India is 5h30 ahead of GMT. Not six hours, not five, but five and a half. It’s a classic example of Indian attitude to the rest of the world. What with a large part of the world living here, what need is there to follow the accepted international norms elsewhere. India can set its own norms.
Some engine parts you can find the world over. I chose a merc for this journey because you can find Mercedes everywhere. Not in India. The dealership quoted me 10 days and €2000 for a set of pistons (a more usual price might be €200). I’d visited Mercedes when I was in Pune, to ask for sponsorship. Their big enthusiasm quickly waned into unanswered calls, and I did think at the time, that the understated sign that said “Mercedes-Benz, India” in that familiar reassuring font and colours, should really say “Mercedes-Benz, but India”.
A merc oil filter is, in most countries, like a dollar bill. Maybe not commonplace, but seek and you shall find. Not in India. They don’t have mercs, they have Tata’s. You want a Tata filter and you have a choice from original (made by Tata), branded aftermarket (made by someone else who knows what their doing), or non-branded (made by neanderthals with a big stick). None of them fit.
By complete coincidence Tata licensed the rights to my OM364 engine from Mercedes years ago, modified it slightly and stuck it in the most common vehicle on the road in Northern India. The 407.
Helpful to a degree, but the modifications affected the parts I needed (like the oil filter) so back to square one. It looked like the only option was to cut down a similar piston so it would fit.
Eventually the speculation about weather cutting pistons down would work was put to bed when Amitoj from Paulco Autoparts located the right pistons (albeit non-branded neanderthal ones) in Agra. The casting quality was terrible, the anodising looks like it’s been done by primary school kids, but they are undoubtedly the right size. Criticism aside, it’s worth praising Amitoj for achieving what in 3 days no other spare parts shop managed, and believe me they tried.
So with pistons in hand the story passes to Deshanka and Sanjay, my mechanics. By this stage I’d already been living in the side street next to their workshop/cupboard for 5 days with no engine in my bus, and jacked up so the shower wouldn’t drain.
Deshanka was feeling the pressure of the other mechanics who all told me he wasn’t up to the job of rebuilding my engine. This need to prove himself made him rush and bodge the rebuild at times, so I watchfully checked almost every bolt he put back in. Good mechanics aren’t the ones that know how to rebuild an engine, they all know that. They are the ones that take their time to think things through, look at the parts and bolts and be assured that they are putting back together according to a design and reason.
Sure enough the timing was 180degrees out and it wouldn’t start. The pump came off, we turned the crank and put it back on. Fired first time. All good. For now. Time will reveal any other rushed jobs Deshanka has done as they work lose, and bring me to a halt. On balance I think probably none.
Deshanka is 27 and Sanjay his apprentice is 22, both from the north of India, migrants to Delhi in search of work. I saw their poverty first hand. No money to put fuel in the borrowed motorbike, only 2 sets of clothes, they didn’t wash before eating and the whole neighbourhood had a cough which I too now have. They slept in their workshop and when the bench was full of my engine parts they slept on the floor with the mice. As soon as they got any cash they got wasted.
When I paid them $100 for 4 days work, they were ecstatic, and promptly spent a fair portion of it on food and beer, for us all, smuggling me into their workshop where the other mechanics couldn’t see us getting blind drunk.
Once again I’ve discovered yet another India. Within the borders of this country is an arrogant nuclear super power, a third world agricultural nation, a paralysing bureaucracy, a corrupt police state, a massive military machine, a bi-polar tourist industry, a hyper-materialistic middle class, a nation criminalised by their poverty and under-education, and an alcoholic urban slum. It’s hard to like or dislike India because all these countries are India. And strangely each one is largely oblivious to the other countries living superimposed over it. The only thing these India’s have in common is the kindness and generosity of their citizens.
I ask a foreign journalist here what the government does to help people. There are schemes to provide the super-poor with work and cheap rice, but on the whole the most an average indian can hope to get from the government is that it leaves them well alone.
I’ve got my passport now, and I’m off. Delhi is less than 400km away from the Nepalese border. One day's drive. But I have to wait till the end of the week to set off. Even a totalitarian Maoist regime seems attractive after 5 months here. Thanks India, it’s been real. After everything you’ve done, there is no way I will ever love you, but somehow, even though I should, I can’t quite bring myself to hate you.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Engine Failure
The engine temperature is slightly high, and the oil pressure is also high. Normally a warm engine would thin the oil and drop the pressure, and I’m low on power. With hindsight its obvious what’s happening. The oil has thickened to the point where it’s resisting the engine from working.
But at the time I don’t know so it could be anything. I stop and change the radiator coolant. No effect. I stop and remove the exhaust filter which might be blocked. No effect.
The temperature is rising and settles just under 100C. I remove the thermostat and clean the outside of the radiator. No effect. I check the connections to the gauges. No effect.
We stop for dinner, and when I drive off again, the oil pressure drops to zero. That’s bad, really bad.
I check the dip stick to see if there is any oil left. It’s there, but it’s turned to a rubbery tar, and is stuck to the dipstick like silicon or chewing gum. I drive on to the next filling station which thankfully sells oil, open the sump and nothing comes out. It’s all gone solid.
Finally it all makes sense. Engine oil reacts with vegetable oil, and somewhere in my engine there is a leak. It’s one of the reasons I check the oil every morning for level and thickness. I’d been worried about it thinning as it mixed in with fuel, but over the last few days I’d been reassured that it looked thicker, and put the thinness down to the variability in morning temperature.
I’ve been changing the oil every 6000km but this time decided to leave it til 10000km as I’m using an engine oil which is supposed to avoid this problem. After 8000km it polymerised. It’s hard to imagine what a mess polymerised engine oil is. It’s heat resistant and rubbery, and it sticks to metal like silicone sealant.
That night I managed to flush enough of it out with diesel. It will dissolve a bit in diesel. I then ran the engine with a mix of new oil and diesel to try to dissolve the rest, but after 500km arriving in Delhi the engine was still full of it, and, at some point it had already caused one of the pistons to cease.
So here in Delhi I’ve had no choice but to do a complete engine rebuild, with new pistons and cylinders. It’s major surgery. You can’t strip the engine back any further than this.
Thankfully it turns out that this engine was copied by Tata and is very popular here, but they copied it with a few modifications so not all the parts are the same. The big problem has been the pistons. The Tata pistons are a little taller than the Mercedes ones.
Pistons aren’t cylindrical. They are very slightly oval. They are cut on an OCUMA (Ovality Cutting Machine). It’s like a lathe, but as they spin the cutting tool vibrates slightly in and out creating an ovality which when in the engine means that that the piston deforms into a cylinder when forces of the exploding fuel act on it.
So unlike most things in India, you can’t get a backstreet mechanic to make a new one. But I can get the machine shop to modify one that is almost the right size.
