The Road East to India

by Devika A. Rosamund

  Thursday 27th November 1975

  I have now lived in the houseboat on the canal in Amsterdam for nearly a week. It takes quite a bit of getting used to! It is damp but we have two gas fires so it is not too cold.

  The houseboat consists of three rooms; one is a sitting room and kitchen combined. We have a little gas stove and a sink with cold water – until the tank on the roof runs empty. It has to be filled with a hose from the furniture shop opposite. The hose has a hole in it so it is quite a job. Bill, one of the guys sharing the boat with us, usually fills the tank. Lenny and I sleep in the sitting room on a double mattress – it is warmer like that! Our blankets are sleeping bags unzipped and an old blanket we found here. I wear thick socks in bed and a jumper on top of my night dress! There is a little ladder down into the second room. Bill sleeps there on another mattress. In the third room are two other guys – one Scottish and one South African. Both are nice – we went out with them a few times for drinks.

  The boat is not very clean inside. We sweep and shake the carpets, but everything is in a sad state of disrepair.

  Now the summer season has finished we are no longer needed at the hotel and all this week I have been doing the rounds of the agencies trying to get work. At last I have found myself a temporary job in a nut factory – I start on Monday. It should be an experience anyway!

  Saturday, 6th December 1975

  I have worked four days in the nut factory now, packing nuts into boxes. It is very tedious and the hours are long, but there are other young people working here too and we are allowed to eat as many nuts as we like. We laugh together in the breaks and that makes it bearable.

  I realise now that this is a strange existence for me – so different from my secure and respectable teaching job last year! I am living a ‘hippy-like’ existence now, but this insecurity is more exciting, more spontaneous than my life before. I have given up that safe security in order to move into the unknown and travel the world and find myself and discover some truth within myself about my own being and about existence.

  However, because I am trying to save money for my trip to India I feel as though I am not really living for the present moment any more, as I intended to do here. I am looking forward towards the future, doing jobs I don’t really like. I wonder, is it right to sacrifice the present moment for something one wants in the future? I had decided before that it was not.

  Friday, 12th December 1975

  The other night on the houseboat I had a strange dream. It was quite beautiful. I saw the world in my dream as a huge brown rubber ball, not quite blown up. I was searching all over it.

  In the dream, a voice spoke to me, and asked me: “What are you searching for?” I replied, “I am searching for the hole in the top of the world, because I know that when I have found it, I will be able to penetrate to the centre of the earth and from there I will be able to fly to the ends of the universe.”

  The voice said to me, “There is no need to search for this centre – it is possible to fly to the ends of the universe from the surface of the world.” I pondered on this but decided to go on searching anyway, so I said to the voice, “I know that, but I just want to try anyway to see if there is a place.”

  Eventually, after what seemed like many days in the dream, suddenly, unexpectedly, I found the place and penetrated to the centre of the Earth. I was very surprised and overjoyed because I did not really know whether such a place would exist. Then the dream ended with music like at the end of a film.

  I know that this dream was influenced by my reading about meditation and my search for myself which is deep within me. I want my life to be such a quest. Nothing else is important to me. I know that if I could reach to this deepest inner part of me, my real self, then I would experience limitless freedom − hence the idea that I could soar to the utmost edges of the universe, of space.

  At the yoga class I met an American guy who is training to be a yoga teacher. He told me he had lived a luxurious, extravagant life in America, but because he had never found happiness or fulfilment, he had come away to seek for it and discovered that happiness can only be found within oneself. He said he had found what he sought for in yoga. He advised me; “Give up the struggle, the fight against life. Let go and flow with the river of life.” What he said touched me deeply.

  I wish I could, I pray I could.

  I am sitting in the library at Cosmos writing this. The books here are so interesting and the room has such a cosy, peaceful atmosphere.

  I want to go on and on learning and discovering all my life. There must be no end, no point in time when I shall say, ‘Now I have nothing more to learn.’ Everything and every experience in life has to be a learning process.

  Amsterdam is really beautiful now with lights and decorations in the streets and a big Christmas tree in the Dam Square. I wandered around the shops today. I love all the little souvenirs: especially the miniature paintings, blue Delft pottery, musical boxes and model windmills. I have bought a musical china windmill for my parents for a Christmas gift. I shall visit them at Christmas.

  Tuesday, 16th December 1975

  Lenny spends a lot of time in the vegetarian restaurant where she is now working as a macrobiotic cook. The people that go there are interesting and unconventional. She is lucky to have such a job. The food is wonderful – all health foods – and I often go there to sit and eat, and drink herb tea. I like to chat to the other people who go in there and read their books, or sit and read my own – or write when I want to express my thoughts.

