Ali Baba and the 40 Mexican Novelists

Children under the age of 12 are in unanimous agreement across India: my name is Ali Baba. This information is usually conveying to me with a wide grin and stroking of the beard they might have in a decade or so. They are the only one's who don't buy my story. I've been sowing disinformation...telling everyone I am a Mexican novelist, and occasionally when my bullshit reserves are getting depleted I admit I am a Mexican travel writer. The kids see right through this act. Clearly I am Ali Baba.

Swastikas and camels are both common in India, but I was still incredibly surprised to see swastikas painted on a camel. Perhaps it is the black paint on a living animal that gives the design an alarming tatoo-like quality, as if this was an angry, prejudiced camel. It seemed as though the swastikas should be accompanied by other tatoos reading DROMEDARY POWER, or BACTRIANS RAUS.

I would also like to point out that the 50 rupee bill is the purple one. Cool people know what's up.

Finally, it occurs to me that there is no excuse to plaster a city with ads for "Anus' English Academy". Come on Anu, you run an English academy, you should know better.

Yesterday was my first extended bus ride, a local route through the countryside to the abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri via Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. There are many technical high schools around Agra, meaning the buses quickly become overloaded with teenage boys who, like their counterparts the world over, are the most obnoxious things imaginable. I haven't spoken to a single Westerner since I got to India but this bus treated me to my first encounter with the Japanese. They were clearly in utter misery on this loud, hot bus in the chaos of India. One retreated behind a scarf over her face, anxiously tapping away at some device with an electric stylus while her friend simply cowered, foldering her big floppy hat over her ears. She whispered quietly, perhaps begging her higher power to deliver her back home to a land with orderly lines and digital toilets.

The city of Agra is utterly revolting. It is half slum, half industrial hellscape, and it is a modern Venice of open sewers. Distant glimpses of the Taj Mahal and the liklihood of being able to stretch this city out into multiple articles and get mad bank from the bosses are the only things giving me reason not to dread my impending return.

With only one street, you'd think that the village of Fatehpur would offer some peace and quiet. Ha. One street is plenty of room for traffic jams and general insanity in India. Here motorcyclists and auto-rickshaws must merely content themselves with mostly directing their compulsive honking at camels and horsecarts. It's an odd little town. Traveling as a Mexican usually throws the nags off their routines, but here when I say I'm from Mexico people start shouting "Acapulco! Acapulco!" Turns out this town has a tradition of cliff-jumpers who earn their living by diving from the walls of the mosque into a shallow pool. The Acapulco divers are admired so greatly that many of the villagers have learned Spanish. I've picked up a little Hindi, and I had a very entertaining trilingual conversation with a 12-year old.

The monumental old city of Fatehpur Sikri above the village is truly astounding. Its massive scale is befitting its status as an old Mughal imperial capital, and the stonework is the finest I have seen anywhere in the world. I can't go into too much detail about the architecture because I blew my literary efforts on my work article and I'm really not supposed to be releasing that content publicly. Anyways,in short it is a whimsical but incredibly potent mishmash of Hindu, Muslim, Jain, and Buddhist structural elements into a compelling architectural vocabulary. Fatehpur Sikri is awesome. More people should go there.

I've accumulated a small traveling library. I brought some guidebooks for India and Nepal with me. After a successful trip to the bazaar I now am the proud owner of the following titles:

1) Cambridge Self Hindi Teacher: A Step By Step, Practical Simple, And Scientific Approach For Mastering Hindi, Equally Useful To Foreigners, Tourists, Businessmen And Students

2) Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Strategems To Reduce Dramatically The Egregious Misappropriation Of Seeds From Your Birdfeeder By Squirrels

I'm about to get on a bus to Agra, the lion's den of Indian tourism. The village imam prayed for my safe travels, but I don't need God's help. Agra bitches is gonna find Ghostface Buddha is more than they can handle. GAUTAM CLAN AIN'T NOTHING TO FUCK WITH.