TRAVEL WRITING: OPENINGS
It was almost as if the tiger had flicked a switch in the forest. One moment it was quiet and calm – the trees
swathed in webs of early morning mist – the next, the air was charged with tension. Gomati had heard the distant
alarm calls – the shrill snort of a spotted dear, the indignant bark of a langur monkey – and her mood suddenly
changed. She blasted a trunkful of dust up between her front legs, then shook her head so vigorously that I had to
clutch the padded saddle to keep my balance. Soon the air was filled with the pungent aroma of crushed herbs
and freshly-bled sap. We sounded like a forest fire – crackling, snapping… But through all the noise came a single,
piercing cry ´- the tell-tale alarm call of a spotted deer. My guide leaned towards me, “When the tiger moves, the
deer calls”, he murmured. “Web must be close.” The forest was silent; no one spoke or moved.
Neon: you need to know two things about this gas. The first is that it is, in elementary terms, a relative newcomer;
even though it is present in small quantities in the air we breathe, it was identified only a century ago by a French
scientist named George Claude. The second is that, being inert, neon is intrinsically dull. Oh, unless you pass an
electric charge through it, as M Claude did. Do that, and it can light up the desert and dazzle the world.
It is a mild day in the mountains of middle Mexico, a fine day for chasing butterflies or lingering on cobbled side
streets, neither of which I´ll be doing. I am here to sniff sawdust and engage in arcane conversations with old men
in dim, cluttered rooms.
I rent a car and head south-west. As darkness falls on the colonial buildings of Pátzacuaro´s main plaza, I corner a
wizened man named Raúl, who in a few moments will be singing and playing ´Guadalajara´ to a to a restaurant full
of Mexican and American tourists. I nod at his guitar and in my broken Spanish, I say something like: The guitar
you are playing, is Paracho from it, that town of guitars in the mountains?
Now its Sunday afternoon. The big cities and colonial scenery are behind me, and under a sky full of dramatic
clouds, I´m racing along a two-lane highway, passing cornfields, rolling at last into Paracho, guitar-making capital
of North America.
At the rodeo you notice that horses and cowboys are kind of alike. Horses stand around a lot, flicking their tails,
breaking wind, doing nothing in particular. Cowboys are like that. They lean on fences, looking at horses.
Sometimes they spit, sometimes they don´t. With their hats tipped down over their eyes, it is never easy to tell if
they are asleep, like horses on their feet. The similarity disguises a major difference of temperament. Cowboys are
soft-spoken, mild-mannered fellows. In the West, it’s the horses that are the outlaws.
