The document provides descriptions from the narrator's travels through various locations in South Asia and the Middle East. It describes encounters with locals, cultural and religious sites, and the varied landscapes encountered. Impressions of cities, bazaars, mountains, and rural villages are conveyed through vivid sensory details. People, places, and experiences on the narrator's journey are captured.

1. Hind Cartwheel
In the summer of 1980, a maverick
young doctor gave it all up, to
hitchhike around the world.
The first part of his odyssey took him
through South America and up
through Africa, accompanied by his
mythical hunter companion, Orion.
His vision quest continued around the
second cartwheel of the European
Grand Tour.
In Hind Cartwheel, blessed by the
living goddess on his thirtieth
birthday, he spins the dharma wheel
of the Indian subcontinent.

2. A Rose in Every Cheek
We roared along white
ornamented mosques and
mudbrick bazaars with cement
wainscoting, corrugated tin
roofs and sliding accordion
doors, all trapped in a web of
naked power lines. I looked
around and directly into the
left eye of a horse’s head that
had momentarily found its
way inside our vehicle. Around
the next corner, our driver had
his license suspended for
overcrowding. It was like being
fined for chaos.

3. A Rose in Every Cheek
When we moved outside again, it was a
circus. It actually was a circus we came
across, although it was initially difficult to
be sure, as it seemed at times that all
Quetta was some farflung magnificent
turbaned Far Pavillion sideshow, in the
barren jagged mountains of Faroffistan.
The lions and tigers painted on the
powder blue panels above the entrance
gave it away, portrayed in various poses,
among the even larger handpainted
portraits of the circus stars- tightrope
walkers and trapeze artists, strong men
and acrobats on stilts, and complete
Asiatic pandemonium. Bright red banners
with too much white Arabic script hung
over the festivities. The food vendors
were as surreal as their snacks. Disco
music blared out over a stoned pair of
dancers on the main stage. There were
barbell weights I lifted, lighter than they
looked.

4. A Rose in Every Cheek
He pressed the ‘play’ button. And
charging into the basic small space
inside a tent in a courtyard of an exile
camp in the desert, came the sounds
of explosions and machine gun fire,
the screams of dying comrades, and a
singular roar of recruitment.
“Allahu Akbar!” It screamed. And Lala
pointed to his chest, and stuck it out
just a bit further, in bashful pride.
I didn’t know what to say, but it
wouldn’t have mattered, since I
couldn’t communicate to anyone in
the tent, with words. Amazing how
brotherhood squeezes through the
language barrier, anyway.

5. A Rose in Every Cheek
Lala’s mother ascended out of the
subterranean clay floor, dressed
in a snow-white cotton kalaa
Afghani with hand-embroidered
tombaan pants, parahaan
overdress, and chaadar head
covering. I still wonder how it was
so white, in the brown dust of the
refugee camp. I still wonder how
she produced the complexities of
the spiced lamb and eggplant and
peppers, and the simplicity of her
calm cherubic smile. We sat on
thin mats and thick cushions,
under the dozens of posters,
wallpapering the Jihad back
home.

6. A Rose in Every Cheek
We laughed, patted
each other’s shoulders,
and basked in the
smiling approval of his
mother and sister. I
thanked them sincerely,
as we left to visit other
courtyards and other
tents, and other sad
stories of displacement
and asylum.

7. Mound of the Dead
Robyn prodded me more awake at
first pale gray light, pointing to the
moustached brown man in the
powder blue pajamas, wearing a
green shawl, and an iridescent Sindhi
pillbox hat with a cutout forehead.
“They sent a limo.” She said, pointing
to the battered red horsecart he was
standing beside. The cartwheels were
splayed, and retreaded with bits of
nail-on bicycle tire. The tiny gaunt
horse in the harness looked a bit the
same way.
“Mohenjo-daro?” I asked. He
bobbled his head from side to side,
almost imperceptibly.

8. Mound of the Dead
We followed the inlaid
courtyard through to
the gardens, and the
open expanse of the
Badshahi Mosque. The
Moghul emperor
Aurangzeb built it over
a two-year period in
1671. You can see it
from fifteen kilometers
away.

9. Mound of the Dead
Capable of accommodating
over 95,000 worshippers, it
was still the largest mosque
in the world during our visit
in 1983. We climbed one of
the minarets for the view
and the vertigo.
A rickshaw pedaled us back
to the ‘Y’, and the smooth
soporific cycling lulled us all
into a new magnanimity
and forgetfulness.

