Author: msmaff5_wp

After my time with Jonathan and family, I headed back to Sarnath, the village outside of Benares that I had found so attractive. My plan was to stay for a month of R&R—reading and rumination. I was reading a wide variety of books at the time. In addition to the Bible that I brought with me, I also had a copy of The Gospel According to Thomas, a Coptic text discovered in 1945 and claiming to be “the hidden words which the Living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas wrote.” This so-called gospel appealed to me then and continues to appeal to many today because it presents mystical sayings claiming to come from Jesus, which are much easier to integrate with Eastern teachings than any of Jesus’ authentic teaching contained in the Gospels in the Bible—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Along with the Buddhist texts that I mentioned in an earlier posts, I was reading things like The Politics of Experience and The Bird of Paradise by R. D. Lang, a Scottish psychiatrist. I reread some of Aldous Huxley’s works. You can hear in these words written to friends that I was being drawn to look deeper within myself for some stable point in the ever changing world. “Each day the world goes on to a different state than that in which we saw it the day before. If we are not equipped with new vision for that day—that is if we rely on yesterday’s insights—we begin to fall behind and in the end understand very little.”

I wrote this to my parents about my time in Sarnath: “As with most places I have stayed in India, my accommodation is a small room with bed, desk and chair. The floor is concrete and the walls and ceiling are whitewashed. Here are both Indians and Tibetans. So, for one meal I have rice, vegetable curry, dal (like lentils), and chapati (flat, unleavened wheat bread). For the other I have thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup) and momo (meat wrapped in dough and cooked in steam—like wanton).”

My plans to stay for a month in Sarnath were cut short abruptly. The dharmsala where I was staying was becoming crowded, and pilgrims had first preference, so I was required to leave. Several people had told me about the beauty of a small village called Bodh Gaya, the place where Gautama Buddha received his Enlightenment. There are numerous temples in the town built by nearly every Buddhist nation. At first it appeared that I was again out of luck, since most lodging places were full because of a ten-day meditation course being offered at the Burmese monastery.

I was about to leave when someone suggested an ashram hidden back from the main street and just across from the Mahabodhi temple, the central Buddhist temple in Bodh Gaya (see my picture above). So it was that I arrived at the Samanvaya Ashram, which was founded by Vinoba Bhave, a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi, as a center for work and for promoting the founder’s understanding that the religions of the world have a common basis. At the time I arrived, a special program had just begun—mainly for the Westerners here. Much more about that in future posts.

I left the Stringhams shortly after Christmas. I had decided that I would be taking unnecessary risks to travel to Kolkata (Calcutta) alone. So, I arranged to meet Jonathan, the Indian evangelist, who was planning to be in Kolkata after Christmas. Kolkata supposedly takes its name from Kali, the Hindu goddess of death and destruction. There is a prominent Kali temple in Kolkata. As my train came into the city, I could see the slums stretching for miles in the distance all the way up to within a few feet of the train tracks. I’ve not seen such an overwhelming number of people living in abject poverty before or since. Those same slum communities are a fixture of Kolkata up to today.

I was not the first Maffin to visit Kolkata. My dad spent time in Kolkata in the final days of WWII, while India was still under British rule—25 years before my visit . He faithfully wrote letters to my mom from shipboard and during his time in India. Thankfully, she preserved his letters. Dad had the soul of a poet. He and a number of his Army buddies made periodic trips from their Army encampment into Kolkata. Here are just a few of his observations. “The place is filled with people of every description. They tell me there is no middle class in India—they are either very poor or very rich.”

In another letter, dad described seeing an Indian holy man, still a prominent sight when I visited Kolkata 25 years later. “The particularly strange character I saw must have been a holy man. He seemed to be begging but was richly dressed, from the royal blue turban on down to a matching draped garment of the same color with a black belt. And he leaned on an extremely crooked silver cane, which had several ornaments dangling from every curve.”

Jonathan had encouraged me to stay with him at the Baptist Missionary Society hostel, which was housed in an old colonial style building. In hindsight, it was a truly humorous situation. Here was a hippie in a hostel with Christian missionaries, both national and expatriate, serving in India and other neighboring countries. One of my vivid memories from that time was of two British missionaries to Nepal who had come to Kolkata for supplies. They seemed to be trying to outdo each other to be the humblest of servants, as Jesus commanded His followers. They found it hard to walk through a doorway. “After you.” “No, please, after you.” “No, I insist, after you.”

