Distancing myself from Bombay, I went first to Ajanta and Ellora, as any good tourist ought to do. I reached Piparia, a small town in Madhya Pradesh, more by chance than by design. Here I met an American, Bob Wilks, working as a Peace Corps Volunteer drilling tube-wells, etc. That was my first experience of rural development in India.

From Piparia, I went to nearby hill station Panchmarhi. Trekking with a guide to a forested hilltop, I was initiated into what it feels like to share a forest with big predators. I continued to Khajuraho, Agra, and Delhi. From there, following the hippie trail, I went to Benaras and Sarnath, and then to Nepal

In Nepal, I went trekking from a place near Kathmandu to Gorkha, and from Pokhara to Jomsom. Many people used the beautifully laid-out and well-maintained trails, but it was the porters who defined the tracks. Almost any house along the route offered a place to stay for the night, and some food or tea.

I remember sleeping on the floor with chicken running around, and with the coolies, whose soles were hardened by walking barefoot. I think I can vouch for the fact that one morning I saw a coolie rising from his sleep and getting to his feet strapping his heavy load to his forehead with his headband in one movement. He hit the road straight from sleep. No stretching oneself, no morning tea, no beedi, no gossip.

I travelled without a camera, Though I was a birdwatcher, I also did not carry a binocular or a field guide. When on a few occasions, I saw a Lammergeier (Bearded Vulture) gliding over a hill top, it came as a surprise.

While in Kathmandu, I briefly met up with Hannah and Ole Nydahl, whom I knew from Denmark. They were among the first Western converts to the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, and they established close relations with the head of the lineage, the 16th Karmapa. Most Westerners “embed” themselves in Hinduism or Buddhism as lay followers, or occasionally as monks, without attaining leadership roles or becoming leading exponents of their chosen faith.

By contrast, Ole and Hannah went on to establish hundreds of Buddhist centres across the world. Arguably, they have been the most important Danish religious entrepreneurs in recent times. Ole did lay claim to the title of “Lama”, but his success as a preacher was not built on his formal credentials.

At the death of the 16th Karmapa in 1981, a succession dispute broke out within the lineage. The Nydahl’s supported the candidate least favoured by the Chinese communist party. Similarly, in his speeches, Ole has repeatedly criticized Islam. Thus, he has been an anti-totalitarian, charismatic teacher of a Western Buddhism based, often uneasily, on Tibetan monastic traditions.

In a sense, he has been a “Track 3 diplomat”, creating new bridges between Tibet, India, Eastern and Western Europe, Russia, Mongolia, East Asia, Latin America and the US. Ole has always preferred life in the fast lane. Non-academic and sporty with the reputation of a womanizer, he still carries on teaching Buddhism despite a serious accident in a parachute jump in 2003.

Hannah had a more scholarly bent of mind. She learnt enough Tibetan to allow her to act as translator for several Tibetan monks at a juncture, when few of them knew English. She travelled widely, spending time occasionally at the Karmapa International Buddhist Institute in New Delhi. She died in 2007.

Though I was into Buddhism and knew Ole and Hannah from Denmark, I did not join up with them. Instead, on leaving Nepal, I went trekking in Himachal Pradesh with Lars Mikkelsen, whom I also knew from Denmark. We crossed the Rohtang Pass by foot, and reached as far as Keylang in the Lahaul Valley by various means of transport.

There were no Lonely Planet guidebooks in those days. The inspiration for the trek came from a book entitled “Bøj dig for Shiva” (Bow Down to Shiva) by the Danish writer Sten Kjærulff Nielsen, who travelled overland to India and Southeast Asia in 1960-62.

He was a religious seeker expressing his dissatisfaction with Western materialism in much the same terms as I, and many others, were later to do. He was also a hardened, and sometimes foolhardy, trekker. His ill-prepared and death-defying tryst with the Drati Pass makes chilling reading. It rhymes with his conclusion in the book that Vishnu’s power only lasts as long as Shiva allows.

Lars Mikkelsen stayed on in India to become a student of Tibetan Buddhism in Dharmsala. Nowadays, he posts wonderful photographs of Californian landscapes. I returned to Europe along the overland route, arriving at the Danish border in August 1970. The last entry in my travel notebook reads:

“There is no India – there’s only here

And no time – only now”

That proved to be a truth with modifications.