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.

Quickie (Apr. 25)

It seems the suits in travel-writing headquarters have noticed I haven't done any work for them in some time. Though they seem no less eager to part company than I am, they did draw attention to the fact that my article on Agra had the word DRAFT right on the title, and many of the subheadings read "incomplete". As I am contractually obligated to give a full reporting of Agra, I was forced to return to that vile city, take my revenge upon it, and in the meantime assert my independence once again from the malignant imperial forces of tyranny. It's like "Return of the Jedi" meets the War of 1812 up in this bitch.

So anyways, I dutifully returned to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri and once again slogged about taking photos and writing notes for paragraphs about Mughal tombs. (Sample note: "lame. add more jokes"). Thus, my friends, you are now blessed with Ghostface Buddha's very own pictures of the above-named cities, and guess what, the Taj Mahal looks pretty much as it always has, save for a layer of smog so foul that when you stand by the riverside you can't even see far enough to discern that you are in the midst of a million-plus population city.

It is still mercilessly hot, and so there are actually almost no tourists in Agra at all, and all the vulture-like merchants of the tourist zones are too busy hiding from the heat in darkened stores to bother trying to screw you. It's like the film "I Am Legend", where you walk almost unmolested on famously obnoxious streets, but can safely assume that anyone who approaches you ought to be machine-gunned in the face. Also, as I've hinted at before, my life is about 30% modeled on the film career of Will Smith. Unlike Agra, Fatehpur Sikri has no seasonal mellow. After 24,000km on the road and a second visit to the place, I now confidently report that the modern village of Fatehpur Sikri is home, on average, to the most annoying human beings in all of India, and the upper-extreme outliers are truly a contemptible marvel. Ghostface Buddha may have had to slap a fool.

Anyways, I gotta go for now. According to my sources, I am dangerously close to missing the closing hour of "the only not-very-bad food eatings restorent in Sanchi", and I like my eatings restorents to be not very bad.

4:20 Die Of Heat Stroke Every Day

On April 20th, 2010, in the tranquil village of Orchha, it was 115 goddamn degrees outside.

CHRIST ON A CRACKER. 115 DEGREES?!?!? IT'S FUCKING APRIL

Indian people wave at me from shops and say "Come in! Come in!" Then when I go in they dont even try to sell me things, they just say "Please, sir, don't be outside."

Orchha is a lovely place, truly one of the most beautiful and relaxing spots in all of lowland India. It's the abandoned capital of the erstwhile kings of the Bundelkhand, and now is little more than a minor pilgrimage village surrounded by scenic ruins crumbling in fields, on the riverside, and being swallowed by the dry forests. I haven't a clue how it's stayed so small and lovely when its epic palaces and temples and its not-that-remote location could easily put it the must-see list of India. Maybe it has something to do with it feeling hotter than drinking boiled chilli sauce from a flaming camel's ass.

I had arrived several days earlier, via a local train so dismally slow the peasants around me took to standing in the doorways and washing their turbans. The last few miles had to be covered by comically-overburdened rickshaws that reminded me that motor vehicles subjectively move twice as fast when you're standing tip-toed on the rear bumper.

As I wondered around the sleepy vegetable patches that now cover most of the fortified river island, I noticed that I had sweated through my shirt, through my backpack, and that this sweat on the far, outer side of my backpack straps had evaporated and left lines of salt and the sweaty frontiers. I felt a need to scratch and salt shook out of my arm hairs. I feel like a potato wedge. My forehead was the same, a sparkling white expanse of sodium chloride. My skull is apparently a salt flat. Pretty soon people are going to start testing rocket-powered cars on my face.

