To be accurate, road and rail trip, but I always like the sound of “road trip.” It was time to leave Indore and head for Agra and hopefully, the Taj at full moon. A three hour bus ride to Bhopal, that, of the infamous Union Carbide debacle that killed thousands of people and then to Agra.
India has so many different methods of transportation it is fairly easy to get from one place to another depending on your desires for comfort, both mental and physical, and speed. Even Indian nationals hire cars to get from one place to another so that they can be picked up and dropped off with ease. Inter city buses go from the downright basic to luxury…you can tell the basic ones because of the bars on the windows, if there are windows, which are always open and also by the seeming lack of maintenance. Luxury air conditioned reclining seat buses make for a far more comfortable trip albeit a more expensive one…still the three hour bus ride cost only $12 and it certainly took the worry out of sitting in the back seat wondering how long we can go before our driver runs over somebody.
So, off we set comfy in our seats and within 10 seconds, we learned the downside of such buses…a very, very loud horn that will blast you off the road from its force and one that will punish you with deafness should you choose to ignore its warnings….It’s loud, loud and persistent…anything that dares get in your way is fair game. And because we are near the top of the food chain of transportation, we can inflict our will on whoever we choose, even if it means passing a truck when there is a car coming directly at us and forcing that car totally off the road onto the shoulder…this is not to say that the oncoming driver took defensive maneuvers like slowing down….no, but he did move onto the dusty shoulder. Cars, rickshaws and cycles/scooters all back off in deference. However, the true king of the highway is the long haul semi…they are really long and take no shit from anybody…they do not stop and wait their turn, they are numero uno and they wear that label with pride. They will simply pull out and totally block the road as they make a u-turn in narrow lanes, cross the medium to head in the opposite direction or any other thing that might suit them.
With those ground rules solidly understood by all, we merrily headed down the highway. Past women all squatted down cutting the ripe wheat or rice stalks and stacking them neatly for threshing. They work large fields and we didn’t see any mechanical equipment until the very end of the trip and even that wasn’t in use. It a very labor intensive, demanding work and, yet, it is the lifeblood of countless millions of people in this country who still to this day work very up close and personally with mother earth.
Along the way we passed beautiful villas/estates…brightly painted and looking picture perfect, while just outside the white concrete wall sits an absolute hovel. Semi-shredded tarps held up with poles making a makeshift tent where inside pots and pans and one’s total worldly goods are sparsely scattered within Stacked piles of dung(from cattle and water buffalo) have been molded into large, round platter-sized patties and are drying in the sun to be used as fuel for cooking for the most part. Ragged children play blissfully outside. You can’t help feeling that the cycle of poverty never gets broken and is just endless. The contrast between the have lots and have nothings here in India is very evident without moving your head from side to side.
Women in faded saris pass walk on the edge of the highway carrying loads of assorted goods on their heads with a small padded cushion for some level of comfort…huge bales of organic material are carried…sticks, grass, bags of potatoes and firewood, amongst others. The one that gets my prize was the lady who was toting a milk container which was topped with a smaller metal container…she was a double decker and never lost a drop.
A couple of times, herds of several hundred goats and sheep were herded down the highway kept in a sort of organized form by red-turbaned shepherds with long sticks who let offending wanderers know that was not to be done. After moving down the highway, it is time to move to the other side so now all four lanes are totally blocked and nobody moves, except for the she sheep and goats and they ain’t too quick about it.
Just when you think that has topped the chart, here comes a camel caravan looking like something out of Bukhara on it’s way to Khiva on Uzbekistan’s silk road. The dress of the camel drivers doesn’t look any different from what it would have been centuries ago. A little boy rides atop one of the camels in a type of saddle that functioned as a platform with a canopy on top of that for protection from the sun. In the back of the train, another boy rode with a dog and a lamb nestled beside him for their journey to who-knows-where.
I personally have no quarrel with the cultural and religious dictate that cattle are sacred beasts, but I do wish that the cattle would learn to obey traffic lights…in cities this is a severe cause for further congestion, as if Indian roads needed any further complications…the cattle are remarkably road savvy, true indications that they are indeed reincarnated and have some innate sense of how the whole system works and just saunter where they like when they like.
And continually the bus either passes or is passed by families on one motorcycle…the young boy almost inevitably in front of dad where he can learn all the ins and outs of almost getting killed but making it safely to destination. Smaller children or girls are sandwiched between dad and mom with her sari blowing back off the motor cycle like some colorful flag on the move.
Finally, however, we made it to Bhopal and visions of what happened here in 1984 still can haunt the mind.