Shaving 2mm off the top of the Tata piston will create a piston that will fit, but the risk combustion bowl in the top of the piston. When the piston is at the top of it’s cycle all the air is squeezed into the small bowl cut into the top of the piston. The volume of the bowl is critical because it dictates the compression ratio. The cylinder is one litre, and the bowl is about the size of a shot glass, so all that air is compressed down into that space before the fuel is added and for the engine to work properly the compressed air has to be the right pressure.
It’s hard to measure these things accurately but the bowls are almost the same size, however worryingly the new bowl, in the Tata piston, when cut down will be about 5ml smaller, which means the pressure increase will be a bit higher. This might affect the engine in a number of ways. Firstly the Injector pump might not have enough force to overcome the increase in pressure, so it won’t push any fuel into the engine. Secondly compressing air like that creates heat so the extra compression might mean the engine runs hotter than usual. Finally it might be too much pressure for the bearings or the crankshaft to take, and either might crack under the strain.
On my phone's calculator I estimate that with the original pistons the air is compressed about 24 times, so the pressure is 24 times atmospheric pressure. With the cut down Tata pistons it will be about 27 times. I’d really like a syringe to measure the volume properly.
To my mind this difference from 24 to 27 is nothing, and if anything will make the engine run a bit more efficiently, but the mechanics are petrified that it won’t work, and it can’t be tested other than by reassembling the engine which is a day’s work.
The guy in the parts shop looks at me horrified when I tell him what I plan to do. “Modifying pistons is not recommended” he tells me. No shit, Sherlock? Is that right? At first I’m stuck for words. Then I start to think of all the things I’m doing which aren’t recommended. Crawling around under my bus on some dirty street isn’t recommended, riding across Delhi in the back of a scooter without a helmet isn’t recommended, not taking anything for the cough I’ve caught off my mechanic isn’t recommended, and that's just this morning. Driving to India in a 21 year old shitty bus, dragged out of a scrap yard, and fuelled by all sorts of crap I’ve scavenged along the way is not recommended. I think increasing the working pressure of the engine from 24 bar to 27 is probably the least of it.
I think it will be fine, but I’ve got enough people filling me with fear it’s really put the doubt in my mind. So now I want to do it just to see if it will work.
The engine will either not run, not run for long, or I’ll spend the next 6 months being highly suspicious of every characteristic of the way it runs, then forget about it, then in 2 years time I’ll remember the pistons and realise it was all Ok.
But at the time I don’t know so it could be anything. I stop and change the radiator coolant. No effect. I stop and remove the exhaust filter which might be blocked. No effect.
The temperature is rising and settles just under 100C. I remove the thermostat and clean the outside of the radiator. No effect. I check the connections to the gauges. No effect.
We stop for dinner, and when I drive off again, the oil pressure drops to zero. That’s bad, really bad.
I check the dip stick to see if there is any oil left. It’s there, but it’s turned to a rubbery tar, and is stuck to the dipstick like silicon or chewing gum. I drive on to the next filling station which thankfully sells oil, open the sump and nothing comes out. It’s all gone solid.
Finally it all makes sense. Engine oil reacts with vegetable oil, and somewhere in my engine there is a leak. It’s one of the reasons I check the oil every morning for level and thickness. I’d been worried about it thinning as it mixed in with fuel, but over the last few days I’d been reassured that it looked thicker, and put the thinness down to the variability in morning temperature.
I’ve been changing the oil every 6000km but this time decided to leave it til 10000km as I’m using an engine oil which is supposed to avoid this problem. After 8000km it polymerised. It’s hard to imagine what a mess polymerised engine oil is. It’s heat resistant and rubbery, and it sticks to metal like silicone sealant.
That night I managed to flush enough of it out with diesel. It will dissolve a bit in diesel. I then ran the engine with a mix of new oil and diesel to try to dissolve the rest, but after 500km arriving in Delhi the engine was still full of it, and, at some point it had already caused one of the pistons to cease.
So here in Delhi I’ve had no choice but to do a complete engine rebuild, with new pistons and cylinders. It’s major surgery. You can’t strip the engine back any further than this.
Thankfully it turns out that this engine was copied by Tata and is very popular here, but they copied it with a few modifications so not all the parts are the same. The big problem has been the pistons. The Tata pistons are a little taller than the Mercedes ones.
Pistons aren’t cylindrical. They are very slightly oval. They are cut on an OCUMA (Ovality Cutting Machine). It’s like a lathe, but as they spin the cutting tool vibrates slightly in and out creating an ovality which when in the engine means that that the piston deforms into a cylinder when forces of the exploding fuel act on it.
So unlike most things in India, you can’t get a backstreet mechanic to make a new one. But I can get the machine shop to modify one that is almost the right size.
Shaving 2mm off the top of the Tata piston will create a piston that will fit, but the risk combustion bowl in the top of the piston. When the piston is at the top of it’s cycle all the air is squeezed into the small bowl cut into the top of the piston. The volume of the bowl is critical because it dictates the compression ratio. The cylinder is one litre, and the bowl is about the size of a shot glass, so all that air is compressed down into that space before the fuel is added and for the engine to work properly the compressed air has to be the right pressure.
It’s hard to measure these things accurately but the bowls are almost the same size, however worryingly the new bowl, in the Tata piston, when cut down will be about 5ml smaller, which means the pressure increase will be a bit higher. This might affect the engine in a number of ways. Firstly the Injector pump might not have enough force to overcome the increase in pressure, so it won’t push any fuel into the engine. Secondly compressing air like that creates heat so the extra compression might mean the engine runs hotter than usual. Finally it might be too much pressure for the bearings or the crankshaft to take, and either might crack under the strain.
On my phone's calculator I estimate that with the original pistons the air is compressed about 24 times, so the pressure is 24 times atmospheric pressure. With the cut down Tata pistons it will be about 27 times. I’d really like a syringe to measure the volume properly.
To my mind this difference from 24 to 27 is nothing, and if anything will make the engine run a bit more efficiently, but the mechanics are petrified that it won’t work, and it can’t be tested other than by reassembling the engine which is a day’s work.
The guy in the parts shop looks at me horrified when I tell him what I plan to do. “Modifying pistons is not recommended” he tells me. No shit, Sherlock? Is that right? At first I’m stuck for words. Then I start to think of all the things I’m doing which aren’t recommended. Crawling around under my bus on some dirty street isn’t recommended, riding across Delhi in the back of a scooter without a helmet isn’t recommended, not taking anything for the cough I’ve caught off my mechanic isn’t recommended, and that's just this morning. Driving to India in a 21 year old shitty bus, dragged out of a scrap yard, and fuelled by all sorts of crap I’ve scavenged along the way is not recommended. I think increasing the working pressure of the engine from 24 bar to 27 is probably the least of it.
I think it will be fine, but I’ve got enough people filling me with fear it’s really put the doubt in my mind. So now I want to do it just to see if it will work.
