A FAB REACTOR IN ELECTRONICS CITY

It is not for want of technically qualified and competent help that Companies fail in some undertakings.  For instance, the specialist water treatment companies in India are extremely competent in water treatment ( which calls for standard plants), but fail miserably when they dabble in wastewater treatment. ( See my earlier article : Why Zermatt fails in Wastewater Treatment ). The failure is attributable in large part to the mental makeup of the company and their culture which confers pride of place to Salesmanship over technical competence and merit.

Every wastewater is different, and so is every wastewater treatment plant.  That is where a small company like Ecotech will score over the giants who are not equipped to design and engineer treatment plants on a case by case basis.

On that happy note, let me wish you and your family a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

A FAB REACTOR IN ELECTRONICS CITY

Regular readers of this Adda/ Blog will no doubt vouch for my aversion to Water Treatment Companies dabbling in Wastewater Treatment : more so, when they use fancy acronyms for obscure, untried, untested and failed technologies for selling to unsuspecting and gullible clients. Acronyms like FAB, SAFF, SBBR, MBBR, #@&?,  etc.  Neither the acronyms, nor the technologies are pariahs per se. These technologies are used extensively in Chemical process plants, designed by punctilious and conscientious Chemical Engineers ( I claim to be one of that tribe).  It is only when a “Salesman” designs these plants, that gets my goat : designed with the sole objective of making a SALE – performance be damned.

Water Treatment Companies are full of Salesmen, who will only sell and scoot.

All these fancy technologies claim to have lesser detention times of the wastewater in the system and consequently smaller footprints of the plants, and lesser energy consumption.  On all counts, these claims are based on false technical premises : and to top it all, the plants will not work.

I have three fundamental technical objections to these plants working on short contact times to treat wastewater.

1. Short aeration contact times necessarily call for a primary sedimentation stage.

None of these #@&?  plants sold by these Water Treatment Companies have this feature.  A pioneering researcher and leading light in biofilm technology, Prof. Hallvard Odegaard of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology clearly and unequivocally prescribes primary sedimentation to remove the sewage primary solids that may not be fully digested in the bioreactor, given the short contact times. 

Sewage primary solids are difficult to handle in small treatment plants.  They are slimy, do not thicken or dewater easily.  Disposal of primary solids is an onerous task.

2. Without primary sedimentation, the primary solids slip through the Bioreactor, and appear in the secondary settler.

As described above, primary solids are difficult to dispose off without extensive conditioning, which is again missed out in the #@&? Plants sold by the Water Treatment Companies.  Worse !  these companies sell plate/ tube settlers for the secondary settling stage, which  just do not work for biomass.  Plate and tube settlers are fine only for chemical sludges in Water Treatment Plants : One cannot blindly transfer technology from Water Treatment to Wastewater treatment.

3. There is an inherent contradiction between the Kinetics of BOD removal and limitations imposed on transfer rate of Oxygen from the gas phase to the liquid phase in the Bioreactor.

A high concentration of biomass in the #@&? plant and the desired metabolic rate call for very high Oxygen transfer rates, which is difficult to achieve under the engineering design offered by these Water Treatment Companies.

Because of the obstructive regime within the bioreactor, only the less efficient Coarse Bubble Diffusers may be used for aeration, instead of the highly efficient Fine pore membrane diffusrs.  Unless pure Oxygen is employed, Oxygen transfer rates and hence availability of Oxygen in the Mixed liquor will be the limiting factor, which will adversely affect BOD removal rates and efficiencies.

There are of course other irritants in using these #@&? technologies foisted by the Water Treatment Companies :  for instance maintenance and repairs of the reactor in case of malfunctioning of the diffusers.  But then, I have never known these companies to be overly concerned about after sales service.  As I have said before, sell and scoot is their motto.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                December 30, 2011

Footnote :

I will cite just two classic cases of #@&? Plants sold by Zermatt, which failed miserably.

