15 October 2016 / leggypeggy

Apologies in advance for focusing on my travel and blogs

Bhopal, disaster, forts, gardens, internet connections, monuments, mosques, museums

Adam and Eve of the Baiga tribe. Part of a display in Bhopal’s Ethnic Museum explaining how the earth came to be.

Today was an eye-opener for me.

So far, we’ve had four days in India. Twelve hours between flights were in New Delhi—a city we know fairly well—and three days have been in Bhopal—a city I first met in the news in the 1980s.

Too many people will remember Bhopal for the tragic chemical gas leak and explosion that happened 32 years ago, just after midnight in December 1984.

Almost 4000 people have died as a direct result of the disaster and more than half a million were affected. It’s often called the world’s worst-ever industrial disaster, and it never should have happened. Even today, there is a general view that Union Carbide has never really paid its dues on this matter.

Thankfully Bhopal has gone on to recover, grow and prosper.

But that hasn’t been my eye-opener.

After four days in India, I realised I haven’t shared anything with you.

I’ve looked, liked and/or commented on blogs I follow. I’ve plowed through several hundred emails and still have 50 unviewed and another 22 that need answers. I haven’t written to my kids except to say we arrived safely.

And most of all, I haven’t told you a darned thing about all the amazing things we’ve seen.

This is worrying, especially when the internet connection drops out regularly and each page takes several minutes to load.

Part of the Bada Gumbad Complex in New Delhi’s Lodi Garden

When I said I was heading to India, fellow blogger and excellent photographer, Vicki Alford, told me to ‘forget’ about dealing with all the online stuff and enjoy the travels.

So I’m taking Vicki’s advice seriously. I’ll try to post as often as I can about where we are and what we are doing. But just for the time being, I am going to stop worrying about liking, following or commenting on other blogs.

Internet connections in the big city have been slow and unreliable. In an hour we head into Satpura National Park and connections will get worse or non-existent. Hey, this post took about six hours to get loaded.

Hope you’ll understand that for now, I’m going focus my patchy internet time on sharing India with you.

P.S. In the last few days we seen vast gardens, multiple festival celebrations, two mosques, a fort, two museums (including the most amazing ethnic/tribal museum I have ever seen), two scenic lakes, traffic jams like you wouldn’t believe (because the Prime Minster was visiting Bhopal), and a hairdressing salon, where three of us gals got the works.

P.P.S. If you are interested in knowing more about the gas disaster in 1984, I can highly recommend the heartbreaking Five past midnight in Bhopal by Dominque Lapierre and Javier Moro.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to check out my cooking blog. Here’s a great Indian recipe for spinach and lentil dal.