Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 P I L G R I M S 06things around by bussing between the holy places. A touch of the homecountry, a sense of support, and familiarity helps in all this sometimeshectic journeying. Hence rest houses, sponsored by governments andinstitutions.We banged on the steel door at the entrance at 2:00 A.M. The watchmanshuffled to the gate and let us in without a murmur; we signed thebook, followed him across a courtyard illuminated in the centre ofwhich was a Bodhi tree with a Buddha image sitting serenely underneathit. The padlocks were removed from the doors of a couple ofrooms in the simple whitewashed block that extended along one side ofthe courtyard. In my cell, the light switch worked—the light bulbrevealed a bare cement-floored room, with one bed, even water nextdoor. Not bad at all.I had brought a water-filtering gadget with me, with which I scrupulouslyfiltered water from the tap. It was an act of bravado: I was eagerto show the great Indian gut rot that I had come prepared. Then we hadour Plans against being hypnotized by the spells of India: no sightseeing,no rushing around a hot, teeming city, just business—book a ticketon the train to Gorakhpur to get us to the Nepalese border so that wecould begin the pilgrimage in southern Nepal at Lumbini, the birthplaceof the Buddha. We both were travelling light and drab, unlikely to attractpickpockets: I just had the robes that I was standing up in, a shoulder bagcontaining my alms bowl with a few spare clothes and medicines for thepair of us in it, an old lightweight sleeping bag, a Buddha image, and varioussacred objects given by people for me to use on the pilgrimage.Nick and I had known each other for about ten years, so I wasn’texpecting any major personality clashes. Admittedly we had differentstyles. I was more reticent, plodding, and tenacious by nature as befittedmy birth sign of the Ox. Nick was definitely a Dragon—spontaneous,ebullient but erratic, but then, as he put it later, we made a“dangerous combination”—he would come up with crazy ideas, and Iwould resolve to stick to them, come what may.9