1. Zermatt sold a FAB reactor ( or was it SAFF ? eminently forgettable in any case) to a Software major in Electronics City. Forget the design, God-awful Engineering of this plant warrants a full page article in itself.  I refused to take over this plant for operation & maintenance citing above reasons.  Taking umbrage at my pigheadedness, Zermatt decided to run the plant themselves.  Even after three months of tinkering and tankering   ( tankering out the untreated sewage), Zermatt could not demonstrate satisfactory performance.  Accepting defeat, very large heartedly, Zermatt put up an additional #@&? reactor free of cost.  I still refused to take over the plant, citing the other design and engineering deficiencies.

Needless to say, my stand did not go down well also with the Project team of the Client who approved the Design and Engineering of the wretched plant :  Worse was yet to come.  In a kneejerk, and short sighted response, and to avoid such embarrassment, the Project team made it a policy to entrust O&M of the plants in future for one year to the original vendor of the plant.  This strategy ensures that all major deficiencies and defects in the plant can be effectively swept under the carpet and kept under wraps for at least a year to save face for the project team as well as the vendor.  After that, who cares ?  It was a running plant after all.

I harbour no hard feelings.  I put it down to Client Prerogative.^##  The entire  #@&? Plant was ultimately as good as scrapped : no tears were shed.

2. ITC’s Leaf tobacco Division ( ILTD) engaged me as Consultant to design treatment plants for their units at Anaparthi and Chirala in Andhra Pradesh.  Citing Client Prerogative ^##, my designs were rejected by the Engineering Manager in Chirala in favour of Zermatt’s #@&?  technology.  Not for the first time a Salesman had done a good Buying job as well.  I promptly resigned from this consultancy assignment.  The  #@&?  Plant, I understand never worked.

##

Client Prerogative  ( from the album ‘ Don’t Be Cruel ‘ )

(Bobby Brown, Gene Griffin, Teddy Riley)

Everybody's talking all this stuff about me,

They all think I'm im-press-ive,

I'll take a small commission,

To help sway my decision,

That's client prerogative.

They say I'm lazy,

I really don't care,

That's client prerogative.

They say I'm abusive,

But they can go and fuck themselves in the clackypipe,

Getting paid is how I live.          

.

It's client prerogative,

I can do what I wanna do,

And if you're giving out 'gifts',

I'll certainly take a few.

.

.

******

ESCAPE FROM SAHARANPUR IN AN AMBULANCE

My visits to ITC factories in India has always been great fun ( see aso : A cold Christmas in Munger, Wastewater Treatment in Nepal ).  This is the only reason I continue to offer pure consultancy services to ITC ( HUL being the only other favoured client ) in view of the excessive demand on my time and effort in this activity, without commensurate rewards.  There is history, there is drama, and the varied Geography and the much touted diversity of Incredible India to explore and to enjoy.

This is the story of my first visit to the ITC factory in Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

31. ESCAPE FROM SAHARANPUR IN AN AMBULANCE

I don’t know why it was that every first visit of mine to ITC factories in far off places, was fated to be an adventure  : Is it just coincidence, or as Auric Goldfinger astutely surmised– enemy action ?  I like to believe I have only friends in ITC.

The Treatment Plants for ITC Cigarette factories at Bangalore and Munger were up and running.  It was now the turn of their Saharanpur factory in Uttar Pradesh. Saharanpur is reached by a long haul morning flight from Bangalore to Delhi – then a quick ride in a Sardarji’s taxi from the airport to the New Delhi Railway station, with the curious acronym NDLS, possibly coined by a child with a lisp.

Delhi has a surfeit of Railway terminals -  NDLS, DLI, DEE ( given name Serai Rohilla, would you believe ? ), NIZ : at one time or the other in my several trips to the North, I have boarded trains starting from these points : In those young and innocent days, on my first visit to Bareilly ( to visit a Kissan Factory) I waited and waited at NDLS, with no sign or announcement for my train until a kindly soul directed me to the old Delhi Terminal DLI.  On my next two trips to Bareilly ( WIMCO match unit – the oldest in Asia), Serai Rohilla (down in the boondocks), and Nizamuddin were the starting stations. 

