April 3rd: Bodhgaya

On April 3rd 1982 I was still in Bodhgaya.  I have already recorded this, from a couple of weeks earlier.

The Bodhgaya Math:  My picture

One thing I always enjoyed in Bodhgaya was that it was a little Hindu town for all its Buddhist sites.  Vaishnavites visited the Mohabodhi temple as part of pilgrimage tours, but the soul of the town always seemed to be to be Shiva.  There was the Shiva shrine on the island on the river.  Opposite the island were lots of little shrines and lingams, so small you could easily miss them.  And next to these as you first entered from Gaya, stretching from the road down to the river bank near the bathing ghat was the Math.  I had long been interested to find out more about it, but no-one could tell me much.  The gates on the road side were usually open; occasionally I'd seen a car coming or going, but this time I decided to have a look in for myself.  I found the temple hot and white with red Saivite statues and a lovely huge eternal duni (fireplace) at the far end.  The area around, still within the walls, was interesting with cows and the people were friendly towards me.  I sat and read for a while in the garden which was atmospheric and overgrown; I was surrounded by trees and had a black-headed oriole for company.  Finally I walked out through the river gates where they kept the elephants and sat in the shade of the overhanging tree, talking with my Thai friend.

Earlier I'd talked with an English couple who were volunteering at an ashram nearby where local untouchable youths were receiving some education.  I'm not sure where the ashram was but it must have been sufficiently far from Bodhgaya not to have come into conflict with the Math.  The Math was something between a Saivite monastery and a feudal palace.  It was the seat of religious power in the town and the seat of political power in the area; it was also the seat of social power and directly or indirectly responsible for the bondage of many low caste people in the area.  Throughout the Nineties I probably read more about Bodhgaya as a centre of caste war than as a centre of Buddhism.  Eventually the power of the Mohant of the Math was overthrown.  I think the Math also controlled the Mahabodhi temple and was perhaps responsible for all the Saivite statues in the grounds.

David Geary relates the history of the Math and the struggle for free labour in his academic thesis; he also describes the development of tourism and the conflicts engendered.

In the Shiva temple:  My picture

Some days before I had walked to the further branch of the river, at the point where Buddha is reputed to have sat.  Buddha's Seat was rather taken over by the Hindu temples around but the river was pleasant to sit by and the country was lovely there, big trees, including sopme with big red flowers.  I looked in at the Tibetan temple there.  I also visited the Hindu temple along the path which was interesting, the typical plaster and white paint style, and I got a guided tour.  There were some fine images:  Sujata who gave Buddha the bowl of curd was worshipped there as a Parvati incarnation alongside Shiva; this reminded me how Buddhist lore had mingled here with the Hindu folk tradition.  There was also a lingam with a Shiva face built in on the outside which seemed unusual.  The village on the way to the river still looked fine, but the people there were clearly more used to tourists than on my previous visit.

I spent a full month in Bodhgaya this time, staying until the weather was really hot and only a few foreigners remained.  I was content sitting in the temple grounds, especially around the tank where a pied kingfisher was often fishing, or talking to people in Shivanath's, or trying to sit in the Zen temple, or hanging out in the market or around the river, preparing myself in my way to return to England.

The Bodhgaya Math from the river:  My picture

Market Day in Bodhgaya:  My picture

The temple at the river:  My Picture

Bodhgaya:  My picture

April 1st: Dhulikhel in Nepal

On April 1st 1979 I was in Dhulikhel in Nepal.  Dhulikhel was a little town to the east of Kathmandu, sitting in the hills at the edge of the Kathmandu Valley.  The town had beautiful brick-built town-houses among the winding lanes and several old temples.  There was a cheap lodge recently opened to serve NGO volunteers and a restaurant on the main street showed that tourism was beginning.  The town did not feel at all touristy, though the kids did approach me as I walked around the streets and temples or sat at the view-points in town.  I remember walking one evening through the old town in the moonlight, very busy that night, the activity at the windows, the round windows in particular and a lot of people in the streets, a puja at a temple.