After our time in Kolkata, Jonathan had invited me to spend time with his family in Siliguri as the new year of 1971 dawned. I described that visit in a letter to my parents. “Am having an enjoyable stay with Jonathan and family. Don’t know if I explained—the family and in-laws move here for the two coldest months and rent a house. He has a son who is about 5 and a daughter who is 1 today. His wife is a Nepali and a doctor. His father-in-law plays violin passably, so we’ve been playing together. [I carried a soprano recorder along with me].”

I concluded the letter to my parents with this expression of hope. “Jonathan is so full of life. I pray that we can all come to a deeper knowledge of Christianity in the coming year. ‘I have come that might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.’ (John 10:10)” I had no idea how marvelously God was going to answer my prayer.

At this point in my travels, I was becoming disillusioned with what I observed of how the Hindu worldview worked out in everyday life. In an earlier post, I mentioned the cows that wandered about everywhere in the cities of India. Cows are regarded as sacred by most Hindus. In fact, I observed that cows were often treated better than humans. The idea that all life is sacred sounds exalted and noble. The reality is that if all life is sacred, then there is nothing really special about human life.

I also saw the outworking of the caste system, which was officially abolished in 1950 but which did (and still does) exercise great power in India. Those at the bottom of the hierarchy, who fall outside the four main categories of Brahmins (priests and teachers), Kshatriyas (warriors and rulers), Vaishyas (traders and merchants) and the Shudras (laborers), are considered “untouchables” or Dalits. This whole system of caste is tied to Hinduism and the concept of karma and reincarnation. That view says that, when I die, if I have lived a virtuous life, I will be reborn into better life circumstances. If I have led a bad life, then I will be reborn into worse life circumstances. The inescapable conclusion is that those of lower caste deserve to be there because of evil done in a previous life.

Even though Buddhism holds to the same philosophy of karma and reincarnation, it didn’t seem to me at the time to have the same disastrous social consequences. As a result I channeled my hunger for truth toward Buddhism for the remainder of my time in India. The first deliberate step in that direction was traveling from Benares to Sarnath, about seven miles distant. This village is sacred to Buddhists because it is where Gautama Buddha supposedly preached his first sermon. It was a peaceful village with a large Buddhist monument or stupa, which dates from the 6^th century and sits atop an older structure built by King Asoka in 249 BC. If you look closely at my photo, you can see a red robed Tibetan Buddhist monk walking around the stupa.

There was a dharamshala (a rest house for spiritual pilgrims) in Sarnath, where those who stay pay what they can afford. I was able to stay for a few days and planned to return for a longer stay in the New Year (1971). While in Sarnath, I met an Indian doctor who was an instructor in preventive medicine, running free clinics in neighboring villages. He was reading “Politics of Ecstasy” (by Timothy Leary) and had turned on once to LSD.

I was reading voraciously and widely at the time. While there I read Aldous Huxley’s Island and Beyond the Tenth by a man born Cyril Henry Hoskin who claimed that his body hosted the spirit of a Tibetian lama by the name of T. Lobsang Rampa. I was also starting to build a small library of some of the Buddhist classics, such as the Diamond Sutra and The Dhammapada, which gave me a solid foundation for understanding classical Buddhist thought.

The Stringhams had invited me to spend time with them at Christmas, so I headed back to Lucknow a couple days before Christmas. I truly enjoyed being with a family for Christmas and relished the church services with many of the traditional Christmas carols. Even though I was becoming more drawn to Buddhism, I still considered myself a Christian and believed there was a legitimate way to blend an Eastern worldview with the Christian faith. Would a true synthesis really be possible?

At the beginning of December, I fled the cold in Darjeeling and headed back to my home away from home with Jim and Charlotte Stringham in Lucknow. They continued to show me unconditional love and to make me feel welcome. Whenever they went to service or prayer meetings, I tagged along. Here’s what I wrote back to my parents about my experience of Christianity in India.

“One of the facets of India that has amazed me most is Christianity. One expects to meet Christians in a ‘Christian’ country, such as America proports to be. The Christians one meets in India don’t seem astonishing because they stand out in relief against people of other religions. They are astonishing because they are seriously trying to live the life that Christ lived—something I have witnessed little of in America.”