 At NDLS, a wait for a couple of hours in the overcrowded Upper class waiting room under the lazily rotating ceiling fans : more to stir themselves up rather than the air in the room.  Waiting for the Ludhiana Express to be shunted into the platform, to escape to the cool interiors of the air conditioned chair car.  A distance of 190 Km to Saharanpur, covered at a fast clip in three hours and a half.

Like the Munger factory of ITC (1908), the Saharanpur unit is ancient, established in the year 1928.  The town itself is a major trading post strategically located at the Northern tip of the Doab, and at the foothills, just south of the Shivalik mountain range, and blessed by the bounty of the fertile lands surrounding it.

The Branch Engineer it was, who had invited me to Saharanpur to start the process of setting up a treatment plant in that factory.  The fellow obviously goofed up. Upon detraining at Saharanpur, there was no vehicle in sight with the ITC placard or the familiar triangular Namaste logo of ITC to welcome me.  I got hold of a cycle rickshaw to ride to the factory gate on Sardar Patel Road.  To my consternation, I found no booking for Dr. Kodavasal in the Peninsular Club Guest House of ITC.  Frantic calls to the missing Branch Engineer elicited the useful information that I had been booked into the New Taj Hotel in the city. Wah ! Taj, I said to myself and I made haste to that star studded hotel with the rickshaw bell clanking all the way.  I could not have been more naïve !

The Grand Taj was in a busy market area, a stone’s throw away from the Ghanta Ghar ( Town Clock Tower), and all roads in Saharanpur lead to this landmark edifice standing from colonial times.

http://wikimapia.org/#lat=29.964583&lon=77.5461683&z=19&l=0&m=b

The Taj hotel was a pretentious little hostelry with an exterior façade of gaudily variegated glass, and matching hotel rooms inside.  I was allotted a premium road facing room, being an honoured visitor to ITC, but was asked to pay in advance.  As consultant to ITC, I had counted on this trip to be entirely paid for : I had not carried excess cash.  Providentially, I found the Main branch of the Indian Overseas Bank next door to the Hotel.  IOB have been my bankers for several years, and at an age before advent of ATM, the Branch Manager was kind enough to loan me money against a debit to my account in Bangalore.

For dinner, I found a Dhaba in the the Ghanta Ghar chowk, where the price was reasonable and the fare far superior to what the Grand Taj had to offer.

Rounds of the cigarette factory, and discussions with the engineers occupied much of the next day, when broad contours of the Treatment plant were outlined.  All the wastewaters would be sewered or pumped to one corner of the factory, close to the Cricket field beyond.  Treated water would then be used to irrigate, create and maintain a lush green outfield for the weekend games of the gentlemen of ITC.  Discussions over, I retired to the Grand Taj for a good night’s rest, to catch the Ludhiana Express on its return journey to New Delhi the next morning.

Trouble erupted in Saharanpur in the morning : bands of vandals roamed the streets, shutting down shops, turning back vehicles,  beating up innocent passersby, enforcing a Bundh.  In India, one knows not the what, when, why, and wherefore of such sudden eruptions of mob violence.  It might be a minor altercation between two communities ( the common euphemism) or it might be the dalits on the warpath, or students protesting against exams,  or just jobless vandals recruited by political parties to flex their muscles.

The Taj unfortunately was in close proximity to the epicenter of this hooliganism : stones smashed into the  façade of the hotel, shattering it, strewing shards of glass inside and out, as a mob raced past, yelling and shouting incoherently.