On this day I walked with friends to the shrine of Namo Buddha.  We set off about 9am and stopped in at the Kali temple on the hill above town which got the sunrise.  We descended to Kavre, where we spent a long time over tea, enjoying the peace and simplicity of a village away from the road.  Then there was a long walk around the higher part of a spur in the heat of the day, the track really a road now and in fact a couple of taxis did pass us.  At Namo Buddha I visited the lower stupa or sat in the shade of the old houses, then climbed to the Gompa, where there was a friendly monk, the stele of Namo Buddha cutting off his flesh to feed to the tigress, and fine views from the very top of the hill.  We returned by a different route with a long steep descent into the valley.   We stopped for tea and boiled eggs in the friendliest and least spoiled of all the places we passed.  I wrote this in my notebook:

Little one-room chai-shop, a room behind for the family; we're having chai and hard-boiled eggs.  We sit around table, three benches and a fourth in the middle.  Door has a gate, windows are wooden varnished black, open on a hinge to attach to the ceiling outside.  Three or four men sit to join us in their chai, an old-faced woman, black skirt and red velvety shirt, white cummerbund, red thin glass necklaces, with pins, an old silver coin, hair in a braid with long red cotton tassel, she has three glass bangles and a beautiful silver bangle on each wrist, face lined like a Tibetan with circular nose-plug on either side, no earrings but large holes.  People go by with baskets slung from the head.  Chickens and goats search around.  A pile of firewood, kids playing.  Three houses visible, one has a thatch roof and whitewash, a pile of hay downstairs, a pile of wood upstairs.  Next door an old-style brick town-house, carved windows and arched verandah, lions carved on stone lintels as corner-piece, deserted.  Another house has thatch lean-to, two shade ochre wash.  Nice bridge coming into town in stone, with a Kali shrine, stone stake in front, red powder all over the many-armed image.

Another day we walked to the old town of Panauti down in the valley.  It was a hot, dusty day and Panauti felt lethargic, crumbling in the heat.  The most atmospheric spot was where we entered by a meeting of two streams.  At the largest temple I wrote this in my notebook:

Big Shiva temple, quiet rural feeling, something like a farmyard.  Big temple has three-storey pagoda, fine carvings on the eaves, Shiva standing on two smaller figures and big griffins or similar in the corners.  All hung with old pots and pans and bells.  Main image inside is not large, but seems to be a Shiva head facing four directions.  Two lion-type animals with broad grins at each of the four entrances.  A big bell suspended at one corner.  Red brick and dark carved wood.  Gold for the top by the trident.  Other little shrines dotted around the yard and some houses in the corner.  One corner has two little cottages with thatch roof and tumbledown look and women and babies sitting outside.  A cat on the roof disappearing into a trap-door.  On another side in a garden a fine built house, could be new, not the normal Nepali town-house style.  Tiles on top, well built brick and ornamental plaster, it rambles around a courtyard, looks very nice.

Mostly I liked to wander around the hills behind the town.  Some jottings from my notebook:

Near Dhulikhel, 2008: Picture by Trym Asserson,  CC

I can see far below a dirt road, a streak of white with a couple of buses kicking up the dust amid a lake of green wheat.  A smaller hill behind fairly bare, some trees and terraces, and patches of smoke where they're burning.  Away to the left much higher ridges disappearing in the haze and the clouds, dark green outlines only, shapes of a valley, and I imagine that behind there will lie some of the high white peaks I haven't seen.  Near me is a plantation and below it are some darker green small trees and grey-brown terraces, stacked sometimes with mounds much darker, a dozen two-storey houses, with windows and awnings, mostly ochre, though some of the upper walls are white-washed, thatched roofs with a characteristic pleat at the top.  A path leading to the left, a man asleep beside, dressed in white, and two people carrying burdens of leaves or twigs.  Butterflies and swallows around me, a couple of brown cows I can't see in a patch of grass between the trees.  The crowing of a cock.

I'm sitting by a little stream in the corner of the paddy fields, near where the trail from the pink house reaches the bottom of the valley.  The noise of the water as it tumbles through a man-made dam forms a constant backdrop of sound here, the surplus of the water flows away to the wheat terraces.  A woman and her daughter are doing their washing a little way away where the stream flows into the valley, clothes laid out all across the banks.  Flowers, of course, white, bursting out by the stream, some very pretty yellow ones, and little violets and the yellow/red ones that line the paths between the canals and paddies.  Butterflies and all sorts of insects more obvious than birds around here; mostly little butterflies, yellows, white and orange, a little zebra-coloured one, and occasionally a black and blue one or a colourful dragonfly or damselfly.  Grasses and mosses, ants and spiders on the shady rocks on which I'm sitting.  There's a yellow wagtail very grey on top here, the calling of a cuckoo above the bubbling of the water.  And the trees rising up to the ridge bright green and brown in the sunshine.  Cactus and straggly trees on the dry, brown terraced slopes leading up to Dhulikhel.