10. Not France
I emerged from the rooftop
longdrop later that afternoon,
to find an invasion of puffy
grey clouds, ballooning over
the barren snowcapped
mountain ramparts above me.
Down below ran the white
noise of white water, and the
ratchet staccato of the crested
kingfishers in the garden. There
was a wind picking up, but it
wasn’t mine.

11. Not France
Carol was real too. Next
morning she invited us to
accompany her on a jeep
tour of all the regional
Buddhist monasteries,
courtesy of the World Bank.
She said it was the least she
could do for our ordeal in its
little cousin, the previous
day. Our driver, Philip
arrived during breakfast
and, sliding back the last of
our peanut buttered barley
bread, we zoomed off in the
back of his jeep.

12. Not France
I sat crosslegged and transfixed
in a lotus position, under the
Tantric stoop of this mini-
Potala, gazing out at the
breathtaking panorama across
the Indus flood plain, to where
we had been west at Shey,
ahead to Matho in the east,
and Stok Palace to the south.
Inside was a fifty foot high
Maitreya Future Buddha,
which took four years of clay,
copper, gold paint and effort,
constructed for the visit of the
Dalai Lama, thirteen years
earlier.

13. The Road to Happy Valley
One morning, I sat in on a
clinic under the tin roof of the
Tibetan Medical Institute.
Inside the yellow boards, I
watched a Tibetan women
doctor spend almost forever,
listening to the wails of a large
Indian lady in a gold sari. She
put three fingers on each
pulse, tore a hastily written
prescription off her paper pad,
and rolled two eyes at me as
the Hindu hysteria left. She
had more to give the turquoise
and coral patients who
followed.

14. Delhi Belly
The third night I emerged from
the bed room bedroom, I had to
rub my eyes. I had a black beard,
Uncle Albert’s red baseball cap, a
blue t-shirt, white shorts, flip-
flops, and a Kashmiri leather bag.
Sitting, beating Aussie Dave in
chess, was a guy with a black
beard, red baseball cap, blue t-
shirt, white shorts, flip-flops, and
a Kashmiri leather bag. He looked
up, and laughed. Neil worked as a
‘meter maid’ in Whistler, but he
didn’t look like a meter maid. He
looked like me.

15. A Sigh made Stone
I jumped on an oxen-
powered lawnmower, not
expecting the reaction I
received, from the giant
white bullocks collared to it.
They burst into forward
propulsion, and it took me
what seemed forever to
gain their control, and guide
them into a steady
cascading pattern of grass
clipping exhaust, in rows of
my own making. Steer
steering. Robyn brought me
a Limca on a wide turn.

16. Ocean of Milk
“Namaste.” Rang out across
the rice paddies, as we passed
Newari smiles and hands
folded in prayer. It was hard to
maintain our balance and a
consistent forward
momentum with our loaded
packs, on the hot mud paths
between the wet terraces,
especially when the Himalayan
foothill backdrop wouldn’t let
go of our eyes. We passed
long thatched houses with
covered annexes of stacked
firewood. There were baskets
everywhere.

17. Ocean of Milk
The only water was the town tap,
back across the bridge, next to
the thatch-covered woodpile.
Refreshed and drenched and
stripped to my shorts, I squinted
down at the Grand Prix of soap
bubbles, slithering down into a
stream under the holes in the
rock, and up to find the glint off
the gold earrings of two bashful
Nepali sisters in colorful dresses,
watching my every move with all
three eyes. Their mother stood
sideways with a coiled headscarf,
half-amused, clutching her sickle.
All three were serenely beautiful.

18. Ocean of Milk
A steep descent had to be
repaid with a near vertical
climb, along a deep river
gorge. Huge conifers hung off
and onto the cliffs, like a
battalion of green trolls,
charging up the bluff while
trying to keep their heads
down. A tired old suspension
bridge, over the Khudi Khola,
groaned beneath us. The few
tin and thatch roofed houses
that lingered around its
anchors was the Mongaloid
Gurung village of Khudi.

19. Ocean of Milk
A stone staircase on the
other side of the valley took
us towering above the
Marsyandi, cresting on a
spur. The trail undulated up
and down through oak and
rhododendron, and spruce
and hemlock forest, forcing
us into an ascent across a
suspension bridge, and
under a kani archway to
Dharapani.

