Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Joanne Kyger, near Kausani, India, February, 1962. These are the Nanda Devi peaks, Nandaghunti and Trisul here, not Mt Kailash as mentioned in the letter below. (photo: Allen Ginsberg, courtesy Stanford University Libraries)
“and we took walks and climbed up a few thousand feet to a peak and saw the panorama of inner Himalayas snows – 200 miles of white crags including Holy Mt. Kailash the abode of Shiva and all sorts of mythological Gangotris and Kedcernaths and Badernaths where there are temples near snow and many Yogas and holy men scattered in caves – walking along path near house, three half naked men sitting with fixed eyes and beards cross-legged all afternoon in trance under tree – one with a pet cow with a monstrous deformed jaw his friend – and tin beg cups on the deerskin mat they sit on – fixed bloodshot eyes on one, and Shiva tridents, like little Neptune tridents, stuck in the ground beside them – immobile hours all of them – then we climbed hill and talked to beautiful Jerry Heiserman clear skinned long-hair-like-girl shining-eyes youth who just came down from Himalayas for the spring, in long orange bramacharia robes, he invites us to astral lunch. Lives alone with another Yoga kid who’s washing himself naked in the garden. We tell him about the sitting bloodshots down below on the path – he says “Ah, they’re just advertisement posters for the real yogas whom you can’t see way back in the mountains.” (Allen Ginsberg in letter to Jack Kerouac, May 11, 1962 from Essential Ginsberg, Ed Michael Schumacher)
