Last night was incredibly bad. Today's lesson - never expect an 11-hour bus ride to be okay when you are paying only $5. The bus ride from Udaipur to Indore was so bad I'd say it was on par with the 24 hours I spent in jail in NYC during the Republican National Convention. The only place for my bag was in the aisle and I had to stay up all night to hold it upright so it wouldn't fall on top of the several adults and children curled up on the floor beneath it. I was in the seat section, which was nestled under a series of cages in which the better classes slept. Across were more cages. It looked almost exactly like a rusty old NYC Dept. of Corrections bus. The ride felt like we were off-roading with no suspension on rocky riverbeds for at least 8 of the 11 hours. It is a miracle that both axles didn't shatter. The stench inside was so awful I could barely think. Unfriendly fellow passengers. The ride got so bad, though, that by the time it was over I felt a certain affection for them or us as a group. It's ok, it's over now. Indore was weird. I arrived there long before sunset. Still totally black out. Dim lights, few people up, bad air. I told a group of autorickshaw guys I needed to go to Bhopal right then, no hotel, and one frenzied guy took me to the bus station not too far away. Within half an hour I was on a Rs 116 bus to Bhopal. The sun rose about an hour and a half later. The landscape of this part of Madhya Pradesh is mostly flat, with some rolling hills. Everything is green and lush, even though a lot of the riverbeds were completely dry. There are lots of deciduous trees, but also lots of palm trees.

BHOPAL

I was very exciting to approach Bhopal and finally see it in person after hearing about it so much. The city is pretty huge. 1.5 million people, fairly large area. Low buildings. I called Sambhavna clinic from a phone place near the bus station, got directions, and took an autorickshaw. The clinic is beautiful, and much bigger and busier than I imagined. Bustling with people. This morning there were huge crowds of people coming for treatment. Right now there are a few other volunteers here, mostly from the U.S. and mostly on their way out starting tomorrow.

You can see the abandoned Union Carbide factory from the terrace here. The flare tower and MIC (methyl isocyanate) tank rise above the area not far from here at all. The neighborhood around the clinic is extremely poor. People have been very sweet to me and very helpful. I'm figuring out now what I'll be working on this week and beyond, but it looks like there is plenty to do. I have only just arrived, so I don't have so much to say yet about Sambhavna and the continuing disaster aftermath situation here in Bhopal, but I'm sure I will have tons to say as time goes on. If you are just coming upon this and don't know anything about Bhopal or what happened here, here are some links:

Where I am: www.bhopal.org (website of Sambhavna Clinic)
International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal: www.bhopal.net
A simple history on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
(There are also detailed histories on the first two websites.)

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Some other observations:

There are tons of mosquitos here already and it's only January. By comparison, there were almost none at all in Rajasthan. It's not any hotter here, so it must have something to do with there being more water here. Apparently malaria is a huge problem here. I'm sticking to the mefloquine. Right now here in this room there are dozens of mosquitos and some people brought in a bowl with some leaves and twigs (a particular kind?) to burn to drive them away. So now I'm in a cloud of relatively pleasant-smelling smoke. Two of the volunteers were diagnosed with malaria this morning. Two other staff have it right now, too. They are starting on a complicated course of treatment with chloroquine and primaquine. I went with one of them down to the "chemist" this afternoon to try to find the drugs he needed. They are basically open street shops with tons of bottles and they have almost every kind of pharmaceutical you could want, no prescription necessary. It's wild. I decided to look for more mefloquine because I only have enough for another couple of months. The first place had none, but the second had plenty and I bought six pills for Rs 312, roughly $1.25 each, one tenth of what they cost back in the United States. I examined them very carefully and it is as legit as I could wish for -- good exp. date, right dosage, right name, size, opaque encapsulation, etc. I'll know if it's the real thing within an hour or two of taking one. So that's good -- problem solved.

Muslim prayer time right now - the Allah Akbar prayer song is playing now. Bhopal has a long and robust Islamic history and there is a much greater Muslim presence here than in the average city in India.

I just went into town to buy a few supplies like a towel to shower and a new pen and a better English-Hindi dictionary. (Much, much less English in Madhya Pradesh than Rajasthan). Bhopal is so much better than the other places I've been so far. No tourists at all, no hassle. I can walk down the street and no one bothers me. The economy here isn't totally based around squeezing foreigners. I feel almost as if I have finally arrived in India for real. The traffic here is the worst and wildest I've seen anywhere. Worse than Mumbai and Jaipur combined, something I never could have imagined that first night in Mumbai. The pollution, too, is suffocating. My nostrils blacken tissue paper. I can feel it in my eyes, too. It's so bad you that when someone smokes cigarette next to you you can't even tell, by sight or smell.

I'm very happy to have arrived at last and to be here. I can't believe I'm here. I will write more when I can. M.