Dhulikhel Town, 2008: Picture by Mdipua, CC

Looking at pictures of this area now, the towns and villages and Namo Buddha itself seem very much changed.

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March 28th: Iguassu Falls

On March 28th 1976 I was at the Iguassu Falls in northern Argentina.

I decided to stay at the Iguassu Falls to see out the time after the recent army coup in peace and quiet.  To a large extent life seemed to be carrying on as normal, though I had not heard whether the frontiers had reopened.  I had visited the ruined mission at San Ignacio Mini and the only problem had been a hands up search on the way back to Posadas. 

Iguassu was quiet and idyllic with just a few tourists at the main falls on the Argentine side and some activity around the luxury hotel on the Brazilian side.  There was a cheap hostel, Hosteria Don Hippo, a ramshackle affair run by a large Pole with an Indian wife and an extensive family.  He did some food, but you could get beer and sandwiches at the midrange Argentine Hotel.  I took turns with others to get wine and picnic provisions from Puerto Iguassu.

On this day I walked down to the bottom part of the falls under San Martin where you could actually swim.  There was a little island for utter peace amongst the great roar of the falls.  On the trails there was wildlife, a snake with blue spots on the path, a party of 30 so coatis with long snouts and barred tails held out straight, a yellow-crested woodpecker and a lizard with a yellow collar.  The sun was pleasantly hot in the middle of the day, although the nights were cooler and sleeping was easy.

After a few days I met a friend who had crossed over from Brazil so I knew the border was open.  But still I lingered on enjoying this grand spectacle and simple living, an oasis in all the political trouble in the country.

The Iguassu Falls, 2005:  Picture by Sakke Wiik, CC

At The Iguassu Falls, 2005:  Picture by Sakke Wiik, CC

March 24th: Kampala

On March 24th 1980 I was in Kampala, the capital of Uganda, travelling with Audrey my American friend.  It was nearly a year after the overthrow of Idi Amin, but Tanzanian soldiers were still in the country, making people uneasy, and the government seemed weak.  Things were scarcely getting back to normal.

We were trying to stay in a downtown hotel, but finding everything a hassle.  In the evening we went for a meal at the colonial Speke Hotel.  Afterwards we were walking back to our own hotel as the time was approaching the ten o'clock curfew deadline and the air was pleasantly fresh and cool.  There was already gunfire in the streets around and we were stopped by a friendly policeman who was anxious that we might not get where we were going on time.  The gunfire kept up most of the night, interspersed with louder noises whizzing across the sky above and exploding when landing.

Although banks and larger offices were largely operating, the main street was lined with boarded up or empty shops, right along to the area where a few Asians were still trying to do business.  We had to leave our room during the day because it had been reserved for government officials who never materialised; and so we took a tour with a friendly taxi driver out through the hills and suburbs to the Kasubi tombs of the Kabakas, the traditional rulers of Buganda, and to the Catholic Cathedral on another hill which had murals of the first missionaries and the embalmed body of the first African archbishop.  It was good to get some historical perspective on the country amid the depressing current situation. 

We had made a fleeting visit to the city ten days earlier to transact some business when we first arrived in the country.  We stayed that time in a small Asian hotel a mile or two from the centre.  This is what I recorded in my journal:

We took the bus journey to Kampala from Kabale, which was long and slow; we were on the bus at 11 but didn't leave until 2.30 or so and it stopped frequently in the densely populated country of Kigezi.  After that the country became more hilly savannah, Ankole cattle land.  Mbarara was battle-worn, the barracks and police area destroyed, the centre of the town empty and looted, only the bus station functioning.  Our neighbour on the bus was going to visit his daughter, aged 20, previously at Makarere University, now in hospital, blinded by gas in the war.  In the early morning Kampala was empty and calm, yet busier than anywhere else I had seen so far in Africa.  Bomb and looting damage, some piles of rubble, yet banks and hotels functioning, and some men involved in construction.  Night-time seems to be the problem, but we heard nothing except a storm after curfew yesterday.  We went at night to see the Israeli film of Raid on Entebbe and the audience hooted with laughter at the appearance of the actor playing Idi Amin (now that he had gone).

Mbarara had been notorious during the Amin years for the killings that were carried out in the police barracks and headquarters.  I had been particularly interested to see what the state of the city would be, and found the sight numbing rather than shocking.