I was in a panic.  Not on account of the rampaging mobs on the streets of Saharanpur : No mob  could shake me, having been part of such mobs myself in my younger hooligan days in Bombay.  Indian Railways too was immune to such mob action in those days and the Ludhiana Express would chug away with one less passenger on board.  I frantically called up the Branch Engineer of ITC for help.  And help did arrive with sirens ululating, blue lights flashing, in the form of the factory Ambulance van.

I arrived in great style at Saharanpur station in time to board the Ludhiana Express.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                      July 16, 2011

Footnote :

Saharanpur must have moved on from those early years : Chief Minister Ms. Mayawati, and Bollywood siren Priyanka Chopra are daughters of Saharanpur.  Hmmmm…… beyond that I know of no other noteworthy achievement of this godforsaken small town in U.P in the intervening 20 years.

TREATMENT PLANT DESIGN BY ACADEMICS

It is a well proven fact that a Treatment Plant cannot be designed by the Book alone ( see : Designing by the Book ).  Equally true is the fact that a Treatment Plant cannot be designed by an Academic, who teaches just by the Book. Lack of exposure to the real world outside the confines of the class room and the campus puts blinkers on these good souls, who would rather turn to page 43, Equation 4.1.3 in the Book, rather than use plain horse sense.  This is one such story of an academic project, which sucked in not only the Guru, but also his equally culpable, blindfolded Chelas into a morass of academic fraud and fudge, all too common in India.

TREATMENT PLANT DESIGN BY ACADEMICS

Very few of you would have heard of Dattaram Advertising Pvt. Ltd., in Bombay.  Fewer still will know that this advertising agency is over 100 years old : yes, 100 years, and still going strong !

 http://www.dattaram.com/inside.html

After I moved to Bangalore in the year 1986, to set up Ecotech, my first assignment for designing a wastewater treatment plant was for NP Chewing Gums in Kaval Byrasandra, right behind the TV tower, a prominent landmark of Bangalore 25 years ago, at the far end of Nandidoorg Road.  Where and how does Dattaram Advertising feature in this story ? Read on.

Raman Rajan and I were college mates for the one year in the year 1968 at the S.I.E.S college in Sion, Bombay, doing out First Year Science as it was called then.  This course one chose after 11 years of studies leading upto the SSLC in a High School, if one wished to pursue the science and technology stream.  Present terminologies of 10 +2, 10+5, P.U etc., go over my head.

Raman Rajan followed in his father’s footsteps after finishing college and ran Dattaram Advertising as its owner/ M.D.  Dattaram handled the advertising for NP Chewing Gums in the year 1986.  I do now know if they still do : or indeed if NP Chewing Gums even exists today.

NP Chewing Gums earlier had appointed a professor from the Env. Engineering faculty of Bangalore University as their consultant to design their treatment plant.  As it turned out, a good number of M.Tech students of the Bangalore U., used this opportunity to churn out their Project reports under this professor.  A big show of “Scientific Method” of diligent study was made by installing a V-notch weir ( a device to measure instantaneous flows of water in an open channel ) in the terminal manhole of the sewer line leading out of the factory.  Now, any practicing environmental engineer would tell you that a manhole is just not the place to install a V-notch.  I  desist from going into the nitty gritty of the technicalities : suffice it is to say that it was an eyewash meant only to impress the uninitiated.

Finally, when the treatment plant design was presented, the Directors of NP Chewing Gums were aghast at the leviathan of a plant staring at them out of the report. The plant was designed for a flow quantity that was several times over that of even the total water intake into the factory.  The good Professor was insistent that his students had done a meticulous job of measuring the flow, and there simply could be no mistake.  “ A V- Notch does not lie “ pontificated the professor, and refused to alter his designs. 

There was another curious anecdote about this learned professor. The consultancy fee charged by the professor was, by all accounts a huge sum of money for the quantum of work put in and quality of report generated.  Later, when I was called in to assist NP Chewing Gum, the Director confided in me that the exorbitant fee charged by the professor was avowedly on account of his American degree, and the need to recover the costs of his foreign education !  The professor and his students were summarily sacked before they could wreak more havoc.

