How far would you go for enlightenment?
Journal Entry: Sunday, July 4th, 1999, 10pm.
'I will get by on no more than five hours of sleep each night. I will have to maintain silence throughout the waking hours of each day. I will be wearing the same clothing for thirty days and nights. I won't be allowed to wash except on a bathing day. I will be carrying all my own gear plus about twenty pounds worth of my master's books up steep mountains along impossibly narrow trails on foot in Keds because my shoes have to be leather free. I will have to shave my head just when I've finally learned to French braid my hair without help. Oh boy!'
Not your typical Club Med vacation. But Geri Larkin isn't your typical traveller. In the summer of 1999 she was invited to make a pilgrimage through the Buddhist monasteries of South Korea - the first Western woman to be so honored.
'First Shave Your Head' is a hilarious, heart-warming, heart-wrenching chronicle of her journey. It is both a delightful travelogue for the armchair tourist, as well as a highly personal odyssey of self-discovery for the spiritual seeker.
At the beginning of the trip, she enters a world virtually untouched by the twentieth century and comes face to face with very modern fears, phobias, desires, and preconceived ideas about dharma she never knew she had. By journey's end she emerges - minus a mane of hair - with her charm, grace, and good humour intact.
'First You Shave Your Head' is a "must read" for Geri Larkin fans and anyone else with a taste for the extraordinary.
