…leaving what feels like a trail of destruction. Seriously, we’ve been starting to wonder if we’ve cursed the region! See what you think:
1. Nepal – we had to change our plans and avoid this place as terrorists protesting about Chinese actions in Tibet started letting bombs off in Kathmandu about a fortnight before we planned to go there. So we got stuck in 41 degree Celsius Delhi instead…
2. India – no sooner had we left India for Hong Kong and terrorists blew up a region of central Jaipur, a city we’d particularly liked! I don’t think the culprits of this one were ever identified, but they killed 80 and injured 200 or so people. A few months later other cities were hit – Ahmedabad and Bangalore.
3. Burma – OK, we didn’t exactly plan to come here after the events of last year, however we have visited several neighbouring countries. The appalling typhoon that devastated a large area of Burma, killing unknown numbers of people (partially due to the Governments’ policy to limit international aid), occurred while we were in Hong Kong. It has been estimated that over 200,000 were missing.
4. China – just before we arrived in China we heard about a very serious train crash near Beijing which killed over 70 people. This didn’t fill us with a great deal of confidence as we planned to spend the next 6 weeks travelling by train through China! Luckily the trains we used were brilliant, cheap, and didn’t crash.
5. China – after we flew out of Hong Kong to Japan the most devastating earthquake for 50 years occurred in the Szechwan region, killing over 68,000 people. The effects of this natural disaster were very much in evidence as we travelled through China, carefully altering our route to stay away from downstream areas of the massive landslide lakes created by the quake.
6. Japan – a much smaller earthquake occurred in northern Japan, about a week after we left the country. The closest city to its epicentre was Sendai, a nice place that we’d visited briefly on the way back to Tokyo from Hokkaido.
7. Japan – at about the same time as the earthquake, a tragedy of a different nature occurred in Tokyo. A psychotic knife-killer hired a car and drove into Akihibara, the electronics centre of town to and created havoc by running over pedestrians and stabbing innocent bystanders to death. He killed 7 before being stopped by the police, but was disappointed by this – he later stated in court "I should have used gasoline so I could have killed more than I did". Nice. We’d walked down the same street, oh, a week earlier.
8. Thailand – we leave Bangkok, and two weeks later the People’s Alliance for Democracy move in and seize control of TV stations and the Government house in what they declare to be a new Revolution (in the light of the recent Thai Coup). Later Government allegations of corruption etc cause the Prime minister to be ditched… all this a few years after the (very peaceful) Coup D’Tat. A stable government system, eh?
9. Japan and Indonesia - more earthquakes occurred just as we were leaving Asia – this time in northern Japan (again), and also in Indonesia, which we had been thinking of visiting, but decided that we didn’t have enough time to cover before moving to Oceania.
Hmm. Is there a pattern here? I think Gary may be innocent on the cursing front, as I seem to have left a trail of destruction before – I was on the Herald of Free Enterprise in a force 9 gale about 6 months before she sank in Zeebruger, and on Greek Ferry in the Cyclodes a few months before it went down on some rocks! Both boats killed hundreds of people. Perhaps for the good of humanity I should stop travelling!
It does make you think though. We live a very cushioned life in Europe where we get far more protection from such things than most countries out here. Not that the UK hasn’t seen its share of terrorists and psychotic killers I suppose. Or, from another point of view, do these natural and man-made disasters happen far more frequently around the world than we realise as we sit in comfort at home in the UK?
So now we move on to Australia. If they will let us in that is!
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