I was introduced to NP chewing Gums at this point by my buddy Raman Rajan of Dattaram fame, with an assurance to them that I had an American degree as well, but no need to panic.  My American degree was obtained by means of a fully paid scholarship.

During the course of my studies and investigations of the Water Balance in the factory, I quickly unraveled the mystery behind the absurdly large size of the plant designed by the Academics of Bangalore University.

The design figure taken by the good professor and his acolytes for the daily flowrate of wastewater tallied perfectly with the monthly quantity of water billed by the Municipal water supply agency ( BWSSB ) to NP Chewing Gums !  

Academic fraud and dishonesty rears its ugly head out of the campus !

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                   August 20, 2011

P.S.  My daughter and son then 6 and 4 years old, had a whale of a time when I played Willy Wonka and took them on a tour of the chewing gum and confectionery factory :  Came back home with several packets full of goodies.

Sojourn in Srilanka

The emerald isle of Srilanka is truly a beautiful country, alas ravaged by ethnic strife.  On a short visit to Srilanka about 12 years ago, I discovered the truth behind Soundranayagam's laments about organised suppression of Tamils in that country.  Soundra  was a colleague of mine at Vanderbilt University in the late 1970's, a refugee of sorts, and a rabid supporter of the Tamils' cause in Srilanka.  No Tamil could aspire to a high post in the Government, the Police or the army : opportunity for higher education was denied to the Tamils.  LTTE was but a nascent organisation at that time, and other more pliant Tamil organisations were mere collaborators, toeing the Government's line.

Soundra was the sole Srilankan representative in the Vanderbilt Cricket team : a clumsy fielder in the deep, who made up for his shortcomings by his irrepressible spirit and never say die attitude.  I can truthfully say that I have imbibed a small portion of his spirit from the five years that I had known him.

45. WASTEWATER TREATMENT FOR A CHEESE FACTORY

IN SRILANKA

Kalutara, Matara, Hikkaduwa, Ambalangoda, Ambatale, Embilipitya – lyrical names of towns in Serendip , also called Ceylon, aka Srilanka.  These towns and names are etched in my memory by my having prepared innumerable proposals for Water treatment plants at these locations for the Sri Lanka Water Board.

Sri Lanka and India have a lot in common in respect of fresh water resources : Both countries are fed by the monsoon rains, the swollen rivers then carrying mud, silt and clay in huge quantities turning the waters brown in colour.  And for the rest of the year, the rivers run calm, carrying clear water with little turbidity.  This wide variation in the characteristics of the water poses a challenge to Water Treatment Engineers to deliver treated water of uniform quality through the year.

The Bhandup Water Treatment plant in Bombay ( see The Bhandup Water Treatment Plant ) employed the Dorr- Oliver “ Pretreator “, a clarifier device with an integrated sludge recirculation system, which could effectively nullify the wide variation in quality by developing and maintaining a “Sludge Blanket” within the clarifier.  The Chairman of the Sri Lanka Water Board on a visit to Bombay in the year 1982 was sufficiently impressed by the performance of the Pretreators at Bhandup, that on his return to Sri Lanka he mandated that in future all WTP’s in that country would adopt a similar technology for treatment of water for their municipal supplies.

And hence my familiarity with Kalutara, Matara, Embilipitya ….., several of which towns indeed now boast a WTP with the Dorr-Oliver Pretreator.

Later on in my career, after my move to Bangalore, I had the opportunity to visit Sri Lanka in the summer of 1999 on the invitation of an engineer of Tamil ethnic origin, to study the wastewater from a Swiss Cheese factory in that country and recommend a suitable treatment scheme.