The engine will either not run, not run for long, or I’ll spend the next 6 months being highly suspicious of every characteristic of the way it runs, then forget about it, then in 2 years time I’ll remember the pistons and realise it was all Ok.
Pene al Pesto
I order Pene al Pesto in a restaurant and for the time between placing my order and receiving the food I am in heaven, tasting the delicious familiar flavours and textures in my head, and delighting in the satisfying feeling that follows the completion of the heavy carb dish.
Of course when the food comes there’s a rude awakening from my dreams, It’s hard to screw up Pene al Pesto, but the restaurant kitchen must be running a masterclass on just how many ways it can be done; floating in oil, cold and dried-out pasta, half peeled garlic cloves...
After 4 months here in India, I’m not expecting anything less. I only ordered Italian food so I could live the brief dream. I didn’t for a minute expect it to be fulfilled.
In so many ways India dashes my hopes and expectations, and screws up my plans and schedules. The endless court case delays and the spiralling legal fees, the tandem paragliding lessons which never really happened. Paying extra for the bus that doesn’t go as far, getting delivered to the wrong side of town by the rickshaw driver that speaks no English, removing the oil filter which can’t be found in India.
Three times I’ve visited Pushkar for the final time, only to find I have to return. My next final visit will be to collect my passport which will have my exit visa in it. I’m not currently allowed to leave the country. I had planned to collect the paperwork I needed from Ajmer and take it all back to Delhi and get the exit visa there. Instead they kept my passport and told me it won’t take more than a week. My brilliantly thought out plans shattered, I will now have to take the 18 hour return train journey to collect my passport and once again visit Pushkar.
But this time I was pretty quick to accept my fate. I tried to argue my corner but these guys were adamant, and I had the sense that they’d done it before, so a voice in my head (I think it was my sister’s) said just go with it.
On reflection it saves me from 2 days wrestling with the immigration officers mofos at Jaisalmere House and the FFRO office in Delhi. And I quite like the Indian trains, they’re cheap and I can write my blogs and eat the variety of low rent restaurant offerings.
After the trial I felt things were far from over, and getting congratulations from everyone about how well I’d coped with it all was an extra frustration. Now 3 weeks on, I’ve raised the money back which I spent, the journey can continue, I’ve got my bail money back and in a few days I’ll get my passport too (they say).
So now, I’m reflecting on how I’ve behaved in my moments of stress. People are fascinated when I tell them I was in a Rajasthani prison, Indians and foreigners alike. I think they are curious to know what it was like maybe because they’d like to muse about how they would cope. I’d thought about ending up in a foreign prison before and always imagined I’d keep my cool. When it happened, I didn’t. With hindsight I’ve got a better idea of who the good guys were and who the bad ones were, and I often directed my anger at people who were helping me and on my side. It’s a testament to them and the Indian character that they put up with me.
But even the “bad guys”, SP Tak and Capn Jatinder of the Military Intelligence, were scared by the events, scared of criticism and jeopardising their positions. None the less, through their fear they stayed courteous (if not dispassionate) which is more than I managed. I’m not particularly proud of the hissy fits I’ve thrown along the way.
In my defence this journey was motivated in part by my anti-establishment desire to escape authority in all its forms, and in India I’ve singularly failed to do that. So I suppose the moral of the story is, if you do end up in a Rajasthan prison through nothing more than bad luck, remember just because it’s not your fault, it’s not everybody else’s either and if you want good Pene al Pesto, go to Italy not India.
Of course when the food comes there’s a rude awakening from my dreams, It’s hard to screw up Pene al Pesto, but the restaurant kitchen must be running a masterclass on just how many ways it can be done; floating in oil, cold and dried-out pasta, half peeled garlic cloves...
After 4 months here in India, I’m not expecting anything less. I only ordered Italian food so I could live the brief dream. I didn’t for a minute expect it to be fulfilled.
In so many ways India dashes my hopes and expectations, and screws up my plans and schedules. The endless court case delays and the spiralling legal fees, the tandem paragliding lessons which never really happened. Paying extra for the bus that doesn’t go as far, getting delivered to the wrong side of town by the rickshaw driver that speaks no English, removing the oil filter which can’t be found in India.
Three times I’ve visited Pushkar for the final time, only to find I have to return. My next final visit will be to collect my passport which will have my exit visa in it. I’m not currently allowed to leave the country. I had planned to collect the paperwork I needed from Ajmer and take it all back to Delhi and get the exit visa there. Instead they kept my passport and told me it won’t take more than a week. My brilliantly thought out plans shattered, I will now have to take the 18 hour return train journey to collect my passport and once again visit Pushkar.
But this time I was pretty quick to accept my fate. I tried to argue my corner but these guys were adamant, and I had the sense that they’d done it before, so a voice in my head (I think it was my sister’s) said just go with it.
On reflection it saves me from 2 days wrestling with the immigration officers mofos at Jaisalmere House and the FFRO office in Delhi. And I quite like the Indian trains, they’re cheap and I can write my blogs and eat the variety of low rent restaurant offerings.
After the trial I felt things were far from over, and getting congratulations from everyone about how well I’d coped with it all was an extra frustration. Now 3 weeks on, I’ve raised the money back which I spent, the journey can continue, I’ve got my bail money back and in a few days I’ll get my passport too (they say).
So now, I’m reflecting on how I’ve behaved in my moments of stress. People are fascinated when I tell them I was in a Rajasthani prison, Indians and foreigners alike. I think they are curious to know what it was like maybe because they’d like to muse about how they would cope. I’d thought about ending up in a foreign prison before and always imagined I’d keep my cool. When it happened, I didn’t. With hindsight I’ve got a better idea of who the good guys were and who the bad ones were, and I often directed my anger at people who were helping me and on my side. It’s a testament to them and the Indian character that they put up with me.
But even the “bad guys”, SP Tak and Capn Jatinder of the Military Intelligence, were scared by the events, scared of criticism and jeopardising their positions. None the less, through their fear they stayed courteous (if not dispassionate) which is more than I managed. I’m not particularly proud of the hissy fits I’ve thrown along the way.
In my defence this journey was motivated in part by my anti-establishment desire to escape authority in all its forms, and in India I’ve singularly failed to do that. So I suppose the moral of the story is, if you do end up in a Rajasthan prison through nothing more than bad luck, remember just because it’s not your fault, it’s not everybody else’s either and if you want good Pene al Pesto, go to Italy not India.
InteGreater
As an engineering student we had to design mechanisms that change one input into another output. The teacher called them black box problems. You have a spinning rod going into the black box, design a mechanism that will make the output rod reciprocate (move back and forth) – the answer is a crank.
The idea stuck with me that the role of an engineer is to isolate the users of their creations, from how they work. And in the last 30 years through the boom of manufacturing methods, materials, tighter tolerances and improved quality they’ve become very good at it.
