My long Trip to India

Lars van Rome was born in 1950. From an early age he was influenced by the creative environment of his parents, who worked in education. In 1968 he began studying to become an art and history teacher, but dropped out at the end of 1969 to pursue more creative pursuits. He wrote his first poems, which were published in 2011. In 1970 he transferred to the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg, where he intensified his passion for art. In 1971/72 Lars van Rome undertook extensive travels throughout Europe. In 1973 and 1974 he found himself in India and crossed the Middle East and Afghanistan three times with a sleeping bag and a oneman tent. In the Himalayas, not far from the Tibetan border, he settled in a mountain hut for many months. A formative experience for him was a meeting with Lama Govinda, his role model and the author of the bestseller The Way of the White Clouds. After a short period of military service and subsequent civilian service, Lars van Rome married in October 1977. The marriage ended tragically in 1979 with the death of his first wife. But fate gave him another great love: Gila, his second wife, with whom he spent 45 happy years until her sudden death in October 2024. Since then Lars has been struggling with a deep crisis of meaning and purpose in his life: severely disabled and plagued by severe depression, he now lives alone with his faithful dog Artus.