End of the Road...

...or is it just the start?

A month on the global road:
--16,860 miles traveled by air, including a perfect circle around the globe, heading on an east-bound course the entire way (NYC to NYC) 
--Seven flights
--Six countries, three continents
--At least four different time zones (I've lost count)
--Temperatures ranging from 45F to 115F
--Modes of transportation: Airliner, boat, rickshaw, tuck tuck, tram, train, 4x4, car, van, elephant
--Food: vegetarian, seafood, mutton, beef

--Average amount of sleep per night: 4-5 hours
--Number of currencies: Four
--Terrorist attacks while en route to Dehli: two (both by Maoist Rebels aimed at the railroads. Total dead and injured: 100+)
--Top memories: The burning of the dead in Lumbini. The cleansing of the body in Varanasi, the giant orange swastika a holy backdrop. Monsoon rain and winds pummeling our little boat on the upper Ganges, and a human skull lying jaw up on the banks where we anchored and held onto our ratted rooftop tarp for dear life. Swimming downstream in the Ganges, nearly drowning when we hit a stretch of water so deep, the clear-over-gravel-color river turned to blue. The overnight train to Agra, sleeping beside dozens of Indians, young and old. The woman who rushed the train on a stop from Occha to Agra, slipping between the car and the platform, her right leg cut off just below the knee as the train pulled out of the station. Touching, for the first time, an elephant's ear, its smooth almost silky texture taking me by complete surprise. The nervousness of a rhino cooling itself with mud only a few feet away from where I stood in the back of the 4x4 ...

Next stop...who knows.

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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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Border Crossings: Northern India

(Note: Please excuse the grammatical errors. I'm writing on the run...)


The sweat that soaks my khaki shirt has nothing to do with the relentless heat that covers this land like a heavy, hot water-soaked, wool blanket. I'm at the border between Nepal and India. It's six in the morning. Skies ominously overcast with gray/black clouds that threaten monsoon season rain. It's been raining heavily on and off all night and the narrow road that accesses both countries is nothing more than a thick layer of gooey brown mud that, taken along with the ramshackle single and two-story wood, concrete and brick buildings that flank it, looks more like the setting for a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western.

My guide and I are stopped by a soldier dressed in olive green who bears a World War II era bolt-action rifle over his shoulder and a thick black leather belt around his waist. He tosses our backpacks onto a wood table and begins inspecting them inside and out. India's mega Hindu population gets along swimmingly with its smaller, but major Muslim population. However, no one gets along with the radical Islam component that has snaked its way into the country via Pakistan and other ports of entry. That said, the bags are checked thoroughly.

After looking us over ...up, down, and up again...the solider gives us the go ahead to proceed across the border. I've already made it through Nepal customs and received my stamp. But it wasn't Nepal I was worried about. What's in the back of my mind is all the trouble I got into recently at the American India Embassy back in the States. The short of it is that the embassy wouldn't issue my journalist's visa unless I met with them in person in Manhattan and attended one of their "press lectures" regarding the benefits of the "New Era India." An invitation I blew off entirely. I didn't come here for politics, but something else instead. Originally that reason was to research a new Chase Baker novel, and to write a couple of travel pieces while also writing for the Vox. But now, having spent a little more than a week in this part of the world that will slam you with a million different sensory alerts at once (from the persistent smells of curries to cow shit, from huge, colorfully decorated trucks speeding directly for you, to millions of people who peer at you with their dark, penetrating eyes as if you are the very first westerner they've ever seen), I'm not entirely sure I can put my reasons for being here into mere words.

Trudging through the mud past the many overloaded cars, 4X4s, and trucks queued up before the wood-pole gate, my guide points out the immigration office and, heart in my throat, I immediately go for it.

It's not much of an office. A couple of rooms in a very old building the interior of which is shaded by old wood shutters left over from the filming of Gunga Din. There's a counter on one side, and a wood table on the other. An overhead ceiling fan blows the hot humid air around somehow pleasantly, while behind the counter, a pot of tea boils atop a hot plate set upon an old wood desk that also supports a computer and a Royal typewriter from the 1950s.

There's a middle aged man manning the counter. He wears loose slacks and an even looser button down shirt. He collects my passport, along with those of a half dozen other people waiting to cross over the border. College kids mostly who look like they haven't slept or bathed in weeks. It makes me smile inside to know that I must appear as a much older version of their wanderlust-filled selves.
After filling out the immigration form, I hand the passport back to the counter man. He in turn hands it over to a second, smaller man, who takes it with him to the computer. As he runs the passport over a scanner I see my face pop up on the computer screen. This is it, I think. The moment where they'll ask me to accompany them into the back room where they'll spend hours lobbing questions about my intentions for visiting India. "Why did you not attend the lecture in New York?" the men will shout while blinding me with a single bright white light. Eventually, the tall one will turn to the smaller one. "See if you can get him to talk," he'll say. Then, as the tall man leaves the room, locking the door behind him, the smaller man remove his shirt, bearing a chest filled with scars from knife fights too numerous to count. He go behind a desk and pull something from out of a drawer. A pair of brass knuckles maybe. As he slips them onto his right hand, he'll smile at me, bearing a gold tooth. "So what's the weather like in New York this time of year?" he'll say.