Turn a key in a modern car and it starts. You don’t need to know about the ECU, signal bus, MTTF of the switch mechanism e.t.c. As artefacts have become more sophisticated, so they have become more like mysterious black boxes.
This also means that as a consumer of artefacts, it’s very hard to know, not just what’s in them but how they have been made and the impact they’ve had during their production.
Kaylan from Bangalore has a few ideas on how to change that. After quitting his business consultancy job a few years back he set off to explore India, living frugally and working manual jobs as he went. In India, dropping out of the rat race like this is unheard of.
Thanks to his experience on the journey and also his business management knowledge, he’s designed a set of principles which he wants to apply to retailing, taking the idea of fair trade a step forward. For instance the price tags will have a breakdown of exactly how much goes to everyone in the chain of production, transport and retailing and the shop will be staffed by disabled clerks. These are just a couple of the ideas that “I-Create” has. I share with him my idea that food should be sold next to screens that have live feeds to the farms and factories where they are processed. Imagine choosing battery framed eggs if they are next to video image of a battery farm hatchery.
But these are just a few of the idea for his approach to retailing. He’s also about to start work on his a village development project, Proto-Village, which I think has some really positive benefits over traditional NGO principles.
Firstly the goal is sufficiency, not development; to get the village to a place where they have enough, sufficiency, not growth at all costs.
Secondly it’s a finite project with a timeframe. Most NGO’s have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems they work on. If they drip feed a solution, the problem is still then the following year when they have to beg for funding, Solve the problem once and for all, then the need for the NGO’s existence goes away. The “Proto-village” scheme will be around for 15 years. At the end, if the team have succeeded or not, it will wind up. Again, it’s a nice alternative to the goal orientated approach, which doesn’t always work in the development field for so many reasons.
Kaylan is looking for volunteers to help with the project. They need to have expertise in one of 9 areas which include economics, welfare and education. Experts will spend 5 months in the village understanding how it works, drawing out solutions from the villagers, and applying expertise and access to funding so village life can be improved where it is insufficient.
People interested in opening the black box should visit www.integreater.org
The idea stuck with me that the role of an engineer is to isolate the users of their creations, from how they work. And in the last 30 years through the boom of manufacturing methods, materials, tighter tolerances and improved quality they’ve become very good at it.
Turn a key in a modern car and it starts. You don’t need to know about the ECU, signal bus, MTTF of the switch mechanism e.t.c. As artefacts have become more sophisticated, so they have become more like mysterious black boxes.
This also means that as a consumer of artefacts, it’s very hard to know, not just what’s in them but how they have been made and the impact they’ve had during their production.
Kaylan from Bangalore has a few ideas on how to change that. After quitting his business consultancy job a few years back he set off to explore India, living frugally and working manual jobs as he went. In India, dropping out of the rat race like this is unheard of.
Thanks to his experience on the journey and also his business management knowledge, he’s designed a set of principles which he wants to apply to retailing, taking the idea of fair trade a step forward. For instance the price tags will have a breakdown of exactly how much goes to everyone in the chain of production, transport and retailing and the shop will be staffed by disabled clerks. These are just a couple of the ideas that “I-Create” has. I share with him my idea that food should be sold next to screens that have live feeds to the farms and factories where they are processed. Imagine choosing battery framed eggs if they are next to video image of a battery farm hatchery.
But these are just a few of the idea for his approach to retailing. He’s also about to start work on his a village development project, Proto-Village, which I think has some really positive benefits over traditional NGO principles.
Firstly the goal is sufficiency, not development; to get the village to a place where they have enough, sufficiency, not growth at all costs.
Secondly it’s a finite project with a timeframe. Most NGO’s have a vested interest in perpetuating the problems they work on. If they drip feed a solution, the problem is still then the following year when they have to beg for funding, Solve the problem once and for all, then the need for the NGO’s existence goes away. The “Proto-village” scheme will be around for 15 years. At the end, if the team have succeeded or not, it will wind up. Again, it’s a nice alternative to the goal orientated approach, which doesn’t always work in the development field for so many reasons.
Kaylan is looking for volunteers to help with the project. They need to have expertise in one of 9 areas which include economics, welfare and education. Experts will spend 5 months in the village understanding how it works, drawing out solutions from the villagers, and applying expertise and access to funding so village life can be improved where it is insufficient.
People interested in opening the black box should visit www.integreater.org
Dialogue and Brake Lights
"Grumpy John", my travelling companion in the chocolate powered lorry we drove to Timbuktu, introduced me to a great car game. Road Kill Bingo. Everyone chooses an animal and each time you see a dead one in the road you get a point. I didn’t know that John had been conducting a little survey before we started playing and by going for donkeys I had no chance of beating him with camels or cows in West Africa.
In Rajasthan stray dogs would be the game winner for sure.
The back of trucks are emblazoned with the phrase “Use Dipper at Night” and various other safety instruction to following motorists, but few truck have working rear lights, and those that do are largely obscured by ornate metalwork grids to protect them. In traffic it’s a rare but relaxing bonus if the truck in front has working brake lights, otherwise full concentration is required to check for the unpredictable stops it might make.
The Pune blast in the German Bakery 2 months ago claimed 16 lives, all tragic and unnecessary losses of course, but I bet more than that die each week in avoidable road traffic accidents on the 200km Mumbia-Pune Expressway.
The terrorism fear though is so that every move Pakistan makes is diligently documented in the Indian press, to the point where I know more about what Pakistani ministers are doing, than Indian ones are (embezzling the IPL cricket money). The average Indian is more likely to be the victim of a fatal car accident that a terrorist attack, yet the newspapers aren’t full of campaigns against bad drivers, or poorly maintained vehicles, which cause avoidable deaths.
I share this idea, that the anger and venom reserved for Pakistan would be better directed at erratic drivers with Chetan, a fellow paraglider and retired media sales executive. He launches into one about Pakistan’s malevolent intentions, and how they manipulate the tap of terror to obtain political concessions. All the more reason not to give shoddy stunts like the Pune bomb the credibility it doesn’t deserve.
Technically speaking (from a military point of view) it was a lousy attack, a small blast, a soft target, probably carried out by 2 or 3 village kids from some backwater hicksville, too dumb to recognise the indoctrination and perversion of Islam their handlers have given them.
By responding with the derision it deserves the media could undermine the political influence of such an attack. Instead they launch into it and propagate it with outraged stories of a Muslim Indian tennis player marrying a Pakistani cricketer, decried as betrayal instead of heralded as a symbol of the potential for unity.
Dialogue with Pakistan will yield peace, just as antagonism will yield more attacks, but working brake lights would prevent even more deaths than Indo-Pak talks.
In Rajasthan stray dogs would be the game winner for sure.
The back of trucks are emblazoned with the phrase “Use Dipper at Night” and various other safety instruction to following motorists, but few truck have working rear lights, and those that do are largely obscured by ornate metalwork grids to protect them. In traffic it’s a rare but relaxing bonus if the truck in front has working brake lights, otherwise full concentration is required to check for the unpredictable stops it might make.
