in the year before we left and I continued to study during our stay, and since.

In that regard, there are three concepts essential to Indias major religions, excluding Islam: dharma, moral duty; karma, moral causality, meaning you reap what you sow, now and into your next incarnation; maya, illusion, in fact everything is illusion but the fundamental reality of God.

A note on names. Throughout, Ive tried to use the names and spellings of cities and places that are the parlance in India now, for example Kolkata for Calcutta, Varanasi for Benares, Mumbai for Bombay, etc. All the names of people and places here are the actual ones, but for three exceptions. My daughter changed her name to Jesus in Jr. High when she was a member of the rock group Les Gods and she kept the name. I use it here in deference to her, but it also adds some humor and irony in a lot of circumstances. Gail goes by the nickname Diosa, and Ive used that here, as well. I have a lot of nicknames. On this trip for some reason everybody called me Roscoe and thats what they call me in this story.

This narrative makes no attempt to recapitulate everywhere we went and everything we did. Nor is it yet another spiritual quest story set in the Himalayas. But as you find out in India over time, you dont have to go looking for God. God finds you.

BEFORE YOU LEAVE FOR international travel youre likely to read a lot of travel writing. There are lots of different kinds of travel writing, natural adventure, for one, but likely you dont have the means or connections to hire a guide and interpreter and six sherpas to go looking for Yetis in the Himalayas and no ones going to pay you to spend two sleepless weeks partying in the nightclubs of Kathmandu. Do you even want to? Every time I see one of those adventure films on PBS, where the narrator/adventurer is struggling, facing death in the jungle/ice/wilderness/mountains, I always think about the cameraman. Where is that cameraman anyways? In other words, those adventurers, natural and urban, receive a lot of material, technological, and financial support, usually right there on the ground with them. Its the same for those restaurant adventurers in Tuscany and those antique bridge heroes in Vermont. They dont go it alone. Call it American maya, we are all illusion tolerant, willing to ignore one thing in order to believe another.

Your tour book will talk about your destination and traveling in it, where you can eat and stay and all the things you should see, but likely it wont discuss the travails of simply getting there, that is, you, the ordinary person who is not a diplomat or a diplomats son, not a travel writer or a tour book writer whos done it a million times, or the daughter of an editor at Newsweek, or a retired military attach, not a frequent flyer member of the airlines Presidents Club flying first class. No, you, who has never been to India before, flying coach, row 60 in the middle aisle of a 61 row jumbo jet.

In fact, unlike you, Diosa and I had a vast university infrastructure that put us through several dinners and day-long disorientations where we were told contradictory things about India by a dozen different people, including the people who just returned. Its a lot like trying to find out whats going to happen after you die. Turn off the TV. Throw away the paper. House sitter? Has he ever watered plants or fed pets or run a vacuum cleaner? Does he know where the fuse box is? Does he care? Will he pay the bills? Water. Phone. DSL. Electricity. Home insurance. You mean I have to insure my cars while Im gone? How about your property taxes which wont be billed to you until youre gone (they wont do it early, I called them and sat on hold for an hour to find that out) and will be due before you return, with a substantial late fee. They wont bill by email, and ever try to reach the Los Angeles County Treasurer on the Internet?