I remember that the bus took a back road as we approached Kampala in the evening.  We parked up for the night in a quiet place, sheltered, with houses near but not right outside the bus.  We were asked to stay quietly on the bus and then we drove into Kampala in the morning once curfew was over, all this handled very calmly in a matter-of-fact way. 

Kasubi Tomb in Kampala:  Picture by Eve Gray, CC

Patrimonium Mundi: Panorama of Kasubi Tomb.

March 23rd: On A Train To Posadas In Northern Argentina

On March 23rd 1976 I was on a train to Posadas in Northern Argentina.

I had been staying with friends of friends in Buenos Aires.  They got a phone call the evening before which convinced them that the long expected coup against the government of Isabelita Peron was definitely coming this time.   They suggested I get on a train the next morning and get as far away from Buenos Aires as I could.  Meanwhile they went away to do what they could for themselves.

In the morning I got an early bus to the train station and had no difficulty buying a ticket to Posadas in the far north of the country; it was where I was planning on going anyway.  I had breakfast, put my backpack in the van and found a decent seat - the train was quite empty.  When we got to the Parana River the train was loaded onto a ferry and we spent five hours steaming upriver; I sat on deck but there was little to see.  The train continued on into the evening in the Entre Rios district, and there were plenty of birds to look at in the swampy pools beside the track.  I took dinner in the restaurant, dull food but there were people to talk to.  When I got back to my carriage they played martial music on the radio and people said that the coup had come.

We spent all night at the station in Concordia.  There was another train on the opposite platform, going the other way.  We were not allowed off the train and the doors were kept locked.  Military men in long black leather boots walked up and down crunching their heels into the gravel on the platform.  We moved off after it got light, and people in the carriage, an Argentine family and a Brazilian circus-worker, said the frontiers were closed.  All day we made long slow progress through the increasingly swampy country.  I read most of the time.  After it got dark, near the town of Santo Tome, we stopped again and the lights were turned out.  Soldiers got on and went through the carriage shining torches in the faces of the passengers.  I quickly took my Finnish hunting knife from my shoulder bag and hid it under the seat.  I was singled out and taken off the train into the open and my rucksack was found in the van.  I was pretty frightened as was everyone else on the train I think.  I was taken in front of a machine gun and bright lights as soldiers went through my stuff.  When they found my paracetamol, they shouted "drogas, drogas" and called the capitan.  He was a real SS type, with greying hair and dark glasses.  He shouted at me and went through my stuff again.  There was another person who had been searched before me and I saw him being loaded onto a truck.  However they couldn't find anything on me and eventually let me get back on the train.   

The train moved off and later there was another search but not so intimidating.  I caught the eye of the family at the other end of the carriage when they finally turned on the lights and we started a little laugh with relief.  They told me that they had not expected to see me again when I was taken off the train.  We got to Posadas at 1.30 in the morning, over twelve hours late, and I remembered to retrieve my knife.  I walked into town and was able to find a hotel, not too cheap and full of cockroaches - I was back in the tropics.

I don't know who the group was that searched me.  I know that various paramilitary groups crawled out of the woodwork during the first day or two after the coup, but these people might just as easily have been the military, and the capitan just a particularly nasty example.  They were suspicious of foreigners, perhaps going back to the Chilean coup four and a half years before.  Most travellers had been searched and some had been briefly detained in the weeks before the coup, so my treatment was perhaps normal.  Of course we know now that more than 10,000 people were killed in the Dirty War that followed, perhaps many more.  Any threat against people like me was insignificant.  My friends meanwhile in Buenos Aires were OK, although I was concerned for them and it was a few months before they surfaced.

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March 22nd: Chobe in Northern Uganda

On March 22nd 1980 I was in Chobe in northern Uganda.  This was a lodge in what is now called the Murchison Falls National Park.  I was with my American friend Audrey. 

The wildlife parks in Uganda were struggling after the Idi Amin years.  Animals had been poached or shot by soldiers throughout that period, and the Tanzanian army had been no better since their arrival.  There was no fuel for trips and there were almost no tourists.  A handful of cheap tourists like me were at Chobe, but there was not a lot to see in the way of wildlife although the Nile was very beautiful at that spot. 