  One day when I was in the restaurant I saw a book called My Way, The Way of the White Clouds by a spiritual Master called Osho* in India. It is a book of his discourses which he gives daily in Pune*, India. The discourses are about the Tao, which means ‘The Way’. There is a picture of the Master in the book – a wonderful-looking man with a long beard. I read the introduction in which someone has written, ‘Christ is alive and well in Pune.’ Of course, it cannot really be Christ, but perhaps someone like him. I read some of the words of his discourses in the book and was very impressed. He is saying: ‘Be like a white cloud floating in the sky – it goes wherever the wind carries it.’ This he says is Taoism: to be natural, and float or flow with the river of life – as my yoga friend said − to not fight with life or nature; to be grateful for whatever life brings to us, and to live in a state of let-go, in great trust. I love this philosophy. It fits with my desire to wander the Earth; to float like a white cloud wherever the wind takes me!

  As I was looking at the book, one of the American twins – (Lenny’s friends who own the restaurant) – saw me reading it and came up and said: “This is the man I would like to see.”

  Gary and Jerry, the twins, are tall, majestic-looking men with long hair and beards. They are artists and spiritual seekers who spend their nights painting and reading spiritual books. I have heard them say that we are in the Age of Aquarius and that something tremendous is going to happen on the planet. They seem to know so much about spiritual things that even though I have studied comparative religion and philosophy as subjects at college, I feel so incredibly ignorant in their presence. Often in the evenings when I come to the restaurant, I hear them talking about higher states of consciousness and spiritual energy (ideas I know little about) and I sit silently and listen. They seem so wise and I would like to pick up little bits of knowledge from them.

  I have written down the name and address of the spiritual Master, Osho, in the back of my notebook. When I am in India I will perhaps go and visit him and see for myself. I have heard that there are ‘godmen’ in India – enlightened people – and I would love to meet one.

  1976

  Monday, 19th January 1976

  I am working at Amsterdam airport, Schiphol, as a waitress. The agencies give us different jobs each week, but today I have a day off.

  1975 has passed. I’ve opened a new pa
ge, begun a new chapter of my life with this new year.

  My friend, an old school friend called Janette, has come across to Amsterdam to spend a month’s holiday with me here. She has come to stay in our new rented flat in the centre of Amsterdam. We left the houseboat because it was becoming too cold to stay there. The water even froze in our tank on the roof!

  Janette wants to go out and socialise and I have been going out with her to bars and discos. One night we went to a club and danced until 4.30 in the morning! We also went to a place called ‘Melkweg’– I have been wanting to go there for ages. It is similar to Cosmos but a bit more freaky. Some people smoke marijuana in Amsterdam but as I don’t smoke tobacco I would not know how to inhale it. I don’t want to take drugs, but I did try a hashish cake there. It did not seem to have any effect on me but I am not going to try it again.

  Janette met a Dutch guy and went out with him yesterday while I was at work. I want Janette to enjoy it here, but I was living such a purist life before – doing yoga and meditation. I think perhaps deep down I want to go out too and have some fun and live a bit more wildly – to experience this other side of life here. I think it is a tonic for me; at least, I think this is what I need at the moment.

  Tuesday, 20th January 1976

  Now I feel that there is an inner conflict in me. It is almost as if there are two parts of myself that want to be developed, acknowledged by me. Both parts are struggling, yearning to grow, to take me over. I am afraid that in giving way to one, I shall lose the other, and I am afraid that one is so elusive and ethereal that I can never touch it no matter how hard I try, while the other is so tangible, so easy, so obviously exciting – but it could never really quench that deeper spiritual thirst within me. Two paths lie open to me – one is spiritual and the other is worldly. I am sure of that and I want to try them both. Is it possible to tread those two opposite paths – if not at the same time, then can I try them separately?

  One of the books that have influenced me the most in my life, (I read it last year) is ‘Narziss and Goldmund’ by Hermann Hesse. Those two men were both searching for the meaning of life, but one spent his life meditating in a monastery and the other one wandered the Earth in order to learn how to weather life’s storms, to experience joy and pain and suffering, and know life in all its fullness – he also had many love affairs. They both searched for truth in different ways. This is my dilemma – which path to take to find truth, to find peace of spirit, to reach to the centre of my being? Is there not a way to travel on both paths, to experience both?

  Wednesday, 28th January 1976

  I know that there is a state, like another dimension, of tranquillity and beauty and inner peace that exists. Sometimes I have touched it; sometimes I have strayed into that kingdom − I felt that I did on Monday when I was out walking in Vondel Park. It was snowing soft, large gentle flakes all around me. The sky was filled with a heavenly twilight, so peaceful and beautiful. It was like a blessing from above, an offering of peace. It was like a communication with a higher realm. I would like to be able to communicate with that higher realm all of the time. I have heard that yogis who meditate can do this.

  Thursday, 12th February 1976

  Janette is going back to England soon. She says she has enjoyed it very much here – I am glad she has. My other friend Pat has also gone back to her own country, New Zealand.

