I was wrong. Following the high tensions of Day Six, I thought that today would show that lessons about working together and communicating had been learnt. Unfortunately, we had a morning of trying to get across town, first to visit the Bhopal Memorial statue and that to take a look at the new business district. In steaming and dusty city air we took to our rickshaw and set off. But because we had limited time, we were relying on navigation from our support crew. Switching in and out of traffic we found our way to the memorial – a modest sculpture of a woman holding a limp child located directly opposite the site where the 1984 Union Carbide disaster killed around 20,000 of the cities poorer workers. As history has so often been repeated no-one in the US company was held responsible or brought to book. Money must have changed hands to hush the whole debacle up, money which, when you look at the squalid surrounds of the memorial, you realise is still not getting to the people who really need it. Behind the fenced off sculpture stands a wall with fading writing imploring that such a horrific catastrophe doesn’t happen again, but you also get the feeling that the memory of any lessons learnted are also fading in time.
From the memorial we were supposed to head from the ramshackle lean-tos to the city’s new business district, but without a map and simply asking directions from passers-by, our small convoy eventually gave up on finding it. In fact, circumstances conspired to completely change the course of the day. While I was driving down one of the many rat-run backs streets, our roofrack hooked on a really low hanging power cable and before we knew it, one of the legs of the rack had been ripped away and had penetrated the canvas roof of the rickshaw just behind Shelley’s head. With no option but to fix it, we set about finding a welding shop. So although we’d been looking for one story, we actually got a far more interesting and interactive other story. The problem we’ve been finding whenever we stop is that the cameras instantly attract crowds of locals, and the welding shop was no different. Before long we were surrounded by half the city all wanting to see what was going on.
With a rather bent and battered, but patched up roofrack back in place we hit the open road for Sagar without experiencing the business district or a decent western coffee shop which we had all been really looking forward to. On the topic of food, I’m finding it very hard to eat spicy breakfast, spicy lunch and spicy dinner every day of the ‘run’. In most places we’ve stayed the alternatives are ‘butter toast jam’ (an emaciated version of a great British tradition) or ‘corn flex and milk’ (sounds passable but the ‘flex’ come with boiling milk! Yummy).
Once again, the open roads varied from relatively stable asphalt to the sharp-edged rubble I’ve only ever seen before on remote outback tracks in Australia. And our little rickshaw once again was to suffer a puncture as a result. With the sun setting on the horizon some 40km from Sagar on a track that was actually a national highway one if our rear tyres gave up the ghost. Fortunately, we’re a resourceful trio and three lumps of tarmac from the roadside (it would really have helped had it been on the actual frickin’ road!) served as blocks that we built up in front of the back wheel as we physically lifted the rear. With trucks and buses splashing past us we managed to quickly get the spare on and were soon back on the road, once again having to complete today's leg in the dark.
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