The Pune blast in the German Bakery 2 months ago claimed 16 lives, all tragic and unnecessary losses of course, but I bet more than that die each week in avoidable road traffic accidents on the 200km Mumbia-Pune Expressway.
The terrorism fear though is so that every move Pakistan makes is diligently documented in the Indian press, to the point where I know more about what Pakistani ministers are doing, than Indian ones are (embezzling the IPL cricket money). The average Indian is more likely to be the victim of a fatal car accident that a terrorist attack, yet the newspapers aren’t full of campaigns against bad drivers, or poorly maintained vehicles, which cause avoidable deaths.
I share this idea, that the anger and venom reserved for Pakistan would be better directed at erratic drivers with Chetan, a fellow paraglider and retired media sales executive. He launches into one about Pakistan’s malevolent intentions, and how they manipulate the tap of terror to obtain political concessions. All the more reason not to give shoddy stunts like the Pune bomb the credibility it doesn’t deserve.
Technically speaking (from a military point of view) it was a lousy attack, a small blast, a soft target, probably carried out by 2 or 3 village kids from some backwater hicksville, too dumb to recognise the indoctrination and perversion of Islam their handlers have given them.
By responding with the derision it deserves the media could undermine the political influence of such an attack. Instead they launch into it and propagate it with outraged stories of a Muslim Indian tennis player marrying a Pakistani cricketer, decried as betrayal instead of heralded as a symbol of the potential for unity.
Dialogue with Pakistan will yield peace, just as antagonism will yield more attacks, but working brake lights would prevent even more deaths than Indo-Pak talks.
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Not Long Enough to Drink the Water
The Union Carbide plant isn’t hard to find, everyone in Bhopal I ask for direction knows where it is. From the entrance it could be the entrance to a rundown city park. Four police officers lounge by the gate and explain that without a permit I can’t enter. Ten minutes later I’ve put 200Rs in an officer’s hand (at his suggestion), he’s pulled on a shirt and he’s doctoring the date on an old permit as we walk into the restricted area.
We pass functional low rise office blocks now abandoned with broken windows and a film of grey city dirt engrained in the plaster. Then, above the thin tree growth I can see the rusting scaffold of a chemical plant being reclaimed by nature, slowly strangled by lianas, trees and bushels.
When arriving in the city I’d half expected there to be an operating plant on the site, with a visitors centre and a PR department extolling the virtues of how safe the plant is now, and how the cleanup has been a big success. A sign of how I misjudged the scale of what happened here in 1984 and the anger that still exists at the injustice that persists. It’s well documented but it’s worth repeating the details lest they get forgotten.
Due to lazy maintenance, and miserly cost cutting, the plant erupted, as a series of easily avoidable equipment failures compounded to release enormous volumes of the active ingredient used in the pesticides that were being made there. The people of Bhopal were “treated” like a plague of locusts.
Union Carbide shirked full responsibility and the court cases continue to this day in the US and in India 25 years later. UC was sold to Dow Chemicals who have denied ongoing liability. Some compensation has been paid but nothing compared to the medical or socio-economic damage the accident caused.
As an engineer I felt it was important to see the mechanics of how the accident happened. The refinery was ravaged by fire and now a quarter of a century later the metal work is rusting and starting to collapse in places. There's little evidence left to how it all started.
The 3 tanks that contained the toxic gas that was emitted each sit not far from where they exploded. The first calmly rests on the ground 20 metres away from its original placement, it’s exposed flanges of shinny stainless steel are unaffected by the fire or the passage of time. The second tank has been housed in a makeshift hanger; presumably to avoid exposing it to rain that might washout the final traces of toxic sludge. The hanger doesn’t look as if it’s seen any maintenance since the clean up in 1985. It’s sagging and cracked.
The final tank was deemed to contain such a volume and concentration of toxins that it was decided that rather than transport it away or chemically treat it in place, the safest option was to bury it next to the hanger in a concrete coffin.
However after 25 monsoons, the poison from the disaster has still not been washed away, and in fact the moving earth caused by the rains around the concrete bunker is giving life to the deadly poison again. The concrete casing is clearly falling apart above the surface, and any civil engineer will tell you the same thing is likely to be happening below it. Forces strong enough to break concrete can bend, fold and crack the steel tank encased in it. In the rainy season, water will leach through the cracks washing the poison down into the water table 200m below.
Less than 100m away from where the 3 tanks sit, is a shanty town butting up against the 2 metre walls of the abandoned complex. The land slopes, and the water table runs, in the direction of the shanty, and the inhabitants have few options but to drink the water from ground wells.
Its little surprise then that even today the Sambhavna clinic, run exclusively for patients with ailments relating to disaster, and funded by charitable donations from the UK and US, still sees 150 patients a day, and have over 24,000 registered. Respiratory problems, caused by the release of the gas now rival eye, skin, liver and kidney damage caused by the affected water supply. The clinic also deals with, diabetes, cancer and children born with birth defects, all of which are at a much higher incidence in Bhopal than elsewhere in India.
The local government now delivers water from outside the affected area to bauwsers on the streets, but they aren’t replenished rapidly enough. Inhabitants jockey to fill cans as soon as the water trucks have passed, but are also forced to resort to the ground water pumps that should have been shut off.
In a city of 1 million, over half have had compensation claims accepted. The amount paid out is trifling compared to the impact. Victims have received between US$500 to €2000 for the most severely affected. A figure described as “Plenty good for an Indian” by a US executive of the company.
Goats, cows and wild boar graze on the site, and kids step through the cracked brick wall to play cricket in the clearings. The government say the site is clean and want to open it as a tourist attraction.
But there's no independent monitoring of the cleanup operation conducted by the Indian government with a one time payment made by UC and seemingly no maintenance of the cleanup. A report in December '09 by the Indian Centre for Science and Environment’s Pollution Monitoring Laboratory found 38 times the normal level of pesticide in the ground water 3km away from the plant. In the site itself they found pesticide concentrations in the soil is 9,866ppm. That means 1% of the chemical composition of the soil is pesticide.
Activists from the Bhopal Group for Information and Actions (BGIA) are in Delhi this week to lobby the government to stand by its commitment made in 2008 to set up the Empower Commission, to be run by an established victims group. The Commission is due to manage a budget of US$400m over 30 years. All six relevant government departments have agreed the plan, the only stumbling block is the local Madhya Pradesh government who see an opportunity in distributing the funds and want to manage it themselves, but, say the BGIA, have shown little in the way of track record of supporting the victims over the last 25 years.
