Undercover In India. The Bohemian Spirit Series, #2

"Reading Hosch's e-book was like watching a foreign movie, following along with each exotic scene. I loved the book's action-filled chapters and its spirited message. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the crowded train stations, the streets of old Calcutta, the burning bodies on the banks of the Ganges River, the ever-present roaming cows, the fragrance of sandalwood incense, and the hypnotic chanting.
The tales he told were absorbing and well-written." GKH, Beta Reviewer"Reading Mr. Hosch's memoirs made me feel as if I was part of every scene, whether living the idealistic hippie life in San Francisco or alongside the colorful characters in the ashrams of India. It's the agenda-less storytelling of a trusted friend who never manipulates the reader or leaves anything uncomfortable out of his narrative to make himself look good." RSF, Auteur, Social Media influencer.
A young seeker in 1970 abandons the hippie drug culture and takes up a serious yoga and meditation practice. He meets an Indian swami and tours the US as his loyal assistant. After the tour, the swami convinces him to sell his beloved VW bus and buy a plane ticket to India. On the way, he stops over in London, Cairo, South Yemen, and finally lands in sweltering Bombay, where he is surprised to see cows roaming on the runway.
After a forty-hour train ride across the subcontinent, he spends the next year studying meditation and yoga with a wizened guru, reputed to know the past, present, and future. But when the guru is suddenly arrested on politically motivated murder conspiracy charges, he pivots and enters an obscure monastery with no electricity or running water in the holy city of Varanasi. Mr. Hosch's satirical memoir is much more than a typical guru/disciple tale.
A unique blend of healthy cynicism, insight, and humor, this unfiltered account of his survival as an inexperienced American in pre-tech India perfectly captures the yoga and meditation craze of the 1970s. It's a must-read for serious yoga students and world travelers alike.  ABOUT THE BOHEMIAN SPIRIT TRILOGYA creative kid on the Jersey Shore performs well on IQ tests but struggles in school with undiagnosed learning difficulties; his worst subjects are math and science.
Jersey Goes West opens in 1951 when he is sent away to a Jewish summer camp at four years old and ends in 1969 when his friends are arrested trying to sell fifty pounds of marijuana to a federal agent in Haight-Ashbury. Having narrowly avoided serious trouble, he renounces his life of crime and looks to Eastern philosophy for his future. In his second book, Undercover in India, we see him as a young aspirant at the beginning of a serious yoga and meditation practice.
He meets a venerable Indian swami and tours the US as his assistant. After the tour, the swami convinces him to sell his beloved VW bus and buy a plane ticket to India. Leaving the country for the first time, he stops over in London, Cairo, South Yemen, and lands in sweltering Bombay, where he is surprised to see cows roaming around the runway. For the next year, he lives in the ashram of an all-knowing guru and becomes a trusted disciple.
But when his guru is suddenly arrested on politically motivated murder conspiracy charges, he enters an obscure monastery. He later goes undercover with wandering sadhus in the holy city of Varanasi. The third book of the series, The Fingernail King, chronicles the next twenty years of his life, in which he runs a small but successful business painting Hawaiian scenes on fingernails in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii.
In this e-book, he spills the inside tea on the clever scammers and con artists who make a living cheating naive visitors, year after year.