Fortuitously, the KASSIA ( Karnataka Small Scale Industries Association) was holding a Trade Fair in Colombo at that time, and I managed to get into the entourage as a delegate : the entire trip of four days was hugely subsidized with accommodation provided at the Taj Samudra in Colombo, a lovely little hotel with a beautiful view of the Indian Ocean.  The historic Galle Face Hotel was just a stone’s throw away, built in the year 1864, and said to be oldest hotel East of the Suez !!  Evidently the Western world with its usual arrogance does not recognize Serais  of yore as fit and proper hostelry.

http://www.photowebusa.com/taj/taj-samudra/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_Face_Hotel

The Tamil Engineer,  Selvarasan, came promptly at 0700 Hrs to pick me up from the Taj Samudra for the trip to the Cheese factory located up in the hills in a smallish town called Maskeliya in the Central Province, also home to celebrated hill stations of Nuwara Eliya, Hatton and Kandy.  Much to my dismay, the early hour obliged me to miss my complimentary breakfast at the Taj Samudra :  I am a skinflint at heart and penny pinching has been developed into a fine art by generations of Kodavasals, eking out a living for vast broods of pigtailed rapscallion Jacks and equally rambunctious double braided Jills in that remote rural village in what is now the district of Kumbakonam.  I comforted myself, thinking that I could enjoy a good local Sri Lankan breakfast somewhere along the way at Selvarasan’s expense.

Selvarasan’s Toyota Corolla zipped us out of Colombo, and we were shortly on the A-7 heading up into the mountains.  With my stomach growling, I kept my eyes peeled for a likely looking joint for a good and hearty Sinhalese breakfast.  But alas and alack !  We found nothing on the way, save for a decrepit run down shack displaying buns fit only for  the mongrel dogs hanging round wistfully in the background.  I had to make do with just some Milky Ceylon tea for breakfast that day, before we started the climb into the mountains.

The route up the mountains was studded with machine gun emplacements manned by Srilankan army regulars : at several points we were stopped and my passport checked,  since I was travelling with Selvarasan a Tamil, at a time when the LTTE  and the army were at war,  the entire nation held to ransom by the ethnic conflict between Tamils, Srilankans and an unusually rabid Buddhist clergy. Buddha’s teachings apparently were lost on these bloodthirsty monks in ochre habits.

The route took us past Kitulgala, the site of the movie “The Bridge on the river Kwai” a classic David Lean essay shot over the Kelani river.  Distance between reality and make believe was again brought home to me as we drove past this remote village of Srilanka.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitulgala

The river was muddy and turbid  when we passed by it, and I gave a mental thumbs up to the Dorr-Oliver Pretreator and the good Chairman of the Sri Lanka Water Board thirty years ago, who had the courage of conviction to do what he thought was right – An Engineer and a Gentleman after my own heart.

We hit Maskeliya around 11 AM that day, only to find the cheese factory nailed shut and boarded up, on account of labour unrest.  We puttered around for a while around the place, much to the amusement of inquisitive goats and lazy cows populating that little hick town.  Human presence now was scarce, the cheese factory apparently being the only high jinks in town.

Selvarasan had organized lunch at his uncle’s home at Hatton a few miles away, at a tea plantation.  The house was a typical Plantation bungalow, which one might find in Coonoor or Munnar : With tiled roofs to combat the incessant rains, and glass all around for that untrammeled vistas of  magical misty mornings in the hills.

The family get together at luncheon was a heartening sight at first : kinfolks from far and wide had gathered together on the occasion of the visit of honoured guests from Colombo.  Strong familial ties continue to bind Srilankan Tamils :  warm and spontaneous hospitality showered on a stranger but a guest like me are possibly things of the past in mainland India.  Srilankan history and politics have contrived to keep the Tamils culturally and socially behind times : the simple, honest and down to earth manner of these people moved even a hard boiled cynic like me. I was struck by  a sinking feeling in my heart, an indescribable and poignant sense of loss and helplessness in this company – for a lost tribe, so near to their homeland, yet so far removed from it.

