One Train Later: A Memoir (44 page)

We get back into the jeep and begin driving along little country roads in the direction of the sunken temple. Everything now appears in a wondrous state after the downpour: steaming, fecund, and primeval. Little prismatic rainbows spring up from every leaf and branch, which seem to be growing right in front of our eyes. All along the road Balinese families bathe in the stream at the edge, waving and smiling at us, and I feel intensely happy.

John says, "They don't call it the rain forest for nothing." This strikes a deep chord and we go into hysterics again. As we are going through this new fit of insanity, a truck pulls right in front of us and sits there. On the back of the truck is a huge colored picture with the words TARZAN THE APE MAN, which finishes us off; now we need straitjackets. The truck is advertising an old film that is to be shown in a local village, but because the picture merges so perfectly with the landscape we are in, it's like a trick of the eye-and in our confused state we lose the last vestige of reality. Fully expecting to see Tarzan, we sit on the tail of the truck like children waiting for an ice cream.

We pull out into an open area with a meadow and a huge banyan tree, where a team of white-shirred soccer players are kicking a ball across the field below. John and I get out to watch them. We stand at the side of the field as interested spectators of the game, and then the ball suddenly rolls to our feet. John gives the ball a hefty kick back out into the field and receives a small round of applause. It comes back, and this time I lob it back. That's it, we race out into the field for a full-on game with the Balinese-only it's not a game in the strict sense of the word, but two deranged lunatics laughing and screaming and smacking the ball all over the place in an effort to beat the eleven Balinese players. Expending a furious amount of fungus-fueled energy, we throw in rugby tackles and headers, run with the ball in our hands, toss it over the heads of the Balinese, until we score six or seven goals and trot off the field to friendly waves, a small round of applause, and looks of disbelief. I turn to John and say in my best Etonian accent, "I think the white man reigns supreme."

We carry on with the rest of our journey, mesmerized by rice paddies, longhorned oxen, more banyan trees, and golden-skinned Balinese kids playing in the ditches, until we reach the sunken temple site, where we spend the rest of the afternoon gazing out at the ocean as the fly agaric runs its course. Finally, after what seems like years of golden dreaming and as the sun slips beneath the silhouette of the sunken temple, we arrive at the idea of returning to the hotel. We climb back into the jeep, and with a glint in his eye, Belushi takes the wheel and floors it. The speedometer hovers around ninety as we yell at one another about great movies, hold on to the sides of the jeep with a white-knuckled grip, and scream as we ricochet out of another pothole. Miraculously, we reach the hotel unscathed.

The next day we opt for another adventure, renting a beautiful motor launch complete with crew, the object being to make it to Nusa Penida, a small island off the coast of Bali. Nusa Penida at that time is inhabited by only one village of primitive Indonesians, most of whom have had very little contact with white people. We each take a healthy dose of chemical omelet again and haul anchor. The ocean and. islands we sail through seem like emeralds dropped into a cobalt soup, and as the sacred vegetables take effect we become mute, silenced by the sea, the sky, and the string of green-jewel islands we pass by. The action of the mushrooms intensifies and brings us to a point where we become paranoid and can't look at one another, can't speak. I try to look at the clouds, but they turn into stone to become hostile faces, so I look down and try to concentrate on details of the launch, waiting for this moment to pass. I feel nauseous and go up to the stern of the boat to vomit, and watch fascinated as my spew drifts off into the ocean behind.

Finally we reach the island, and as the internal storm smoothes out we drop anchor and look across the water at the shoreline: a white-sand beach with a dense backdrop of rain forest. A small brown figure emerges, and we wave. The figure waves back. We wave again, the figure waves again until all we are doing is waving at each other like flags in a breeze. It feels splendid and we grin at one another, delighted with our waving. More people emerge from the trees and then more and more until it appears that the entire village is out to greet us. In the magical continuum we now inhabit, this moment is imbued with the feeling of a first encounter, alien beings greeting one another, lost souls reestablishing contact. Gazing out across the Indian Ocean, I feel like Captain Cook arriving on the shores of Hawaii.

We are all waving like mad now and on impulse we dive over the side of the boat and into the water, and then they dive in and begin swimming out to us. Within minutes we are surrounded by brown-skinned people, laughing, smiling, and greeting us like old friends. It's a feeling of intense joy and happiness that somehow is simple and ancient; no barriers, no preconceptions, no fear, just beings greeting one another in celebration. We can't understand one another, but we get the idea that they want to show us their village. Like a school of dolphins, we swim to the shore and follow them on a path through the rain forest to their village, which is inside a staked compound. They have large thatched huts and we go inside one of them and sit on the floor while they show us clay pots., knives, fabrics, the artifacts of their daily existence. Words are grunted out to signify each item, and we grunt back with encouraging sounds. It feels as though we are in an enchanted zone, and all concerns about records and tours and movies lose meaning as we experience this moment as if it is the only reality we know or have ever known. The visit finally comes to an end and we trip back along the trail through a tapestry of thick verdant rain forest, trilling birdsong, prismatic butterflies, and the sweet smell of fecund nature until we arrive back on the sparkling white sand, where we part company with sweet smiles and nods, swim back to the boat, and set sail for Bali.

A few days later we go our separate ways. I promise to hook up with Belushi in a few weeks in New York. I arrive in Bangkok and immediately fall in with a group of young Thai royalty who have been waiting for me. For a few days we wander in and out of palaces, float up and down canals, walk through the underbelly of Bangkok while I photograph and smoke Thai stick. I call Kate. She sounds distressed and in need of my support. She puts Layla on the phone, who chirps out, "Dadda." A rush of remorse cuts through me, and yet 1. hear myself merely promising to be home soon, as soon as I've been through India and Nepal.

