A Dangerous Place

The train is late leaving Orchha.
Hordes of people wait in the station looking to get somewhere else. Ceiling fans mounted to platform shelters attempt to cool the stifling air but manage only to push it around. Air that makes your clothing stick to your body even at six thirty in the morning. The flies are relentless, as is the smell of stale urine and rotting garbage.

The train that will take us to Agra is late. But when it arrives, it's a mad rush to get on and to get off. People's very lives seem to depend upon this crucial transfer from ticket holder to train passenger, from passenger to the newly arrived.

I squeeze into a car marked B-1 represented in the white hand painted script of several languages. I step over suitcases, bags of onions and potatoes, sleeping children, and bodies everywhere. Someone is sleeping on my seat. An old man. He sees me coming, gets the gist of what's happening and gets up. He leaves, never to be seen again.

I set down my bags, pull my hat over my eyes, fall asleep.

An hour later, the train arrives in another station. It's the same deal. Masses of people waiting for the train. Men dressed in loose, bland colored clothing and sandals. Women dressed in colorful sarees, their rich black hair protected with thin veils, their black gem stone eyes accentuated by the blood red mark placed between them in the same manner as Catholic ashes.

The train whistle blows. Not everyone has boarded the train yet. I'm staring out the window when my eyes lock onto a woman who is beginning to panic. She's also dressed in a colorful saree and a veil. She's waving her hands in the air as if this gesture will make the conductor stop the train just for her. But instead the train begins to move. She runs for the still open door, but falls off the platform onto the tracks. The train doesn't buck or make even the slightest of odd movements or sounds when it cuts her left leg off. There are only the screams and shouts of the witnesses on the hot platform. The train stops. The woman is pulled up off of the tracks, her stump bleeding, the amputated leg left behind.
 
My fixer and I rush outside to see what we can do. But of course we can do nothing. Those who attempt to help the woman run the risk of making the situation worse, and even facing an inquiry of the law should that happen. The woman lies on her back, her hands raised over her head. No one does anything to help her. Her blood stains the hot platform. Soon it will attract the flies.

My fixer turns to me.
"There is a hospital here," he says. "Nearby. But it will take a long time for them to get here."
He shakes his head sadly, and turns.
I follow him back into our car.
As we sit back down, he turns to me once more.
"After the train leaves the station," he says, "they will retrieve her leg."

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Travel Alert: It's Now Open Season on Americans Heading Abroad

This a warning to all Americans traveling outside the domestic US. You are in danger.

In the wake of the Obama Administration's negotiations with the Taliban to free Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl from his five year POW captivity, you will now have a price on your head. You will be fair game for any Al Qaeda linked or inspired group or even individual who wishes to not only fill his or her pockets with American greenbacks, but also in the process, perhaps work up an exchange for a radical Muslim terrorist now under detention at Gitmo. You know, your life in exchange for the life of a mass murderer.

I'm not about to get into the politics involved here or the timing amidst the VA scandal or the horrid foreign affairs speech Obama delivered last week to graduating West Point cadets. I'm not going to get into the fact that going forward with the release without giving Congress 30 days notice is illegal. I'm not going to comment on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's optimism that the prisoner exchange (five terrorists for a single POW) “...will present an opening” of further negotiations between the US and the Taliban (Huh? Since when did the Taliban go from terrorist organization to sovereign nation status?). I'm not even going to get into the fact that Bergdhal was not only drunk when he was captured by the Taliban, he had drifted far away from his post in what some fellow soldiers described as an attempt at "desertion," and that just prior to his "capture" he wrote to his parents, I'm “ashamed to even be American.”

I'm not going to get into any of that.

But what I will say is this: American's traveling abroad and especially alone, must now act with extreme vigilance, which means if it's possible to have eyes installed in the back of your head, do it. Obama's America has shown itself not only to be open to negotiations with terrorists but extremely willing to continue to do so (Short-timer Obama Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to spin his way out of using the "N" word during this morning's press briefing due to the fact that we're dealing with an American POW here and not a civilian hostage, but his argument was profoundly and disturbingly weak. A negotiation is a negotiation no matter what you label it. No wonder he's getting the hell out of Dodge).

Very likely, Obama will have his chance over the the course of his remaining two years to practice his new found craft of negotiation and what amounts to collaboration with the terrorist network (if collaboration seems too strong a word, remember, the unknown sum of money we also paid out to free the soldier isn't going to go to new hospitals and schools. It will go to the Taliban fighting machine.)

I travel abroad upwards of three to four months out of the year. Next week I'll head to India and Nepal and while terrorist activities aren't nearly as rampant in these places as say, nearby Pakistan, the opportunity exists for something bad to happen now that open season has been declared on US citizens. Not even travelers visiting seemingly safe places like Rome, Paris, and London will be immune.

Perhaps it's time the major media stopped hiding behind a cloud of political correctness and fear of being labeled racist by making Barack Hussein Obama II accountable for what will surly become some magnificently ill-fated foreign policy decisions that achieve nothing more than undermining America's international interests and its overall security. But then, what the hell, the guy we didn't "leave behind" is ashamed to be an American. I can't help but wonder how Obama truly feels about being an American.

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