I continued to write (remember that I’m still an unbeliever): “The most important thing that is required is for everyone, YES!, ME TOO, to realize that they are not serious enough about being Christians. They need to surrender their lives completely to God—this is the only thing that really is effective. Otherwise, we are leading lives of rebellion and are no use to God besides which our rebellion keeps us from receiving God’s gifts, which He wants to give to us.”

After a few days, I climbed aboard my usual III^rd class sleeper to New Delhi to check in at the embassy and collect any mail being held for me. I made a quick side trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Red Fort. Unlike some tourist attractions, there was nothing disappointing about the Taj Mahal. It is a gorgeous edifice with perfect proportions, a true labor of love. The carving of the marble and the inlays of semi-precious stones are breathtaking. I stayed in one of the least savory hotels I visited while in India. I can testify that it had a truly “gray atmosphere” and that there were “flash latrins”.

From Agra, I moved on to Varanasi (Benares). Even as an unbeliever, I felt that there was something spiritually dark about Varanasi. As one person put it “half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting to die.” To friends, I wrote, “A person is supposed to gain the equivalent of ‘grace’ by dying and having his/her body burned and ashes scattered in the most sacred of all Indian rivers—the Ganges. It’s a sobering thing to watch a body burn on a funeral pyre—really brings home the futility of most ventures on earth.”

I wrote my parents, “Took a nice boat ride along the Ganges and saw the people bathing and performing their religious duties. Spent quite a bit of time at the burning ghats. Males are brought in white shrouds, females in red. The ghats run around the clock. Some of the bodies are wrapped with garlands of flowers, which passing cows casually nibble off.”

Until the early 1800s, widows were burned alive (often unwillingly) on their husbands funeral pyres, a practice called sati, which was supposedly supported by the Hindu scriptures. The great Indian missionary, William Carey, took a lead role in convincing the British authorities to finally outlaw the practice in 1829. Carey and some notable Indian scholars of the Sanskrit language argued convincingly that there was no support for this horrific practice in the Hindu sacred writings.

I will save the account of my visit to the nearby village of Sarnath for a later post.

I very reluctantly left the Stringhams to venture farther north and east to Darjeeling. The train journey from Lucknow to Siliguri took nearly 24 hours to cover a distance of almost 600 miles. I traveled III^rd class reserved sleeper again. Because the reservation cost a few rupees more meant that most of my traveling companions were well-educated professionals. That meant that most were fluent in English, so we had some enjoyable conversation. At one point the first day of travel, we got our first glimpse of the Himalayan Mountains. Even from over 100 miles away they towered into the air.

Getting to Darjeeling from Siliguri (just about at sea level) was definitely part of the thrill of the visit. The only proper way to do the journey was (and still is) by the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, affectionately known as the Toy Train. It’s a narrow gauge railway (2 foot track spacing) that takes 7 hours and 55 miles to climb 7,000 feet in altitude using a system of loops and switchbacks to accomplish the job. The views from the train of the terraced fields and tea plantations, with the Himalayan Range as a backdrop was breathtaking.

Darjeeling is located at one end of the serpentine spine of a “hill”. The land drops off very sharply on every side. Everywhere roads can be seen snaking their way laboriously up the hillsides through tea gardens. The entire northwest horizon is dominated by Kanchenjunga and it’s sister peaks. Everest can’t be seen from the city but can be seen from Tiger Hill, which is about seven miles from the city and another 1,500 feet in altitude.

My visit to Darjeeling was marked by two significant events. One was the morning I hiked up to Tiger Hill to watch the sunrise over Mt. Everest. Two Indian friends and I left well before sunrise one night. The moon was full and imparted a strange aura to the landscape—mountain laurels, clouds in the valleys, Buddhist shrines. From Ghoom, with its large Buddhist stupa, the road climbs steadily to Tiger Hill. The scene by moonlight near dawn was a carpet of clouds at the base of the high peaks with thermals projecting large masses of clouds above the base. The light slowly increased, flooding everything with amazing colors.

It could finally be seen where the sun would rise somewhere behind a huge arch of cloud. There was a gasp and the rest of us turned to Kanchenjunga sticking above the clouds with an unearthly red glow. There was now a huge circular castle in the middle of the arch. The sun rose behind this castle and the arch was filled with phosphorescent colors. Finally the sun emerged, accompanied by a warm ovation by those assembled on the hill. The pictures I took are disappointing.