In amongst all this wrangling to spend government money it’s easy to get distracted from the fact this was an accident caused by negligence, with massive consequences. As individuals, it’s too easy to be negligent, and most of the time it causes little or no repercussions, but as a corporation Union Carbide, now Dow, had an obligation to put systems in place to forcibly prevent negligence. More than reminding employees to keep on their toes, they should have had a management system and technical systems that made negligence impossible. The courts are deciding if they did enough in this respect.
Corporations working in the developing world are doing so because it’s cheaper. It’s cheaper because space and resources are cheaper, but the big saving is workforce and freer operating legislation. That’s MBA double-speak for lower skilled people working in less safe environments. Union Carbides' defence against negligence was that the Indian government didn't have sufficient safety standards. Standards which would have made it more expensive to opperate the plant. The lack of standards made the need for UC to negligence-proof thier opperation all the more important.
Dow, as with any quoted corporation, has a "responsibility to its shareholders". All those hardworking middle class savers and investors around the world, who knowingly or not have put their money and financial expectations in the portfolios and funds that contain Dow stock. Even if Dow were to put their hands up and pay out, (which ethically there is no doubt they should), it's the shareholders and not those who made the decisions that led to the negligence who'll be stumping up the corn.
Warren Anderson the American CEO of UC legged it to the US skipping $2000 bial, and has fought extradition to India ever since. After Enron and Madoff, the anger of America’s middle class 501 losers has encouraged the judiciary there to convict senior management to long prison terms for company crimes that they actively orchestrated. Corporate negligence is different from corporate corruption but the climate now exists to apportion blame the top management. Perhaps the fact the Bhopal trial has run so long, into this era where CEOs can't shirk their corporate responsibilities, will mean due punishment will be dispensed in the US to Warren Anderson, and the management team who allowed this negligence to take place. Or perhaps it will procrastinate further beyond the lifetimes of the survivors and the perpetrators.
We pass functional low rise office blocks now abandoned with broken windows and a film of grey city dirt engrained in the plaster. Then, above the thin tree growth I can see the rusting scaffold of a chemical plant being reclaimed by nature, slowly strangled by lianas, trees and bushels.
When arriving in the city I’d half expected there to be an operating plant on the site, with a visitors centre and a PR department extolling the virtues of how safe the plant is now, and how the cleanup has been a big success. A sign of how I misjudged the scale of what happened here in 1984 and the anger that still exists at the injustice that persists. It’s well documented but it’s worth repeating the details lest they get forgotten.
Due to lazy maintenance, and miserly cost cutting, the plant erupted, as a series of easily avoidable equipment failures compounded to release enormous volumes of the active ingredient used in the pesticides that were being made there. The people of Bhopal were “treated” like a plague of locusts.
Union Carbide shirked full responsibility and the court cases continue to this day in the US and in India 25 years later. UC was sold to Dow Chemicals who have denied ongoing liability. Some compensation has been paid but nothing compared to the medical or socio-economic damage the accident caused.
As an engineer I felt it was important to see the mechanics of how the accident happened. The refinery was ravaged by fire and now a quarter of a century later the metal work is rusting and starting to collapse in places. There's little evidence left to how it all started.
The 3 tanks that contained the toxic gas that was emitted each sit not far from where they exploded. The first calmly rests on the ground 20 metres away from its original placement, it’s exposed flanges of shinny stainless steel are unaffected by the fire or the passage of time. The second tank has been housed in a makeshift hanger; presumably to avoid exposing it to rain that might washout the final traces of toxic sludge. The hanger doesn’t look as if it’s seen any maintenance since the clean up in 1985. It’s sagging and cracked.
The final tank was deemed to contain such a volume and concentration of toxins that it was decided that rather than transport it away or chemically treat it in place, the safest option was to bury it next to the hanger in a concrete coffin.
However after 25 monsoons, the poison from the disaster has still not been washed away, and in fact the moving earth caused by the rains around the concrete bunker is giving life to the deadly poison again. The concrete casing is clearly falling apart above the surface, and any civil engineer will tell you the same thing is likely to be happening below it. Forces strong enough to break concrete can bend, fold and crack the steel tank encased in it. In the rainy season, water will leach through the cracks washing the poison down into the water table 200m below.
Less than 100m away from where the 3 tanks sit, is a shanty town butting up against the 2 metre walls of the abandoned complex. The land slopes, and the water table runs, in the direction of the shanty, and the inhabitants have few options but to drink the water from ground wells.
Its little surprise then that even today the Sambhavna clinic, run exclusively for patients with ailments relating to disaster, and funded by charitable donations from the UK and US, still sees 150 patients a day, and have over 24,000 registered. Respiratory problems, caused by the release of the gas now rival eye, skin, liver and kidney damage caused by the affected water supply. The clinic also deals with, diabetes, cancer and children born with birth defects, all of which are at a much higher incidence in Bhopal than elsewhere in India.
The local government now delivers water from outside the affected area to bauwsers on the streets, but they aren’t replenished rapidly enough. Inhabitants jockey to fill cans as soon as the water trucks have passed, but are also forced to resort to the ground water pumps that should have been shut off.
In a city of 1 million, over half have had compensation claims accepted. The amount paid out is trifling compared to the impact. Victims have received between US$500 to €2000 for the most severely affected. A figure described as “Plenty good for an Indian” by a US executive of the company.
Goats, cows and wild boar graze on the site, and kids step through the cracked brick wall to play cricket in the clearings. The government say the site is clean and want to open it as a tourist attraction.
But there's no independent monitoring of the cleanup operation conducted by the Indian government with a one time payment made by UC and seemingly no maintenance of the cleanup. A report in December '09 by the Indian Centre for Science and Environment’s Pollution Monitoring Laboratory found 38 times the normal level of pesticide in the ground water 3km away from the plant. In the site itself they found pesticide concentrations in the soil is 9,866ppm. That means 1% of the chemical composition of the soil is pesticide.
Activists from the Bhopal Group for Information and Actions (BGIA) are in Delhi this week to lobby the government to stand by its commitment made in 2008 to set up the Empower Commission, to be run by an established victims group. The Commission is due to manage a budget of US$400m over 30 years. All six relevant government departments have agreed the plan, the only stumbling block is the local Madhya Pradesh government who see an opportunity in distributing the funds and want to manage it themselves, but, say the BGIA, have shown little in the way of track record of supporting the victims over the last 25 years.
In amongst all this wrangling to spend government money it’s easy to get distracted from the fact this was an accident caused by negligence, with massive consequences. As individuals, it’s too easy to be negligent, and most of the time it causes little or no repercussions, but as a corporation Union Carbide, now Dow, had an obligation to put systems in place to forcibly prevent negligence. More than reminding employees to keep on their toes, they should have had a management system and technical systems that made negligence impossible. The courts are deciding if they did enough in this respect.
Corporations working in the developing world are doing so because it’s cheaper. It’s cheaper because space and resources are cheaper, but the big saving is workforce and freer operating legislation. That’s MBA double-speak for lower skilled people working in less safe environments. Union Carbides' defence against negligence was that the Indian government didn't have sufficient safety standards. Standards which would have made it more expensive to opperate the plant. The lack of standards made the need for UC to negligence-proof thier opperation all the more important.