20. Ocean of Milk
The light had changed so slowly
we hadn’t noticed. Gradually, in
under a week, with just a few
hundred meters of elevation
every day, the edges sharpened.
The lowland glow crystallized
into altitude glint. Clarity
infected every experience.
Climbing hearts pumped the
sludge out of the deep white
matter of previous existence.
The new light ether brought us
into the present, leaving the
grist of guilt and shame and
worry far behind.

21. Ocean of Milk
I sat at 5500 meters for an
hour, waiting for Robyn to
catch up.
When Destiny finally called,
Chaos was still on the other
line. Maybe it was the
altitude. We were both
quiet, and upset with the
situation, the loss of Julie,
and each other. She walked
on over the pass, and I
hiked into oblivion, stuck in
knee-deep snow.

22. Ocean of Milk
The bank guard let me
hold his rifle, while he
posed for a photo.
When Dan and Bert
entered the scene
behind me, he looked a
little nervous, until I
gave him back his gun.

23. Ocean of Milk
The Company stopped in a
sunny courtyard, drinking
lemon tea, and eating
apple pie and 5 star bars.
Revived, we hiked south
out of Jomson, passing
trains of ornamented
horses, blinding white
peaks, brown and yellow
cliffs, and bright green
irrigated fields.

24. Ocean of Milk
I turned to find Jesus in a
saffron robe, and a string
of gauri-shankar rudraksh
beads, strolling barefoot
beside me. The sadhu
seemed to have levitated
over the steepest and
narrowest part of the
canyon, cut through the
solid rock and a short
three-sided tunnel. He
dematerialized in almost
the same instant.

25. Rendezvous with Rama
But Gerry had a problem. To
achieve artificial gravity, he
was spinning his cylinder at
3 rpm, too fast for human
inner ear adaptation, and
dangerous, because of the
Coriolis forces with which
the colonists would have to
contend. Even Sir Arthur
had given his Ramans a
twelve-fold less rotational
force to live in. I was the life
sciences guy. What
happened outside was
fascinating.

26. Rendezvous with Rama
The rotational limit I
imposed on the design
changed its
configuration totally.
Gerry’s cylinder became
the Stanford Torus, the
original donut space
stations of the science
fiction of my youth.

27. The Fountains of Paradise
The plains spread out below,
playing hide and seek with
the drifting clouds, dropping
silently under us. The
caretaker produced two cups
of hot tea from his hut, near
at the top.
Sybe and I found the six-foot
sacred footprint, in a rock
formation near the summit.
Even if it was a human
remnant, the question was
who it really belonged to.

28. Coconut Grove
Our destination on the
Arabian Sea really was
known as the Paradise of
the South. Kovalam
literally translates as ‘a
grove of coconut trees,’
and they seemed to go on
forever. Seventeen
kilometers of velvet sand
coastline, cool breezes
and clear azure water
formed the famous
crescent.

29. Smoking Gorillas
The big ecumenical sign in the
Muslim restaurant beamed
out over our chicken biriyani.
‘All religions welcome, no
discussion of politics allowed,
no washing in the plates.’ A
barber turned up the lights in
his shop, to give me a shave.
Up and over the bridge, we
wandered down a clean
brightly colored market street,
mobbed by packs of
adolescent schoolgirls with
‘Clean Up Bombay’ t-shirts. I
bought a pair of buffalo
sandals.

30. Palace of the Winds
His name was Goru, and he was ugly.
Big and brown, he belched and
farted, and ate with his mouth wide
open. He got his chocolate brown
Indian eyes and his hooked
Rajasthani nose from his parents,
who passed on their vegetarianism as
well. He only answered to Hindi, and
only when he wasn’t eating, smoking
my fags, or relieving himself in public.
He had nits in his disheveled hair,
stubbornness in his veins, larceny in
his lymphatics, and lethargy in his
limbic system. He was the
quintessential native nabob. But,
most of all, he was the best goddamn
camel in the Thar desert.

31. Palace of the Winds
I slept on a real alluvial
bed, soft and sandy,
and surrounded by
flowers and errant
peacocks, The full moon
played luna tunes, in
the still desert night. A
field of starlight shone
overhead. It was the
best night’s sleep of my
life.