The Nile in Murchison Falls Park, 2010:  Picture by Daryona, CC

However I enjoyed this day.  The roar of the river was constant as it passed by the lodge and the many islands, but I could always hear the grunting and splashing of hippos in the water.  The earth was red and the trees mainly small and thorny with many sausage-trees (Kigelia, a characteristic tree in much of Africa.)  With two others I went out in the morning for a walk, under the leadership of a guide with a rifle.  This was the only way to get out in the park unless you actually had fuel to put in the tank of one of the park vehicles.  Walking was a good way to do things and was atmospheric even if the guide did not know which antelope was which.   We saw crocodiles by the river which I had not seen before in Uganda.  Best was a huge herd of elephants, maybe one hundred in total, spread out along the ridge amongst trees perhaps seventy yards away.  There were led by a huge male and were not especially pleased with our presence.  I kept close to a tree but held my ground and was able to watch them for a long time while the guard kept his rifle at the ready.  I knew enough to know that such a large herd of elephants was a bad sign rather than a good one, as elephants only gather in such numbers when they are under threat.  This was probably all the elephants within a wide area.

Then in the evening I went out again down to the creek by the Nile, enjoying being quiet and being on my own with just the birds around.  I sat near the weed-covered areas where the jacanas and the moorhens live, and then there was a splendid sunset going down behind an acacia tree as I sat and watched it get darker and darker until the bats came out.  Being out in the wild was more important than seeing the more spectacular animals.

We had stayed a week or so earlier at Mweya in Queen Elizabeth National Park in the west of the country by Lake Edward.  It was a beautiful place but the road in was littered with the dead bodies of hippos killed by soldiers.  I could see the ridge of the Ruwenzori mountains to the west but not the snow peaks.  Again there had been no fuel for vehicles but we were able to go out on a launch on the lake which was good for the water birds.  One evening I left my meal in the hotel to go back to my room in the hostel to get something and had to cross a courtyard to get back.  I heard an animal make an almighty roar as I started to cross, but I did not hesitate for long as I was hungry.  The staff told me that they had been troubled by a lion at night recently.

Brian Schwartz saw no elephants at Chobe and was there at a similar time to me, perhaps a week or two later, as recounted in his book Travels Through The Third World.  He writes of meeting Iain Douglas-Hamilton who was doing an aerial survey of elephants in Uganda - Audrey and I also met him at Mweya.

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March 21st: Juba

On March 29th 1981 I was in Juba in Southern Sudan, with Mary.  I was trying to get the documentation which would allow me to return to Khartoum, get my exit visa and my money converted, and from there travel back to the UK.

The days were hot and close in Juba: mornings in the Ministry fighting the bureaucracy, a siesta after lunch and the Greek Club in the evening, food and socialising with other teachers.  The time passed quickly but frustratingly for me, and agonisingly slowly for Mary, who was finding being a vegetarian difficult in Sudan.  I was trying to eat as much as possible and taking iron pills to try to get my weight up.  Most of the other teachers from the South now seemed depressed by their experiences, but we made cheerful conversation as we had done previously.  I met one of my students working in a shop in the Malakia, the market area.  After graduating from school it was the only job he could envisage, working for an Arab trader; if this did not work out he planned to go back to his village in Equatoria and cultivate, as he put it.

At first we stayed in a depressing rat-ridden guest-room at the University, where we saw no sign of students or staff.  Two aid workers took us to Sunday lunch at SIL, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, because they did cauliflower cheese and real mashed potatoes and Mary could not resist.  Eventually they offered us a clean, modern room in their compound at a good price and we capitulated.   The missionaries were blue-eyed and calm.   At lunchtime we would listen to their tales of language translation around the world; they looked on Southern Sudan as a hardship posting like everyone else, and described it as second only to New Guinea in terms of under-development.   After lunch on that first Sunday we walked out to the hill behind the non-functioning petrol station.  We climbed to the top among baboons and the trees, and admired the view away from Juba from the summit.  The hill seemed volcanic and was the only place to get exercise - I was still looking for weight after the poor diet of Rumbek.

Otherwise we saw a Sergio Leone film in a small open-air stadium; some enterprising Britons living in Nairobi were importing the films and trying to make a little business of it.  I also visited Issa again at the Wildlife Hostel and heard tales of exploits from her macho shooting Latins, "My father was a professional hunter."

Finally the papers were all provided correctly and we got a flight to Khartoum.  Going through customs I followed an Arab trader, who was asked to open his battered, overfull suitcase.  The case held nothing except banknotes, and he had difficulty stuffing them all back in like a crook in an Ealing comedy.

Edward Hoagland in his book African Calliope gives a description of the Greek Club, hunters and other Juba characters he met there in 1977.

Juba, 2007, Picture by Katy Fentress, CC