Then, suddenly, as composed as a monk and looking as if he'd been patiently awaiting me, there stood Baba, around a curve in the trail. To my relief, a glint of recognition shone from his peaceful eyes at my mention of the elusive highway. Uttering not a single word, he turned and glided away down the footpath, having simply nodded that I should follow him. And yet, even after all I'd been through, I hesitated: a strange creeping tingle pricked at my mind.

Very quickly I realized my monkish saviour was being swallowed by the jungle, and I raced toward the fading form as the forest's thorny fingers grasped at me. As I teetered from my pack's weight and tripped from time to time over the roots of trees, my eyes clung to the steady stranger's back always just ahead and out of reach.

At last we exited the jungle and came upon an enormous checkerboard of inlaid sky mirrors that were race paddies speckled with snow-white herons. We splashed and splished our way over the perfectly square paddies to a distant roadway of asphalt and broad shade trees. At the road a divine scent enchanted my senses, and I looked across the empty road to be dazzled by the magnificence of roses growing prolifically on the front wall of a house.

Leading me past the roses, through a tall gate and under an inconspicuous sign which read The International Guest House, Baba guided me up onto the columned veranda of a beautiful European-styled villa. Completely uninhabited, it was the quietest and cleanest home I'd seen along the Grand Trunk Road.

Waving away my wallet, my guide-turned-host handed me the home's keys and wandered off. Inside the double doors I settled down in a luxury of wicker furniture and privacy, all the while marveling that such a beautiful place could be in such a secluded area, a place where foreign visitors were surely rare. I reclined onto the soft bed and was soon sound asleep.

I took my bath the next morning in the same manner I have had to do all across India: quickly emptying pails of icy well water over my loudly protesting bones. But in this particular bath I had good reason to celebrate, and to even take an extra baptism or two--privacy! For the very first time I had no large crowds of gawking villagers for bathmates. Only me--me!

It was the first bath in a long time that I came away from feeling totally cleansed. Awash in perfumed mist, warm sunrays, and the sparkle of watery diamonds dripping from the petals all around me, I set out to see who was responsible for this secret paradise. My answer lay but three strides away, around the nearest corner of the house in a little garden of gold roses.

Beneath the sheltering branches of a wizened old mango tree stood two ordinary headstones. The one on the left was etched in the flowing script of Hindi, the one on the right in the stoic characters of English. Humbly and soon with tears stinging my eyes, I read its special message: The divine souls of an extremely simple couple of this area, who symbolized the ideal of love, compassion and selfless service to mankind, are resting here in peace.

This place has been constructed by their son in the memory of his most ideal parents, as an expression of his extreme devotion and love towards them. Having founded this memorial he has made a meek effort to give concrete form to his parents' feelings of "welfare of all."

What an honor to have been invited into such a home--one built entirely from love and devotion! And what a strange coincidence that the sole person who held its keys had been there in the jungle when I'd needed shelter the most. I picked two wildflowers and gently placed one on each grave.

That day stretched into three, and never a single rupee of payment was wanted, or even accepted, from my willing pockets. To the Hindus, one of the saddest tragedies anyone can suffer is that of being separated from one's family, particularly one's parents. I have noticed that in India particularly, most sons never leave the area of their parents. And so it was that many farmers and villagers, some with small gifts of fruit or vegetables, visited me at the guest house to let me know in their own subtle way that I was still among a family of sorts. Some stopped by just long enough to ask where I was from and where I was going (as if they didn't already know), while they puffed on one of their crude and bitter bitas (cigarettes.) Others stayed for hours and took their turn trouncing me at chess, deftly capturing all the pebbles we had standing in for absent pawns and rooks. Usually in the background there were laughing children, playing another one of their unusual badminton games in which marigolds were substituted for birdies and hands became rackets.

Eventually I learned bits and pieces about the devoted son who had built the guest house. He had lived in West Germany, having gone there many years before as a young man from a
nearby village, and he had been fortunate enough to land a good job with the government. However, having found the material riches he'd hoped for, he was still plagued by homesickness. Acutely aware of how it was to be alone and in a strange culture, he'd had the home built to shelter and provide comfort to any foreigner who should need it. They would not, he hoped, feel so far away from family and friends as he had all those gray, rainy German evenings.

The night before my departure I sat up late reading the messages of gratitude contained in the guest house's log book. Since the house was but three years old and unknown to all except the occasional foot or bicycle traveler who chanced upon it, there had been only a few guests inside its walls. Smiling broadly, I noted I was the thirteenth, a very lucky number in India, where many associate the meaning "giving to all" with it.

I was also the first American, though most of the writing was in English, the common tongue of the world anymore. One passage held a particular fascination for me, written by another foot traveler, dated July 9, 1984. Shozo Nakamura, a Japanese from a city named Gifu, had written:
I'm walking around the world. But yesterday I got sick. Maybe I caught cold. So when I reached this International Guest House, I was real happy, like oasis in the desert. The rest was in fluent Japanese, of which I know nothing. But then that hardly mattered...I had no doubt that the very same emotions and thoughts of joy that he'd gone on to express would soon be flowing from my very own heart and pen.

Steven