Dow, as with any quoted corporation, has a "responsibility to its shareholders". All those hardworking middle class savers and investors around the world, who knowingly or not have put their money and financial expectations in the portfolios and funds that contain Dow stock. Even if Dow were to put their hands up and pay out, (which ethically there is no doubt they should), it's the shareholders and not those who made the decisions that led to the negligence who'll be stumping up the corn.
Warren Anderson the American CEO of UC legged it to the US skipping $2000 bial, and has fought extradition to India ever since. After Enron and Madoff, the anger of America’s middle class 501 losers has encouraged the judiciary there to convict senior management to long prison terms for company crimes that they actively orchestrated. Corporate negligence is different from corporate corruption but the climate now exists to apportion blame the top management. Perhaps the fact the Bhopal trial has run so long, into this era where CEOs can't shirk their corporate responsibilities, will mean due punishment will be dispensed in the US to Warren Anderson, and the management team who allowed this negligence to take place. Or perhaps it will procrastinate further beyond the lifetimes of the survivors and the perpetrators.
Monday, 5 April 2010
Panchgani Above My Weight
I’m waiting for the Indian Treasury to decide if they can give me back my bail money in cash. They won’t accept my bank card as proof of my UK account details, and they won’t pay the money to someone I nominate, in case that person rips me off. How thoughtful, far better that they keep my bail money safe for me, forever.
So in the meantime I am slowly heading to Delhi hoping to get there in time for this to be sorted, but I certainly don’t want to get there sooner and have to wait it out in the capital. I am using the time to call and email sponsors and fund-raisers in the hope of meeting my €5000 target I need to continue the journey. I’ve already got cash and pledges of €1000 so quietly confident there is a good chance.
I’m also taking full advantage of not having to be anywhere to go paragliding, and at the moment I’m in Panchgani, which is another amazing world class site. It’s great for cross country flying. You set off from one place and hop from one thermal to the next covering huge distances. I’m not that good, and the season has finished so the weather isn’t ideal anymore, but with a lot of patient waiting (nic-named “para-waiting” by pilots) keeping an eagle eye on conditions I and a couple of friends here, Arabind and Chetan, have managed to get some good flights in and improve my skills.
I’m parked at the top of the take off site, so in the morning I can check the windsock streamer from bed. Strawberries and mulberries are in season, and haven’t tired of fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast. There is a 14 year old boy who sells freshly squeezed lemon juice who brings his cart next to the truck around 9am, and we chat in sign language about the wind. He can’t fly but knows well enough when the conditions are good from having watched countless pilots in the past.
The police have clamped down on the un-insured tandem wallahs who offer a 20 minute flight for 2000Rs to the wealthy Pune weekenders, after an accident last week, so we have the launch site to ourselves and instead of having to wrestle for a takeoff slot we’re surrounded by tandem wallahs with nothing better to do but help us lay out our wings and lend their experience to assess the wind.
The rival tandem pilots have to collectively pay some cash to the police, but as the wind is too strong and the tourist season is still a few days away from starting they are holding out before paying up and starting work. On a good day they can earn €400-500, but it’s a short season and most pilots are in endless hock to their backers who paid for their wings and harnesses.
Andre, an expat from Montreal who’s run a campsite here for solo-pilots for 11 years, usually turns up to offer meteorological advice in his drawly French Canadian accent littered with Indian idioms, “Yeah-er, Wat-to-do?”. He’s even run us 3 km down the road in his pick up to another launch site when the wind was backing. There’s a thermal over his campsite which means his windsock regularly points upwards.
The conditions have been unusually strong here, making take off risky and flying even riskier. Landing back on the launch site is a near impossibility in strong winds so the only option is to “land down” in the valley which stretches out 1000ft bellow around the manmade lake and dam.
The black areas of burnt grass provide good sources of thermal air, warmed by the hot ground and sent upwards like the goo in a lava lamp. I’m learning to “core” thermals, finding the centre and circling upwards in it.
For landings, I’ve mostly used the fields zig-zagging around trees and shortening my approach with plenty of brake as the as the terracing cheats me by dropping the ground away from me the further I travel. I’ve landed by the lake a couple of times, and today I took my togs for a swim. After stripping naked in front of non-plussed washer women I then balked at the mirky waters. The ladies shrugged grunts eventually persuaded me in. I didn’t want them to think I was another of these exhibitionist from Mumbai come to flash at the village girls. Usually I catch a local bus which winds up the mountain switchbacks to the cooler air of Panchgani or hitch a ride in a truck that’s going that way.
When I get back I’m greeted by the concerned lemonade boy who asks me where I landed and how the flight was. Nods, grins, hands and pointing, our conversation is completely silent apart from the word “Wind” which can mean strong or weak, depending on the wind.
In the evenings I cycle into town for dinner with Chetan and Arabind, my co-pilots, after washing off the red dust in the bus shower. My water pump has burnt out and I have to take the motor apart to check it, so in the meantime I’m using a bucket filled at the nearby spring. Before bed I sit on one of the benches near the hotel and use their free wifi with the black valley below lit only by a smattering of village lights and the red lines of grass fires spreading up the opposite side.
So as you can imagine , until the bail money is ready, I’m not in any great rush to leave for Delhi to be shunted from one heartless government office to the next.
India is one of the few countries that emits less than 2 tonnes of CO2Te per person, thanks in large part to people like this. At first I’m struck with the thought that if everyone lived like this the global carbon footprint would disappear overnight. Ironically, the famines and mass-migrations which will result from climate change, will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents.
The battle to find sustainable solutions of energy creation and consumption is in many ways more a battle to maintain our standard of living rather than to save the environment. We have to turn unsustainable consumption into a responsible and globally fair use of resources, or expect a reduction in the standards of living we take for granted. Probably we’ll have to do both, and probably we won’t do either enough.
So we, as a planet, could ration energy now and see a drop in our standards of living, or we can take small possibly ineffectual steps which will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents. Those people will probably be from poor countries, because poor countries are typically dependent on agriculture and poor countries are in the tropics where weather patterns are most likely to be affected. In Croydon we will struggle to find Zimbabwean Bok-Choi in Tescos
No one knows with much certainty how much climate change will really impact on agriculture and sea levels, so it’s hard to know how strictly to ration energy now, but not doing it allows richer countries to take advantage of their wealth to exploit global resources, to the detriment of people living in poorer countries (again – see oil, , fishing rights, minerals, diamonds, agricultural land, holiday resorts...).
