Pollution

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  Madurai, India
Tuesday, August 15, 2006

There are close to a billion people in India and this has a severe impact on the environment. I try to be as objective in this travel log as possible, and therefore I must also write about some of the less beautiful sides of India. Yes, this is not paradise.

Pollution is the major problem, and one that is very obvious wherever you go.

1. Air

Everywhere you walk you are attacked by the fumes of auto scooters, buses and other kinds of polluting machines. After a short walk you sneeze and your handkerchief is filled with black sooth. Sometimes you can even see the smog hanging around the city, especially in Chennai and the dusty cities of Southern Tamil Nadu

Bins in India_1

. We only found one single place where it was nice to smell the air: on the backwaters between Kumarakom and Allappey (see day 17)

2. Water

Water from the tap is definitely not fit for consumption by Westerners. It takes a steel stomach or years of immunization to survive that. So we drink packaged mineral water and take very good precautions when taking a shower or brushing our teeth. The sea water looked ok, but all the small canals and big rivers smell of sulpher.

Today we heard an amazing story on Indian television. In Mumbai the sea water turned for a couple of hours from salty water into sweet water! Many people thought this was a miracle, and started drinking the stuff (I can assure you that the water looked as dark and disgusting as you can possible imagine). Although the government warned everybody that is was probably some toxic waste from a nearby factory, thousands of people flocked to the sea to drink the water and carry it home in buckets, bottles and even plastic bags.

3. Noise

This is my major concern. My ears constantly hurt from the barrage of noises, ranging from the incessant horns that sound on the cars to the Bollywood music that you can hear on street corners, on buses, in supermarkets. I honestly believe that the Indian horn is directly connected to the brake AND accelerator so that it constantly beeps. When we take buses or go to the movies we have to put in our ear plugs if we don't want to damage our hearing permanently

Bins in India_2

. And the fans (which you need at night to keep the temperature down) sound just like an helicopter.

4. Smell

The smell is sometimes terrible, especially when we come near a canal or we see someone who urinates next to us (something that happens at least once every hour). There are also many nice smells (of spices for example) but it all gets blown away when people use the world as their personal toilet.
People also spit a lot. First they consume a lot of chewing tobacco (more than 60% of all tobacco consumed in India is used for chewing). And then you have the betle nuts that leave a thick red slime in your mouth and produce wonderful results when men spit on the walls or pavement.

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