lass threw back a general invitation to a party that night with some of her college friends who were doing the “summer job in Tahoe thing.”
Rebecca and I were inseparable, although sometimes only in spirit, from that night on. She gave her employer two weeks notice and joined me in the Bay Area. Early in our relationship together, a bit of a hint of a previous romantic crush began to leak into our conversations. Though she had never met him, it seemed (to my ever more acute ears) that she had an infatuation with Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead. I knew a way to stomp any further thoughts of him out of my new love’s head. I wrangled an invitation into one of the last of the Wales/Garcia sessions and said I was going to bring a big fan. My plan was, at some point, to throw a few leading lines to Howard Wales that would set up one of his bitter, twisted remarks, hopefully, about Bobby Weir … “chinca, chinca.”
When we got to the studio, however, it was not the first, nor the last time, that I would see a musical collaboration that had changed totally and completely. Being in Tahoe and focused on the teachings of the lama, I hadn’t known that Jelly Roll Troy had been in a coma as a result of a gastro-intestinal attack. Though Jelly had recovered, there were near-death consequences. Jerry Garcia had brought John Kahn in to replace him on bass. Garcia had quite obviously taken over leadership and direction of not only the musicians but the recording sessions. He was pushing hard for completion of the new album. There were no Bobby Weir “chinca, chinca” jokes from Howard, so I foolishly and childishly blurted Weir’s name, caught myself and shut up as the session ended. Garcia casually replied that they always put Weir in the front-middle of the Grateful Dead promotion photos because “Bobby is the best looking guy in the band.”
Chapter Five
“There is a Bazaar where everyone seems to be buying and selling things from all over the world, and you meet all kinds of people. It is as noisy as hell and very dirty but a very nice and interesting place in a lovely valley.”
A CHINESE TRAVELER, 700 AD
ASIA, 1972
After the unrelenting difficulty of travel across India, part of which included the specter of war, Kathmandu exuded a feeling of welcome. Our friends, Bill and Patty and Ted and Cathy, were already there as previously agreed. We checked into the Snow Lion Hotel, famous for being the headquarters of Sir Edmund Hillary at the time he undertook his first successful ascent of Mt. Everest with the Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. Other hotels had their own history and attributes. The black market money exchange was in the Panorama. Hash and ganja came by room service at the Inn Eden.
I began searching for horses to provide local transport and we moved into a house known as the Double Dorje in Bodha. Horseback riding offered not only a pleasurable means to take in the remarkable scenery; it also served well during our forays to and from the commercial center.
Bodha is one of the more isolated corners of the Kathmandu Valley where Bill, Patty, Ted and Cathy had taken up residence. It was about eight miles from the city center of Kathmandu. Bodha is home to a giant stupa built at the time of the Buddha’s death and one of the eight most revered spots in the Buddhist world.
The giant eyes on top of the great stupa structure lend a certain beneficence to the surrounding area. Shops selling chai and chaat, prayer flags, singing bowls and cymbals encircled the stupa. Pilgrims to the holy site ritually circumambulated the shrine.
Life was very simple and very primitive. It was necessary to take appropriate precautions to stay healthy. Going to market, carefully shopping and cooking, boiling water, and house keeping were necessary activities and yet there was still plenty of time for enjoying meals with friends and exploring the exotic culture. The whole valley ran out of food about eight at night and provisions would not be available until the trucks arrived with produce the next morning.
Bill and I purchased Russian-made motorcycles. There was practically no traffic, dirt roads were the norm and I cannot remember even one traffic light.
One day, the Hog Farm bus, with Wavy Gravy as its admiral, limped into Kathmandu, infusing the scene with a whiz-bang but weary energy. The grueling trip up the steep mountain road was not achieved without difficulty. Nepalese bus drivers enjoy pointing out to the Western tourists the unreachable remains of all types of vehicles that didn’t make it across, including other buses with less astute drivers. Unfortunately, Wavy and his wife, Billy Jean, would soon have to leave for a U.S. hospital due to Wavy’s bad back. One of the Hog Farmers was Dr. Larry Brilliant – a genuine M.D. and counter-culture hero, and he insisted Wavy go home.
Soon after the Hog Farmers arrived, a Mercedes-Benz van, driven by a guy known as German Ted, pulled into the stupa area. He and his wife, Tory, had with them the first Afghan mastiff dog that I had ever seen, an incredibly fantastic specimen of the canine world. I approached Ted and found out that he had acquired the dog in Afghanistan where the breed was rare and had, for centuries, been guard dogs for the caravans. I determined then that I would, someday, have one of those proud, majestic beasts.
It was at this time in Kathmandu that we all became aware of the plight of the Tibetans. Thousands of Tibetan refugees were fleeing to Nepal from the Communist Chinese takeover of their country. They were living in mud and squalor in tents all across the Kathmandu Valley. They nevertheless seemed to us to be very bright, happy, energetic people, exuding sheer goodwill, despite their hardship. They drew all of us into their lives and we found ourselves wanting to help them.
But first, I began a quest to find some hash to potentially smuggle to Amsterdam. Since it was legal, I had very few problems obtaining it; but the Nepalese were quite adept at controlling its leaving their country. Nonetheless, in my explorations, I established some valuable connections with customs officials and other government appointees who would prove beneficial in the future in other ways that had nothing to do with hashish smuggling.
Our home, the Double Dorge, was a sprawling 150-year-old structure that, like all houses in the valley, had ceilings that were less than six feet tall. Hog Farm bus rider, Milan Melvin, shared half the house with us. Milan had a long, checkered history on the scene. He was one of the first underground disc jockeys to play rock and roll music on FM radio in San Francisco in the late ’60s. One night, on the air, he made the startling announcement that he had been an FBI informant infiltrating anti-war activists. After a personal 180, Melvin married the sister of Joan Baez – Mimi Farina. While the marriage was short-lived, it did give Milan an odd credence that weighed against his former informant career.
Our next-door neighbor was an attractive Canadian woman dubbed “Buddy Lynn” for her easy manner with males. She introduced me to General Wangdoo. The General was one of the heads of the Khampa resistance – guerillas who were fighting on behalf of Tibet and funded by the CIA. They were located in the Mustang Province at the outermost reaches of the Nepalese/Tibet border. I spent afternoons at Buddy Lynn’s Bodha house, fascinated and intrigued by Wangdoo’s tales of life and the battles that he had fought, which were less militarily significant and more a thorn in the side of the Chinese Communists. His story began with the CIA “recruiting” eight teenage Tibetan boys to train them for high altitude mountain work. In 1959, the freshly trained teens were parachuted back into Tibet with radios strapped on their backs for the purpose of starting the first resistance cells. According to General Wangdoo, he was the only one of the eight who actually survived that first drop. Also, it