Wherever I fly I’ve found out about the local agriculture, to know which fields I can land in, and even more importantly I find out about the local weather. Really understand it in detail, how it should be, how it is this minute, and how it changes during the day. Everywhere I’ve been, from Annecy to Panchgani, pilots tell me the weather is unusual for time of year. Maybe it’s me! Or maybe it’s the human nature of pilots to be diffident of the winds, but I believe it’s a sign that weather patterns that are changing, and it makes me feel that the changes will become quite radical.
As long as these gypsies can scavenge pressed sugar cane for their donkeys and don’t have to move in to a city, they’ll be ok. It would be hard for their standards of living to drop further. But in the valley below the fields are all empty at the moment. It’s great for me as it provides endless choices of landing areas. They are waiting for the first signs of the monsoon season to start planting. I wonder if they can afford the irony to call it agri-waiting?
So in the meantime I am slowly heading to Delhi hoping to get there in time for this to be sorted, but I certainly don’t want to get there sooner and have to wait it out in the capital. I am using the time to call and email sponsors and fund-raisers in the hope of meeting my €5000 target I need to continue the journey. I’ve already got cash and pledges of €1000 so quietly confident there is a good chance.
I’m also taking full advantage of not having to be anywhere to go paragliding, and at the moment I’m in Panchgani, which is another amazing world class site. It’s great for cross country flying. You set off from one place and hop from one thermal to the next covering huge distances. I’m not that good, and the season has finished so the weather isn’t ideal anymore, but with a lot of patient waiting (nic-named “para-waiting” by pilots) keeping an eagle eye on conditions I and a couple of friends here, Arabind and Chetan, have managed to get some good flights in and improve my skills.
I’m parked at the top of the take off site, so in the morning I can check the windsock streamer from bed. Strawberries and mulberries are in season, and haven’t tired of fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast. There is a 14 year old boy who sells freshly squeezed lemon juice who brings his cart next to the truck around 9am, and we chat in sign language about the wind. He can’t fly but knows well enough when the conditions are good from having watched countless pilots in the past.
The police have clamped down on the un-insured tandem wallahs who offer a 20 minute flight for 2000Rs to the wealthy Pune weekenders, after an accident last week, so we have the launch site to ourselves and instead of having to wrestle for a takeoff slot we’re surrounded by tandem wallahs with nothing better to do but help us lay out our wings and lend their experience to assess the wind.
The rival tandem pilots have to collectively pay some cash to the police, but as the wind is too strong and the tourist season is still a few days away from starting they are holding out before paying up and starting work. On a good day they can earn €400-500, but it’s a short season and most pilots are in endless hock to their backers who paid for their wings and harnesses.
Andre, an expat from Montreal who’s run a campsite here for solo-pilots for 11 years, usually turns up to offer meteorological advice in his drawly French Canadian accent littered with Indian idioms, “Yeah-er, Wat-to-do?”. He’s even run us 3 km down the road in his pick up to another launch site when the wind was backing. There’s a thermal over his campsite which means his windsock regularly points upwards.
The conditions have been unusually strong here, making take off risky and flying even riskier. Landing back on the launch site is a near impossibility in strong winds so the only option is to “land down” in the valley which stretches out 1000ft bellow around the manmade lake and dam.
The black areas of burnt grass provide good sources of thermal air, warmed by the hot ground and sent upwards like the goo in a lava lamp. I’m learning to “core” thermals, finding the centre and circling upwards in it.
For landings, I’ve mostly used the fields zig-zagging around trees and shortening my approach with plenty of brake as the as the terracing cheats me by dropping the ground away from me the further I travel. I’ve landed by the lake a couple of times, and today I took my togs for a swim. After stripping naked in front of non-plussed washer women I then balked at the mirky waters. The ladies shrugged grunts eventually persuaded me in. I didn’t want them to think I was another of these exhibitionist from Mumbai come to flash at the village girls. Usually I catch a local bus which winds up the mountain switchbacks to the cooler air of Panchgani or hitch a ride in a truck that’s going that way.
When I get back I’m greeted by the concerned lemonade boy who asks me where I landed and how the flight was. Nods, grins, hands and pointing, our conversation is completely silent apart from the word “Wind” which can mean strong or weak, depending on the wind.
In the evenings I cycle into town for dinner with Chetan and Arabind, my co-pilots, after washing off the red dust in the bus shower. My water pump has burnt out and I have to take the motor apart to check it, so in the meantime I’m using a bucket filled at the nearby spring. Before bed I sit on one of the benches near the hotel and use their free wifi with the black valley below lit only by a smattering of village lights and the red lines of grass fires spreading up the opposite side.
So as you can imagine , until the bail money is ready, I’m not in any great rush to leave for Delhi to be shunted from one heartless government office to the next.
------------
Next to the launch site is a gypsy camp of tarpaulin tents. Their donkeys compete with the mosquitoes in the truck to keep me awake at night. I’ve been watching how they live, and really impressed how little they consume. Their energy is from firewood, and they draw water straight from a spring at the edge of the launch site.India is one of the few countries that emits less than 2 tonnes of CO2Te per person, thanks in large part to people like this. At first I’m struck with the thought that if everyone lived like this the global carbon footprint would disappear overnight. Ironically, the famines and mass-migrations which will result from climate change, will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents.
The battle to find sustainable solutions of energy creation and consumption is in many ways more a battle to maintain our standard of living rather than to save the environment. We have to turn unsustainable consumption into a responsible and globally fair use of resources, or expect a reduction in the standards of living we take for granted. Probably we’ll have to do both, and probably we won’t do either enough.
So we, as a planet, could ration energy now and see a drop in our standards of living, or we can take small possibly ineffectual steps which will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents. Those people will probably be from poor countries, because poor countries are typically dependent on agriculture and poor countries are in the tropics where weather patterns are most likely to be affected. In Croydon we will struggle to find Zimbabwean Bok-Choi in Tescos
No one knows with much certainty how much climate change will really impact on agriculture and sea levels, so it’s hard to know how strictly to ration energy now, but not doing it allows richer countries to take advantage of their wealth to exploit global resources, to the detriment of people living in poorer countries (again – see oil, , fishing rights, minerals, diamonds, agricultural land, holiday resorts...).
Wherever I fly I’ve found out about the local agriculture, to know which fields I can land in, and even more importantly I find out about the local weather. Really understand it in detail, how it should be, how it is this minute, and how it changes during the day. Everywhere I’ve been, from Annecy to Panchgani, pilots tell me the weather is unusual for time of year. Maybe it’s me! Or maybe it’s the human nature of pilots to be diffident of the winds, but I believe it’s a sign that weather patterns that are changing, and it makes me feel that the changes will become quite radical.
As long as these gypsies can scavenge pressed sugar cane for their donkeys and don’t have to move in to a city, they’ll be ok. It would be hard for their standards of living to drop further. But in the valley below the fields are all empty at the moment. It’s great for me as it provides endless choices of landing areas. They are waiting for the first signs of the monsoon season to start planting. I wonder if they can afford the irony to call it agri-waiting?
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