The other significant event proved to have much more lasting value for me. The Stringhams gave me an introduction to a minister in Darjeeling. Jonathan was (and still is) married to a remarkable woman, Indira, a medical doctor who pioneered work among alcoholics and drug addicts. They had two children—a boy of five and a daughter just a year old. He was (and still is!) an evangelist, leaving home for months at a time to travel on exhausting tours, speaking to college students and tea garden workers.

As I wrote to a friend, “The answers to some of my questions about Bible passages have been more than answered. Understanding comes in waves.” The radical nature of Jonathan and Indira’s faith in Christ was stunning to me. They staked everything on the truth of the Good News about Jesus. I wish that I had a picture of them from that time. The picture above is more recent. I stayed in Darjeeling for a couple weeks and spent part of most days with this family.

I finally had to flee Darjeeling because of the cold—days only in the low 50s, nights near freezing and almost no building with any source of heat. I’m guessing that the fancy hotels had heat, but that’s not where I was staying. I was paying less than a dollar a day for room and breakfast. When I left Darjeeling because of the cold, it was the last time I was to see that city. Fortunately, it was not the last time for me to meet up with Jonathan and Indira. More on that as my story unfolds in real time plus 50 years.

The reason I headed north rather than south with the others is complex. I longed to go to Darjeeling to see Mount Everest and the tea plantations. But the more compelling reason was to visit Jim and Charlotte Stringham. God has a marvelous sense of humor. I was in India to immerse myself in Eastern religions, convinced that I would discover the truth through this path. The Stringhams were Christians, and not of the casual variety. Both graduates of Yale, they moved to China in 1933 as Presbyterian missionaries, where they served until 1944. When forced to evacuate China, the Stringhams and their four children returned to Canandaigua, NY, my home town.

Dr. Stringham worked as a psychiatrist at the large VA hospital in town and with his family attended the church where my parents and I worshipped. Later, when Dr. Stringham opened his own practice in town, he was our family physician. Health issues prevented them from returning to the mission field. After their health issues were resolved, in 1961 they were approved to return to mission work, this time to Lucknow in north central India. I would have had contact with them again in 1966 when they were in the US on furlough.

By this time in my travels, I was hungry to see a home town face. I took the overnight train from New Delhi to Lucknow. Almost all the long haul trains in India at that time were still powered by steam engines. I traveled in a III^rd class reserved sleeper. Reserved meant that only passengers with reservations were permitted in the carriage—theoretically. Wooden boards folded down for sleeping at night—eight per compartment. My air mattress and sleeping bag gave me a fairly comfortable night’s sleep. It amuses me that a modern-day description of the rigors of travel on the lowest class of Indian Railway sleeper car (SL) sounds exactly like what I experienced 50 years ago! During waking hours, I enjoyed conversations with the other occupants of my carriage.

Once my train arrived in Lucknow, I managed to find the Nur Manzil Psychiatric Centre, of which Dr. Stringham was the director. The hospital was founded in 1950 by E. Stanley Jones, an American missionary who gave himself heart and soul to the people of India. He also started a Christian Ashram movement, spiritual retreat centers in which he tried to incorporate as many elements of the rich Indian culture as did not conflict with the Christian faith. I met the Stringhams coming out of chapel, and both were quite surprised to see me. I stayed nearly a week with them, luxuriating in their hospitality. I had a small room with bed and table all to myself (except for a friendly lizard). I toured the clinic, which had a pleasant atmosphere and genial staff.

A few memories come back to me from my time with Jim and Charlotte. They were a deeply devout couple. No matter how early I rose in the mornings, I could hear them praying in their bedroom. I often walked with them through the streets of Lucknow in the morning. They carried a loaf of bread with them on our walks to give to beggars. Apparently, unscrupulous men deliberately maimed children, sent them out to beg and then demanded all that they collected at the end of the day. By giving food, they were able to help without supporting the cruel begging racket.

Jim and Charlotte had an older Muslim man who cooked both Western and Indian dishes. Jim was a marvel of efficiency in the mornings. He had it timed so that toast popped out of the toaster at the moment the egg was ready to place on top. I ate everything set before me. The Stringhams carved out time from their busy schedules to spend with me. We had many helpful discussions about the Christian faith. They loaned me a book to read while on the road—The God Who is There by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, an American who founded a Christian community in the Swiss Alps. This book was going to prove pivotal in my life.

I reluctantly left the Stringhams. The Magical Mystery Tour was heading on to Darjeeling in the foothills of the Himalayas.