In February, 1984 a methyl isocyanate and other chemicals leak at the Union Carbide plant floated out over the surrounding areas, which naturally enough, were the shanty slum areas that surrounded the plant…the “Haves” certainly didn’t have houses there, but the “Have nots” were directly in the path of the deadly gases. Over 3,000 people died and over 500,000 suffered injuries, many crippling and ruining what modicum of meager existence they endured.
Naturally, the blame game got bandied about…the official government paper on the disaster said that shoddy maintenance and lax control of the plant were the cause. Union Carbide has always maintained that it was the result of sabotage. Does the corporate world ever assume and accept responsibility for anything?....not to my knowledge, and it is a world wide occurrence.
UC settled the lawsuit by paying $470 million dollars at the time and walked away from any further involvement. They later sold their interest to other chemical companies.
When the bus let us off for what we thought was the train station to catch our train we were stranded in the middle of a large field with no clue what was going on…rickshaw and taxi drivers all told us they would take us to the station and looking as confused as we actually were, a man said that over in that other part of the field was a car that would take us to the station, our ticket allowed us to do that for free.
So off we went. Now I didn’t really expect Grand Central Station, but I’ve seen a lot of railway stations in my life and I thought since Bhopal is a city of. it would at least have some flavor of a station with amenities…they told us there would be food at the station, to which, Carol replied: “Good, I like to eat at stations.”….well, not at this one…there wasn’t anything at the station except for a large schoolyard sized playground with concrete floors and pillars scattered about to hold the roof up…Lots of people were stretched out on the floors and waiting for their trains….The Indian railway system was built by the Brits during the Raj and it is a really remarkable system that can take a traveler near to where they want to go anywhere in the huge nation and have classes of service to fit any budget, about 8 I believe.….Amtrak this is not. For another thing, Indian trains run on time.
We had three hours to wait for our train and the thought of being here with nothing to do but sit on the floor, no chairs or benches, in the “waiting room.” So I checked outside leaving Carol to manage the bags to see what our options were. I noticed a sort of hotel looking building and we decided that we would get a rickshaw and find a place to eat and hide out for awhile. With a lot of miscommunication and false starts, we did, in fact, get to a place that looked like the odds of not getting sick were at least in our favor, we went in and ate, with a lot of strange looks from the patrons. We ate, surprisingly well, in fact, and hung out before heading back to the station.
A group of young policemen were all going somewhere and they stared at us constantly, so I went over and made with the friendly tourist….they, as always, are thrilled at interaction…I love to do this, blacksmiths, shopkeepers, policemen….if people show interest and friendliness, I want to explore that. They told me they were policemen so I grabbed my pockets like I had to protect my money….lots of laughs. Another one had a mask on(as did many other people guarding against germs or dust) like the old shoot-em-up stagecoach bandits and so I made like he was one…more laughter….we had a great time asking questions that weren’t totally understood or explained, but it was fun…naturally group photos were required by all and they insisted Carol come over and join in the photo session.
So off we went. Now I didn’t really expect Grand Central Station, but I’ve seen a lot of railway stations in my
I know that I am far more engaged in life and my surroundings when I travel than I am at home. There, I am a closet recluse with only a few friends. I tend to be critical of people and lifestyles and find lots to criticize…however, when I travel I can accept without judging, be open and accepting of all I see. I feel I’m a better person when I travel than I am when I’m home…this is something I’ve recognized about myself. Haven’t necessarily liked it, but have known it’s how I operate…At home I’m an observer, when I travel, I’m a participant. I just naturally fall back to my youth traveling by myself and enjoying the interaction I found along the road.
Finally, it was time to find our train. We had asked where we were to get the train and were told: “#2.”…always good to get confirmation. “#2,” was the answer…another person looked at our tickets and said “#1.”…we went back and for the with #1 and #2. The weight of evidence seemed to be #1, so we headed up the staircase, high enough so that trains could easily clear, with bags, and down the stairway on the other side only to be told…you guessed it, it was platform #2…back up the stairways and down the other side to wait for our train…several came by before our allotted time and I wandered a little and noticed that there was a track on the other side of the platform which I hadn’t seen, and that was the proper side, Track #1 on platform #2…so, like much of life, they were all correct, ya just gotta ask the right question to get the right answer.
Our train finally arrived 30 minutes late after me explaining in detail to Carol how they were always on time…so much for what I know.
Headline of the day: “Eat beef, get five years in prison in Maharastra.”…..I’m glad I had the veggie burger.