  I have decided now that I can’t wait any longer to go to India! I am longing to board the Magic Bus – the ‘famous’ or ‘infamous’ bus that travels regularly overland from Amsterdam to India. Even if I don’t have as much money as I would have liked (I will probably have only about £300 altogether) I don’t care. I went to the office to enquire about buying a ticket for the bus. It takes six weeks altogether and stops on the way for several days in major cities to pick up other passengers. The ticket costs £60 one way, but I need extra money for food and accommodation for the six weeks’ journey. Of course, I will stay in the cheapest of places, but that will be the fun of it. I don’t want to travel like a rich tourist; as I said before, I want to experience life at its rawest. I expect that I will need about £100 to get to India and £100 to return on the bus. That will leave me with £100 to travel around India with. I’ll carry it all in cash, English money, with my passport in a large zipped cloth shoulder bag I’ve made myself. I’ll bring a rucksack with as few clothes as possible, a sleeping bag, and books to read on the journey as well as this journal I’m writing, of course!

  I got a pleasant surprise when I arrived at the office and was shown photographs of very modern, comfortable-looking buses. I had imagined that the bus would be like the rusty old one painted with freaky pictures that I have seen parked in a street in Amsterdam. Most other people have also seen and heard about buses like that too – but I was told that the new buses they now have running are not like that anymore. Also, I was told that very few of them break down, contrary to popular belief. Everybody has heard stories of buses breaking down somewhere in the remote desert or lonely Himalayas!

  Lenny has fallen in love with the twins who own the restaurant, so she has decided not to come with me on the bus at this time after all. She says she will come on a later bus with one of the twins – she is not sure which!

  I have now waited so long to go to India that I simply cannot put it off any more. I have been working all these months. Recently I had a temporary job in an icy cold factory making blinds and lampshades. This winter is so freezing cold and I long to get away and start the journey that has been my dream for my whole life. Now I will go, and I have no fear of going alone. I love travelling alone.

  Monday, 1st March 1976

  I have now bought my ticket for the Magic Bus for next week! I went back to the office to buy it, and the girl behind the desk, before giving me the ticket, proceeded to warn me: “India is not the paradise that people think it is.” She gave me a detailed description of a pile of huge insects she had seen swept into a corner of Delhi Airport and other airports while she was there! She has never been on the Magic Bus but once travelled to India by plane and did a two-week tour of that country, also by plane! She also told me about somebody who flew to India, saw the airport, and turned around and came straight back!

  I am a bit squeamish where insects are concerned but if something like that would put me off, then God help me, I would not last long on my travels. I hope I have more guts than that!

  I have never imagined that travelling is going to be a bowl of cherries; I have never imagined that India is going to be a bed of roses! I know there will be difficulties and dangers and adventures on the way and that I will be stretched to my limits.

  Chapter Two

  On the ‘Magic Bus’ to India

  Athens, Greece

  Wednesday, 10th March 1976

  We are in Athens! The bus has stopped here for a few days to pick up passengers after travelling for three days and nights without stopping. There are two drivers and they take it in turns to drive. We have already travelled through Belgium, Germany, Austria and Yugoslavia.

  It’s a long time since I walked out in warm sunshine. For a couple of days before I left Amsterdam the sun shone weakly, giving us cheerful signs of spring at last, after such a long, cold and cheerless winter. I have never seen spring in Amsterdam, but those two sunny days in early March leave me with a preconception of what must be the beauty of spring days in that lovely city. There were flower markets and fruit markets opening everywhere. The canals sparkled in the sunlight, and buds showing green upon the trees gave promise of blossoms. I wandered through Vondel Park again before I left.

  Now I am in Athens I remember Amsterdam with affection. Athens is a big, dusty, noisy city. It has its beauty spots, one of them being the area around the Acropolis and the ‘Placa’ (old part) with its flea market (where I am sitting now), quite Eastern in its wares, embroidered dresses and tunics, leather goods and Greek coffee pot
s, etc. The set-up of the town is familiar to me. I have been here before, and the memory of the streets, and even the Greek letters, comes back to me, like the gradual recollection of a faded dream. It is the atmosphere which is instinctively familiar to me – and the smells! And the cloudless sky. However, I feel uneasy here and even bored. I want to get away. We are leaving tomorrow afternoon.

  My emotions on this trip are erratic. I felt no real sense of adventure actually until we entered Greece. I was busy observing the other passengers with interest. The few English people – so English (!) straight out of the mother country and London, two days ago! I felt quite proud of the feeling that I had at least been living in Holland. I was very conscious of hearing their English accents – one not very pleasant London accent which seemed to be a drawl of its own, all too familiar, as strong as any American accent I’ve heard. Even the Danes sitting in front of me – there are eight on the bus – expressed their dislike of the ‘screeching voice’, and, when I asked, assured me mine was not like that!

  I discovered, though not until we had been travelling for twenty-four hours, that there is a boy from the city of Bath sitting opposite me on the bus. He left school a year or so ago and is now waiting to go to university. I like talking to him. I feel easy with him. I am going to study at Bath Teacher’s Training College next year to complete my Bachelor of Education degree course. I am studying Comparative Religion and Philosophy as my main subjects.