trip to a more exotic land. I had been gathering ideas from long term Saudi colleagues about some of the more interesting places to visit. I had decided to fly to Kenya and Tanzania and possibly climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Plans were proceeding to this end with the assistance of a most obliging travel agent in Jeddah. But the travel agent kept bumping into snags with visas and flight availability. So, just two weeks before my scheduled departure, I heeded the advice of this Indian travel agent and decided to go to Kashmir instead. My family in Canada still expected Africa to be my destination. Little did any of us know what was in store. This was the time when Indira Gandhi was India's leader and the Indian National Army had recently entered and bombed the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the most sacred shrine in Sikhdom. To the Sikhs this was sacrilege equivalent to the horror Muslims would feel if the Kabala in Mecca was bombed by radical Christians or the outrage Roman Catholics would suffer if the Vatican was taken over by Muslim extremists. Inside a Houseboat All this was far from my mind as I settled into a houseboat on Nagin Lake in Kashmir. Coincidently, the houseboat which I shared with fellow Canadians Don and Jane Perry was named the 'Canada Houseboat'. Don was also working for Bell Canada International and he and Jane were stationed in Abha, in the mountains in the southwest of Saudi Arabia near the