There seemed to be a kind of sameness in Asiatic Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan that I have trouble putting into words. Part of that sameness is, of course, the uniformity of religion—all three are nearly 100% Muslim, even though the people represent many different ethnic backgrounds. Another part of the sameness was the starkness of the landscape, at least in the parts of the countries that I traversed. Entering India, it was my impression that I had stepped out of a black and white movie into a world rendered in full Technicolor. I will share some of my first impressions, which I wrote back to friends in the US.

“India is such a strange place. In New Delhi, the gamut of everything is to be seen. The wealthy Indian’s contempt of the poor is obvious. One man told me I should stay in the center of town—all the Western restaurants and fancy shops—and avoid back streets because there was nothing of interest there. The saints and charlatans are in great profusion, and in most cases telling the difference requires greater discernment than I presently have. One Indian I spoke with had returned recently from a religious festival where [he claimed] the ceremonial fire had been kindled with a prayer. A street corner astrologer [one of literally hundreds] told me incredible things about my past with details that would have been impossible to guess.

“The Sikhs seem to be the most genuinely religious people here and can be trusted to give honest service. I had a long talk with a member of the Sikh family on the train from the border to New Delhi. He has invited me to his home in Baglali [sp?], so I will probably see him again. The Sikhs are generally well-dressed. There hair is not cut, but is worn on top in a bun, over which the turban is worn. Sikh men were often drivers of the auto rickshaws that weave in and out of traffic in New Delhi. Sikhs formed some of the most elite regiments of the Indian Army.

“The second day I was in New Delhi was the first day of Diwali, the Festival of Lights. On this day every household lights candles and has a great variety of sweets on hand. Most people also buy fireworks. At times it sounded like the city was the scene of a great battle. I went to a sitar concert, and it was like New York, everyone well-dressed and most speaking in English.”

In another letter to friends about my inner mental processing, I wrote, “Before I left [the US on my journey], I felt that too often I set myself up as your friendly neighborhood prophet and general mystic. The journey has somewhat changed this. Every day is a bewildering flow of new experiences, which have to be fitted into some larger scheme. So often I am caught doing the right things for the wrong reason (the greatest temptation in Murder in the Cathedral [by T. S. Elliot]). There is no good or evil; everything is capable of perversion. Every good act is capable of being used to ill advantage of the self. Even alms, the confession of faults one to another, the whole gamut of religious observance, when used wrongly, can destroy the self more than greed, concealment, or even total irreligion.”

You can hear in this that always, in the background of my mind, issues of significance were constantly percolating. I was wrestling with some of the deepest issues of life and hungering for the Truth.

My traveling companions and I left Kabul and drove to the border with Pakistan another 150 miles east. The ride from Kabul down to the plains of Pakistan and India was harrowing as the road twisted through the Kabul Gorge, sheer cliffs on one side and a sharp drop on the other side to the river below. The border crossing into Pakistan was fairly smooth. Following the path of the ancient Silk Road, we drove through the Khyber Pass and on east toward India.

In Peshewar, we were able to book spots on a train heading for Lahore. It was the first of my many experiences with the vast railway system that the British built on the Indian subcontinent. Even though the railway system clearly showed signs of wear and tear, it certainly seemed luxurious after weeks on the road through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan. We reached Lahore and the border with India after spending only a single day in Pakistan.

What a relief it was to cross the border into India on October 28. One chapter of my adventure was over; the next chapter was just about to begin. I had been on the road by now for nearly a month and a half. I had traveled about 5,000 overland from Luxembourg. Traveling and experiencing a spectrum of different cultures had helped in part to prepare me for the dizzying diversity of humanity that I was about to encounter in India. This is not to say that anything can truly prepare a Westerner for India.

In Firozpur, my companions and I boarded the train for New Delhi, a rail line established in the late 1800s. Once in New Delhi, we found wonderful lodging at a youth hostel housed in a 14th century hunting lodge, which was used by the kings of India when the area was all forest. The cost for pitching my tent in the courtyard was 1 rupee (less than 25 cents) a day. For that sum I got the use of the toilet, running water for part of the day and security for my belongings.

