Title: From Camden to Kathmandu
Author: Bruce Berlin
Pages: 190
Genre: Memoir
In 1972, Bruce Berlin — a young poverty lawyer from Camden, New Jersey — set off on a journey with no clear destination. What began as a restless escape became one of the most formative adventures of his life. Traveling overland through Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan at a time when those borders were still open to wanderers, Berlin found himself riding across the Afghan desert in the back of a truck with armed men and their rugs, navigating a world that would soon be transformed by war.
In India, something shifted. Visits to the sacred Buddhist sites of Bodh Gaya and Sarnath planted a seed. Then, in Kathmandu, a chance encounter with former law school classmates led Berlin to a month-long Tibetan Buddhist retreat at Kopan Monastery — an experience he would later describe as perhaps the most important month of his life. Guided by Lama Yeshe and Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, Berlin began a practice that would sustain him for the next fifty years.
From Camden to Kathmandu is a memoir about following the open road before you know where it’s going — and discovering that the destination finds you. Written with the documentary authenticity of real letters sent home, it is the story of a restless young man’s transformation into a meditator, activist, and lifelong seeker.
From Camden to Kathmandu is available at Amazon.
╰┈➤ Book Details:
➺ Title: From Camden to Kathmandu: You Don’t Have to Know Where You’re Going to Get Where You Want to Be
➺ Author: Bruce Berlin
➺ Genre: Memoir
➺ Sub-genre: Motivational Self-Help
➺ Language:English
➺ Pages: 190
➺ Publisher: Our Time Books
➺ Publication Date: October 2, 2025
➺ Formats: Paperback, Kindle
➺ Paperback ISBN: 978-0996623223
➺ Price: Paperback $18.00, Kindle $2.99, FREE with Kindle Unlimited
I am in a remote Afghan village on market day. Hundreds of rifle-bearing men on white horses dressed in white robes and turbans surround me. Our vehicle is the only one in this tiny, nameless place in the middle of nowhere. We stopped here for lunch on the second day of a three-day trek through the high desert from Herat to Mazar-i-Shariff in northern Afghanistan. For most of the journey, we haven't even been riding on a road, just following tracks in the desert.
– Excerpted from From Camden to Kathmandu by Bruce Berlin, Our Time Books, 2025. Reprinted with permission.
Bruce Berlin has been a Buddhist meditator for over fifty years, beginning in the spring of 1973 when he spent a month training with Thubten Zopa Rinpoche and Lama Yeshe at Kopan Monastery outside Kathmandu. He began his legal career at the Legal Aid Society in Trenton, New Jersey, later practicing poverty law at Western Massachusetts Legal Services. A former US Institute of Peace Fellow, he cofounded and directed New Mexicans for a Bilateral Nuclear Freeze and created The Trinity Forum for International Security and Conflict Resolution. He later founded New Mexicans for Money Out of Politics and spent eight years as a senior attorney with the New Mexico Public Education Department. He is the author of Breaking Big Money’s Grip on America and resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Connect with him on social media at:
➢Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bruce.berlin.5
➢Substack: https://openroadopenheart.substack.com/
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