Somerset Maugham had he traveled in Srilanka would have expressed these sentiments much better.

Back in Colombo, I did some shopping for the family at the Odel department store, relished string hoppers with fiery coconut curry in roadside eateries, patronized the Elephant House store right behind the Taj Samudra for snacks and other goodies.  And at the airport on the way back to catch my flight to Madras picked up a three string Carnelian necklace, said to have magical properties for the missus back home.

http://www.jewellery-art.co.uk/carnelian-gemstone-meaning.html

After nearly twelve years, I am yet to see it take effect.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                           December 03, 2011

WASTEWATER TREATMENT IN NEPAL

About 45 years ago, my cousin Jagan went on a bike trip to Nepal all the way from Bombay, on his newly minted Rajdoot.  Ever since that time, I have been fascinated by this little land locked Hindu Kingdom in the shadows of the mighty Himalayas.  Dev Anand further kindled this passion with one of his more memorable movies.  I finally made the trip to Nepal in the year 2009,  needless to say, with a fair share of adventure that has dogged me on all my travels in India and abroad.

42. WASTEWATER TREATMENT IN NEPAL

 

XYZ Limited, a major tobacco and cigarette manufacturer ( among other business interests) have a joint venture cigarette manufacturing factory in a town called Simara ( Simra), Nepal about 100 Km by Road, South - South West of the capital city of Kathmandu.  Reportedly the Joint venture partner is the Royal family of Nepal (as with most other major industrial and business ventures in Nepal, I suspect).  Simara is a semi industrial town with several minor small scale industries : about 20 Km further down along the same Tribhuvan Highway lies the town of Birgunj, the preeminent land entry point to Nepal from across the Indian Border town of Raxaul in Bihar.  Birgunj with its Special Economic Zone status is a tax free haven for several Indian Companies who have set up shop there.  Simara boasts an airport ( ICAO code : VNSI ) serving the southern border of Nepal with India.

The purpose of our visit to Surya Nepal cigarette factory was to investigate and assess performance of the Wastewater Treatment Plant there ( A DEWATS treatment plant), and determine if the same could be replicated in their proposed new facility in Ranjangaon, near Pune.  Three other officers from the project cell of XYZ Limited were my companions on this trip to Nepal.  Neither Ranjangaon nor the surrounding areas are tobacco country.  The plant location was dictated primarily by an archaic section and clause in the Tobacco Licensing Rules of the Government of India.

We flew from Bangalore to Delhi, transferred to the International terminal in a World War II vintage rattletrap of a bus and boarded the onward flight to Kathmandu. Jet Airways had convenient connecting flights for the two legs of the journey.  From Kathmandu International airport, we were to hop across to the domestic airport, a short distance away, and get on the Buddha Air flight to Simara.

And Lo and behold, just as we stepped into the portals of the ramshackle domestic airport terminal, the Buddha Air Flight had taxied to the end of the runway, serenely revving up its turboprops, readying for take off.  No amount of pleading, cajoling and entreaties with the airport staff could bring the 14 seater back to the apron for our benefit.  Resignation writ large on our faces, we watched helplessly as fat Buddha took flight to the clear skies of Nepal with a disdainful tilt of its nose.

With the forced change of plan, the folks from XYZ Limited made some frantic phone calls, and an ancient boxy Toyota Corolla was arranged late in the evening around seven PM for the road trip to Simara about 100 Km from Kathmandu.  As the setting sun cast an orange glow over the valley, anticipation rising, I looked forward to the thrill of a drive through the mountains on a late December night. Honking and weaving our way out of the city, I saw long queues of vehicles at every petrol pump we passed by, fuel being in acute shortage in the Himalayan Kingdom.  Thankfully our car was tanked up for the trip to Simara.  We plodded through the busy and unruly city traffic, and were finally out of Kathmandu by about eight PM in total darkness.