But within a few minutes, something far different occurs.

The little man behind the desk takes hold of his stamp, and positioning it above the page that contains my visa, brings the inky business end down hard onto the page. The little man hands the big man the passport. And the big man, in turn, hands it to me. He smiles politely but genuinely.

"Welcome to India," he says. "I hope you enjoy your stay."

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Check out the first Chase Baker adventure novel, THE SHROUD KEY, and look for CHASE BAKER AND THE GOLDEN CONDOR coming early this Fall. 
 

Want Visa to India? Be Prepared to Wait...and Wait...

Want your India Journalist's visa? Go here ... But plan on waiting in line for weeks...

Oh the insanity.
Over a month ago now, I submitted my paperwork, along with my precious passport, to the India Consulate via a company called BLS International, in order to secure my entry visa to the great Asian land of mystery and enchantment (Couldn't resist that rather dramatic opening). I'll be heading to India and Nepal in June in part to research new material for what will become Chase Baker III, but also to photograph and write a few travel pieces for both the Vox and whoever/whatever will buy them...

...Oops, did I just say I will be working in India????

Scratch that...I will not be working. You see, I can only enter into India as a journalist because, well, I make my living as a journalist and writer. But here's the catch, India will only grant me a visa if it's a journalists visa and only if I make a solemn promise not to perform any journalism while I'm there. Huh? You with me here? Or as fucking confused as I am? 

Three weeks ago, I (along with a crew from The Daily Show) was summoned to the NYC India Consulate where, inside a sweltering basement room cooled by non-effective ceiling fans, made to sign an affidavit swearing I would not practice any journalism while visiting India. That is, unless I agreed to attend a news conference about the upcoming India elections and engage in writing some "positive stories" about them. "Yeah, I'll drop everything and get right on that..."

Well, I haven't attended any news conferences about elections in India, however (and at this point, miraculously), I have been told (via email) that my visa and passport have been processed and, low and behold, approved. But here's the thing: I still haven't received my priceless materials from Fed Ex, even though I've forwarded three separate pre-paid return envelopeds to BLS. That's right, three envelopes. Now I get an email just this morning telling me BLS is about to go belly up in a matter of ummmm, days.

Oh, the humanity...

I suppose I might have to haul ass back down to NYC and strangle someone in order to get my goods back. And then, if I can avoid arrest and have finally made it to India, I will swear to God that the camera in my hand, and the laptop in my satchel, and the notebooks stuffed into my pockets on my bush jacket, are all just for show. I'm not really a journalist and I'm not being a journalist. Who says I'm a writer? I'm just being a stupid nobody, doing nothing, for no good reason.

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Look At Me I'm Walking

Look at me I'm walking.
After three months spent sitting on my ass waiting for my surgically healed foot to heal, I'm not only walking but somehow managing a gimp-style jog that leaves me fairly exhausted after only a couple of miles. A word of warning: When your surgeon sits down with you to discuss an upcoming surgery, listen to him/her. You will spare yourself a lot of grief in doing so. I am such an idiot, I half listened to my doctor and in turn, assumed I'd be back in the gym after only a week or so.

Two weeks later when I had my stitches removed, only then did I realize the full extent of the surgery. I'd had a bunion the size of a walnut removed; a hammer two repaired with two screws, a tendon replaced, and a cracked bone also screwed back together with two more screws. There's a six inch pin that had been inserted in my toe which eventually got removed with the help of a pair of common construction pliers (no shit!).

In a word, my foot looked like I'd stepped on a landmine.

But all the time on my posterior did not go wasted. In that time I wrote the second in the Chase Baker series: Chase Baker and the Golden Condor. I also wrote the first draft of what might become a serial novel called Orchard Grove. I also wrote a third draft of The Breakup. All this, plus a script for Pathological which is being shot as a short movie in Albany, plus my normal journalism duties for Globalspec.

Maybe my foot didn't work, but I used the time to my advantage, and now it's time to get back into some kind of shape for my upcoming field research trip to Nepal and India for Chase III.

When you're down for the count, don't just lie there. Put the time to good use. Otherwise, you'll go bananas.

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