After being able to trust almost no food for the last three weeks except for flatbread and kebabs, the vast array of Indian food was a marvelous treat. Some restaurants offered full vegetarian meals for 2 rupee. I quickly became addicted to finger foods such a cheese pakoras and various kinds of samosas. I also began to experiment with paan. Paan is a digestive aid and stimulant. It’s a betel leaf stuffed with various ingredients—nearly always chopped betel nuts and slaked lime—then folded into a triangle or rolled. Paanwalas have tiny shops and can make any combination of ingredients to suit each customer. After chewing, you can either spit out the red juice or swallow it. As I newbie, I spat.

In my next post, I will share some of my first impressions of the seemingly endless variety of humanity on this vast subcontinent.

As I traveled, I was trying to process the flood of sights, sounds, smells and particularly my experiences with both Westerners and the nationals of the countries in which I traveled. I wish that I had the presence of mind at the time to keep a daily journal. It would help to trace my thoughts as they evolved as a result of my experiences. I have the next best thing in letters back to friends. Here’s what I wrote in one letter:

“I want to try to give you my impressions of the entire ‘scene’ here. Of course I’m involved on a lot of levels, so it may not be objective. There are Afghanis living in almost any imaginable condition. There are rich, young Afghanis in good suits and children and beggars in rags asking “bakshish” [a few coins given to a beggar]. Some are clearly in awe of Westerners, and some are very proud and despise us. It’s hard to know who to trust. It’s hard to communicate with someone you can’t trust (real or imagined). The West is destroying them by forcing them into this stance.

‘The hippies I meet here are a strange form of humanity [this coming from one of them]. They have overcome the world physically—i.e. not desiring economic or domestic security—but are resting after the great effort. Now, instead, they are free to do unwitting damage at deeper levels. People pay 12afg for Coke instead of 3afg for tea, wear 1000afg coats, smoke 40afg cigarettes, and refuse 1 or 2afg for a beggar. They are arrogant and haggle over things with Afghanis as if they were children. Moral: take what you learned at the last level and apply it to this one.

“Existence is the same wherever or at what level. There are rich exploiters and poor exploiters, straight exploiters and hip exploiters. Your level determines what is good for you in relations with the world and in what ways you act to exploit the world. People must learn that economic and social enlightenment are very minor tasks compared to what is needed to transform the entire man. If I could only learn my level and what my special way of exploiting the world is.”

That is just a sample of the ramblings in my brain at this point in my journey. What you can hear in the midst of those disjointed thoughts is the recognition that true transformation cannot be imposed from without but must flow from a fundamental reorientation at the heart level. What was vague to me at the time was how best to accomplish that radical inner reorientation.

My traveling companions and I decided to take a side trip from Kabul before heading over the Kyber Pass to Pakistan and India. We arose early one morning and staggered to the bus to Bamiyan, which was supposed to leave at 3am. The bus was already packed full with Afghanis, so we decided to ride with the luggage on the roof. We finally left at 4:30am for the 100 mile ride over a rugged mountain range.

The ride was incredibly beautiful as the road followed small, green river valleys past high, craggy cliffs on either side. The road steadily climbed from Kabul (a little over a mile above sea level) to Bamiyan at over 8,000 feet above sea level. We arrived at 3:30pm after several stops for tea, etc. Bamiyan, with a population of only 200 at the time, sits in a green valley with mountains rising all around, some to 18,000 feet.

In the valley there were two spectacular images of Buddha carved into two niches in a cliff face—one 100 feet tall, the other 175 feet tall—built in AD 507 and AD 554. There were still remains of the frescos that once covered the niches of the Buddhas and some of the meditation cells. We walked out on top of the head of the larger Buddha; the view of the valley was spectacular. All that is left today of the two statues of Buddha are the niches that once housed them. Both statues were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001 in a fit of religious fervor. In the same valley we also saw the ruins of an entire city in which Genghis Khan killed every living thing to avenge the death of his brother-in-law.

Our stay in Bamiyan was surreal. We found accommodations in the back room of a chai (tea) house. In the evenings, we drank chai and smoked hashish with the people of the village. The owner of the shop played a dambura (a two-stringed fretless instrument) very proficiently while someone else played tabla (a drum) and sang. One evening, all the Westerners in turn were summoned to get up and dance with a lieutenant in the local police force.

Before heading back to Kabul, we hired a vehicle to drive us out to the lakes of Band-E-Amir. We climbed further into the mountains to an altitude of about 10,000 feet. The lakes range from smaller to quite large with the bluest of water and rugged mountains soaring still higher in the background.

We reluctantly left this spectacular part of Afghanistan for the long bus ride back to Kabul and the journey further east to India.