Immediately outside Kathmandu, the mountain ranges took over : two beams of light, a little askew, battling the twin hazards of darkness and  light fog clinging to the mountainsides, we crawled around bend after bend in the road.  Lumbering trucks ahead, grunting and groaning in low gear, slowed us down even more. The biting cold of the winter night seeped into the cabin of the car, further adding to our misery.  The anticipated pleasure of the drive quickly turned into an ordeal of Himalayan proportions.

Relief came around midnight, when we stopped for dinner at an all night Dhaba at a nondescript village called Nibuwatar.  The food, hot and fresh was excellent and raised our spirits.  What gladdened our hearts even more was the good news that the road ahead was better, long stretches of it in the plains of southern Nepal, bordering the Chitwan National Park, a world heritage site.

The drive along the broad and straight carriageway of the Tribhuvan Highway brought a tear to my eye, as my mind harked back to a description of this very road, ridden over by my cousin almost 45 years ago on his Rajdoot motorcycle.  On a fine summer day, Jagan Swamy had set out from Bombay on his Rajdoot, traversing the states of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar then on to Nepal and back to Calcutta as the final destination. The bike was then shipped back to Bombay, while Jagan took the flight home.  His travelogue typewritten on 20 pages and circulated to friends and family was the very first of this genre of writing for me : I have read and reread his story several times, with undiminished pleasure and awe, and always with a twinge of envy.  This was the seminal event in my life, sparking in me a lifelong passion for the romance, the mystery, the adventure and sheer pleasure of travel into the unknown.

 Jagan the rakish, swashbuckling adventurer passed away in Dubai at the young age of 42.  R.I.P

It was the wee hours of the morning when we finally hit the sack in a Lodge in Simara, mentally and physically exhausted.  The eight hour drive, punctuated with a flat tyre on the way, was one adventure I could have gladly done without.

The DEWATS system of waste treatment, a glorified version of the age old septic tank followed by an upflow filter was inspected the following day at the factory of Surya Nepal.  The trick of the trade in this technology is to provide a settling tank at source for each stream of wastewater, before it reaches the DEWATS treatment plant.  The technology was approved by me for implementation at their new facility at Ranjangaon, with a small aerobic stage of final treatment in place of the reed bed system in the original DEWATS design.

The journey back from Simara to Kathmandu by air that evening was not without its share of excitement and a minor flutter.  In the security frisking booth, my wallet was opened by a snub nosed Nepalese Armyman, whence he extracted several 500 Rupee Notes and was proceeding to confiscate them.  I was not aware that the Indian 500 rupee note was contraband commodity in Nepal.  I came to know later that this prohibition was on account of huge influx of counterfeit notes via Nepal courtesy the infamous ISI of Pakistan.   I had to leave behind a 50 Rupee note to retrieve the rest of the loot.

The flight from Simara to Kathmandu was delightfully pleasant.  It was just up and over, across a mountain range and before I knew it, we had landed in Kathmandu in all of 20 minutes from start to stop.  The foolhardiness of the self inflicted ordeal of the road journey the previous day hit me in the face like a ton of bricks.  Mercifully, the Hotel de l’Annapurna lived up to its reputation, affording a comfortable night’s sleep after the travails of the preceding days.  No marks for guessing the owners of the oldest five star hotel in Nepal, established in the year 1985.

The following day, before the crack of dawn, in bitter cold conditions, we motored to Nagarkot about 30 Km out of Kathmandu : here King Midas appears at sunrise, gently brushing the Himalayan peaks with his gliding touch, transforming to gold peak after lofty peak, mesmerizing the onlookers  for a few fleeting minutes with sublime magic.                        

Rest of the day was free for leisure  ( in tour itinerary jargon), and we spent time visiting the famous Pashupathinath temple, ( another world heritage site) the largest shopping mall in the city ( decidedly dowdy ) and taking in other sights and sounds of this multifaceted city.

Dr. Ananth S Kodavasal                                                                      Oct. 12, 2011