The grinding penury of Calcutta smacks me in the face as I drive into the city in a shrunken cab that's not much bigger than my suitcase. People everywhere huddle together and contort their bodies into little holes in the walls of decaying buildings along the side streets, with nothing but small votive candles to add a pathetic light to the pervading gloom. Calcutta seems even more sunk in decrepitude than Bombay, and I wonder what it is that compels me to visit these places. At the hotel I am met by a suave young Indian who has been contacted ahead of time by one of the Thai set. He tells me that I am his welcome guest and promises to show me around. But the next day, ignoring the warnings not to visit these areas, I hit the back streets of Calcutta alone and--now having developed furtive techniques to disguise the act of taking pictures-manage to shoot several rolls of film without getting killed in the process. In the evenings I join up with a crowd of forwardthinking young Calcuttans who argue vehemently with one another about everything. They are verbal, cerebral, and intense in a way that is a characteristic of the people in this part of India.

Flying into Tribhuvan Airport is not without hazard, as collisions between birds and aircraft occur frequently-a documented fact-but as we lurch down toward the runway, I am full of expectation. The city of Katmandu was the fabled end of the hippie trail in late-sixties London, and the road east was the requisite adventure. As I gazed up through the murky window of my West Kensington basement flat and played over the drone of a dropped D tuning, it hovered in my imagination like a dawn sun, the word Katmandu, like the word Shangri-la, conjuring up a feeling of ultimate spiritual destination. As I struggle through the airport with my guitar, cameras, suitcase, and dozens of little Nepalese kids holding out their hands and yelling, "Monee," This, I think, is it.

Checking into the Yak and Yeti hotel, I am slightly disappointed by how modern in 1981 this place already seems to be-a little too Westernized maybe. But excited, I drop my things in the room and set out for Durbar Square in the center of the city. As I pass through alleyways, chowks, stupas, pagodas, and shikara temples, I begin to fall under a spell. Katmandu-with its crazy mix of Hinduism, Buddhism, Shamanism, and Islamic beliefs and languages-impresses me as a city where all of mystical Asia merges. In Durbar Square I meet some French kids and get into a conversation with them, and before long we have climbed to the top of a building to lie out in the afternoon sun, smoke some hash, and gaze out over the city. The alkaloids take effect, and the warm heat of the sun makes me sleepy as I stretch out on the tiles. I laugh, thinking that this is completely daft but I had to do it sometime, I suppose, and follow that up with the sacred mantra-om mani padme hum (hail to the jewel in the lotus)-and then let my mind drift out across the rooftops into the soft blur of the eastern sky.

A couple of hours later we collectively grunt and begin to move. One of my new friends, Jean-Francois, offers to show me where they are staying, just off the legendary Freak Street. Located in the heart of old Katmandu, Freak Street was the place you had to go in the sixties and seventies. As I walk through it in the late afternoon I realize what it must have once been, with its resident hippies, the sounds of Hendrix, cheap dope, and fast-track spirituality, but already it seems to have faded. We arrive in a shabby little hotel where my friends are all camped out in a couple of rooms with sleeping bags.

The next day, being a good tourist, I decide to visit a beautiful and revered old Buddhist shrine on the outskirts of the city, the Swayambhunath Temple. A small black taxi drops me off at the bottom of a very steep hill with a shrine at the top, and looking upward, I see the white temple glowing in the afternoon light with its Buddhist pendants fluttering in the breeze. I sling the camera bag over my shoulder and begin the long hike up the eastern stairway to the shrine. It's a warm, hazy afternoon and a small breeze brushes my face as I climb past the figures of Ganesh and Kumar. I feel happy as Katmandu, Nepal, interconnectedness, interbeing, fill my head in a sweet and drowsy brew. Then thoughts about my girls back in London intrude and I feel something else-selfishness, perhaps-but in the soft blur of the moment I promise to make everything alright and send them love from this hill.

Halfway up, as if hallucinating in the afternoon breeze, I hear one of our songs-"Voices Inside My Head." It doesn't seem possible. This is Nepal, the land of a thousand Buddhas, but as I get closer to the top of the hill, it grows louder until there is no mistaking it.

I pull up level with a small tin hut close to the shrine. Sitting there in the dirt is a shrunken old man with a tiny transistor radio, the track blasting out through the plastic grid into the dirt of Nepal at his naked feet. I smile at him and with advanced linguistics try to make him understand-me play ... you radio ... good. He looks up at me without comprehension and offers me a Coca-Cola from the crate he has at his side as he extends the other open palm for payment, obviously not realizing that a rock god stands before him. I smile at him with compassion and move up to the shrine to spin a few prayer wheels.

As I stare across the holy Bagmati River at the cremation ghats the next morning, the pungent odors of smoke and flowers fill my head as sensual memento moris of the death and mortality that face you every few feet in Katmandu. The small stupas here each contain a lingarn of Shiva, the phallic symbol that represents his procreative powers. A little farther up the river I come to the Bachhareshwar Temple, full of painted skeletons and erotic scenes. I stare at them, thinking that everywhere you turn here there seems to be an illustration of some sort of embrace of life/death, a yearning toward the spiritual, the rising above human complication. In this kaleidoscope of sex, death, karma, and samsara, thoughts of record companies, American tours, and the next hit shrink away-at least until I get back to the hotel and pick up my guitar again. The immediacy of the instrument and traversing of frets and strings wash away these morbid scenes.