I defied the advice of my well-wishing Indian acquaintances, not only because ignoring sensible advice is my custom, but also because Orchha is just a wonderful place to explore regardless of the weather. After much effort, I found it: the perfect spot. I settled down to read in a breezy nook between swaying green bushes on the riverside in an unperturbed nature reserve directly across the river from empty farms and the nigh-perfectly photogenic memorials of the Bundela kings. I reclined in the shade and took to leisurely reading a collection of essays on modern India (chapter 1 summary: holy hell, Bihar is awful). After a couple hours I reluctantly turned in, because I had just finished my seventh liter of water for the day and felt that not needing to piss after consuming that quantity of fluid probably signalled some kind of impending medical emergency. I would have to be evacuated to a real city by rickshaw, and in a weak condition I would probably have to be tied to the roof. It was either that or die on the forest for my undiscovered corpse to become the local deers' salt-lick, so I shuffled back to my blissfully dark cell in the village.

It was about 111 degrees when these events transpired. The next day, I hiked out in the opposite direction from the village to see the abandoned Lakshmi temple and its fabulous Bundeli paintings. It was then that I checked the meteorological data in the newspaper and thought to myself "Dear God, and it's still only April. What day in April is it, by the way? Let's check the top of the newspaper....The 20th? Oh dear. I almost forgot." Suffice to say, on April 20th (for complicated reasons relating to electromagnetic currents and the counter-longitudinal azimuth of the pole star), it was of paramount importance that I go smoke some weed.

This presented a bit of a dilemma, as I had already budgeted the afternoon to visiting a palace in the village of Datia. Then it ocurred to me...what's the conflict? I hopped onto a bus right away. The palace at Datia is something of a fantasy castle, a ridiculously tall Rajput fortification that begins with several levels of pitch-black chambers at the bottom, passes up through a labyrinth of staircases, and climaxes in an almost Escher-esque courtyard with a gigantic keep in the center which can only be summited by navigating a series of hidden passages, balconies, flyover walkways, and hard-to-find, locked-up stairwells. Nobody comes to Datia, and in this heat, I was literally the only visitor in the logbook, so I had the citadel all to myself.

"But wait," you ask, "you said the stairs of the inner tower were locked up?" Well, they were locked up. The empty palace of Datia was the perfect place for me to combine my two favorite criminal offences, the second being breaking and entering. I actually have something of a history of breaking into castles. The most memorable such adventure culminated in a frenzied nighttime escape through the rain on a wooded hillside in a desperate bid to evade the Luxembourg police. But that didn't happen in India so it's besides the point. Anyways, it just so happened that one critical staircase tucked away within a giant stone pillar was sealed shut with nothing more than a metal door with a twisted metal wire holding it in place. The wire was too thick to untwist with my bare hands, so I began digging in my backpack for some kind of tool. For reasons long since forgotten, there was a toenail clipper at the bottom of my bag. I examined its filed edge and could positively feel the mischievousness glowing in my eyes, or maybe I was just high. In any case, if prison inmates can use a file to break out of jail bars in weeks or months, I could certainly get through a 1/8" cable in a an afternoon. All I needed was patience, and I had several lumps of it in a small plastic bag.

Finally, after what seemed simultaneously like aeons and moments, I had sawed through enough wire to snap it by brute force. I clambered into the forbidden stairs, completely failing to contain my giggles, and loosely eased the door into place behind me. Even in my hyper-alert state of paranoia, my main concern was that somebody's dog would come sniffing up after me, lured by the trail of salt I imagined stretching behind me like an edible, biscuit-seasoning version of Ariadne's thread.

So, for the second day in a row, I spent much of my day listlessly pretending to enrich myself in a tranquil spot marked by architectural beauty, and for a second day in a row I eventually retreated because I was as parched as a trout in a tumbleweed. Once again, I have had my way with the primitive defensive systems that just can't come close to keeping Ghostface Buddha out of a fucking castle. And no one shall ever know. Except you, I guess, or anyone who can read the cached draft of this post, like I guess anyone with a grudge against me and subpoena powers. What's that sound? Are those sirens? Shit...fuck....shit....where are my firebombs? IT'S TIME TO SMOKE SOME BACON.