Amalgamated Quickies Division

When, due to circumstances beyond your control, you have nothing to offer but a quickie, you often risk leaving somebody disappointed. Therefore, I shall instead bang out three quickies in a single afternoon, an approach that many find more satisfying. This is not a metaphor. I am strictly talking about blogging. There are no quickies in other parts of my life at all. I can't even have quickies. You see, I'm impoteohgodtheshame

1. Two Trains to Gwalior

I passed through the famed fortress-city of Gwalior near Agra. In the fortress itself, which is quite ruined and empty, the second best part was being a gigantic nerd and hiring a guide to explain to me the engineering feats of the famous palace of the Tomar Rajputs, which was cooled and illuminated with an elaborate system of pipes and mirrors. I love elaborate systems of mirrors, and pretty much anything a geek can do in a middle-school science class. If it cleverly employs magnets, mirrors, or pendulums, you can bet I will be all over it. The best part was the nearly-vanished exterior ornamentation of the same palace, which still features many of its bright blue tiles, and crucially, an entire row of yellow tile duckies.

I then went down into the city and (among other things) visited the famous Raj-era palace of the Scindia Maratha kings. Many people go there to gawk at the dazzling displays of wealth, such as the world's two largest chandeliers. I personally found it most rewarding as a comic gallery of pomp and awful taste. The Scindias to this day are indisputably the most self-absorbed of all the Indian royal families, and THAT is a regal distinction.

I spent a long time in one hallway unsuccessfully trying to photograph the reactions of surprised Indian tourists who entered the passage to see a fabulously gaudy sculpture introducing the locals to the story of Leda and the swan. Invariably they stared for a moment, shuddered in comprehension, and tried to scoot their children away as quickly as possible. And they say Westerners have no appreciation for different cultures.

The most dramatic part of the Gwalior experience however, was the massive difference between the two trains I took through it. Some days before I passed through on a local train to Agra on a 'general ticket', on perhaps the busiest intercity rail line in India. It was like one of those documentaries they show you about the underdevelopment of the Third World, with every passenger myself included forming grotesque human jigsaws with their neighbours and young men hanging to the outside of the train. Family members stood on their luggage and on one another, as fathers held their children to keep them from spilling back off their sacks of luggage and into the open, stinking lavatories. One unfortunate vegetable-seller got trapped by the crowds in the carriage with us and couldn't get off the train for another 100km away from her home. For about 45 minutes I was balanced one on foot, held in place between two strangers' asses, doing my utmost not to slide the three inches over to the fresh pile of banana puke in the aisle.

Not particularly wishing to repeat this exact experience, and acknowledging that, yes, with some advance planning I can use "wealth" and spend more than $1.05 on a train ticket. From Agra back to visit Gwalior I booked the Shatabdi Intercity service. On these trains you get air-conditioning, a cushioned seat, and a free copy of the newspaper of your choice in a variety of languages. A well-dressed man with a silly red turban comes and serves you tea. We arrived in just a couple hours, just in time for me to finish my morning toast. Two fucking Indias.

2. Some Buddhist Shit

From Gwalior I got on a standard crappy night service south and jumped off in the wee hours at some smoky Central Indian town, and rubbed my eyes several times when I perceived there was a gigantic plaster gaping lion's mouth leading into a Durga temple immediately outside the station. By 5:30am I was in Sanchi, an eensy lil' village in the middle of Madhya Pradesh. On top of a small hill is a collection of ancient Buddhist ruins, including a fabulous stupa dating to the time of the mighty Buddhist emperor Ashoka. From the top of that hill it became abundantly clear why very few people from outside India are coming by to visit: it's in the middle of hundreds of miles of empty golden fields, and it was, of course, hot as fuck. However, in deference to the Buddhist inclination to the gentler things in life, the whole hilltop is kept as a lovely little park, and they have bunnies.

3. Place Could Use A Flooding

A typically ass-rumbling day of steaming buses across the summer-parched lowlands of western M.P. finally deposited me in otherworldy Mandu. Arriving in Mandu is sort of like going to an island surrounded by dry land while simultaneously travelling backwards in time (But all travelling in India is backwards! HA!). Mandu is a large plateau surrounded by wide, deep, and precipitous gorges that are crossed by only one narrow spindle of land. Obviously, this is a fabulous place for a fortified city, and so it was under a succession of Afghan kings who turned the entire place into a rich capital of their Central Indian trading kingdom and built themselves a bunch of pleasure palaces hanging on the edge of various picturesque, unassailable ravines. Now the plateau is still remote, and has degenerated into an isolated colony of primitive rural villages clustered in the vicinity of a tiny tourism and market sector. Everyone was amazed to see me here in the summer, when even they would rather be elsewhere. I was repeatedly told to either lock myself in my hotel room or find a large tree to get drunk under, and to return for touristic purposes during the rainy season, when Mandu allegedly acquires water and the color green.

I defied all such advice and promptly fell ill, though I personally blame the local restaurant staff who appeared to be improvising when I asked which items on the menu were "fresh, new, clean, or healthy". In any case, after an exhausting day bicycling around the plateau while the sun gods took a personal interest in me, I eventually had to flop at a chai stall near a distant palace. I noticed everywhere I went that not a single man, cow, chicken, or buffalo could be seen outside the shade, and all (especially the cows) wore an expression that clearly said "Fuck THIS. I am not leaving this tree. Bitches better bring me some food." Aside from your foolhardy narrator, the only beings crossing the baking ground between village loitering spots were the goats, because they are fucking stupid, and the constantly water-hauling village women, because they are oppressed.

Sick and exhausted, I spent another day accomplishing nothing but a torturous 1km breakfast expedition. I almost mustered the wherewithal to write a version of this very post, but was thwarted when I found the only computer within a 90-minute drive and saw that, just as the owner claimed, its feeble internet connection had recently been gnawed upon by desperate squirrels. I returned to my hotel, exotically located behind a disused saloon, and contemplated the shrivelled trees and the dramatic but now bone-dry ravines and I decided hey, what the hell, this could be the one place where being in a monsoon won't just suck, so I'll come back later.



Now, my friends, after yet another truly awful night on a bus (a night spent going nowhere because the fucking axle broke outside some hydration-estranged village in the middle of goddamn nowhere), I am taking my rest and recharging. What does the future hold, you ask? Well, let me tell you. While I lounge about doing nothing and hiding from the sun in my secret lair I am putting the details in for the next, culminating phase of this journey. Look at a map of India, up towards the top a bit. There's a geographical feature you may notice. This summer, Ghostface Buddha takes on the only objects in India that could possibly compare with him in overall eminence...THE HIMALAYAS.