Marketplace Features

"Journey Of My Life..." Reporter Stephen Henn's feature "Bonded Labor In India" only told part of the story. In this "Reporter's Notebook," Henn describes how the trip to the small Indian town ended up being its own mini-adventure.

"Doing this series took me on the plane ride of my life: Chicago to Los Angeles to Tokyo to Singapore to Bangalore, India -- all in a weekend. I read three novels and spent days crammed into tiny little airline seats-- but the flight was the easy part.

When Marketplace launched this series last summer, I made a rookie mistake: Applying for a visa at the Indian consulate in Washington, I checked the box marked "journalist" and told consular officials I was hoping to write a piece on child labor.

For two weeks, I heard nothing. Then, after dozens of calls, I was told Marketplace would have to hire a special government guide -- pay his wages, pay for his food, transportation and lodging. Then this "guide" would approve my final script.

Let's just say we found a way to get me into the country without a guide. But that was just the beginning of getting to the story.

The city where I landed, Bangalore, is a high-tech boomtown. It's one of the fastest growing in Asia, and its population shot from 4 million to 6 million in 10 years. While the boom brought some of the best nightclubs to Bangalore outside of Bombay, its traffic is chaos. Diesel power rickshaws battle with oxen and buses for space on city streets; drivers develop some kind of strange swarming instinct. The air is so full of soot you can feel the grit in your teeth.

Driving north from Bangalore along the Mumbai highway was one of the most terrifying experiences of my adult life.

Once we cleared Bangalore, the road narrowed to two lanes. It was unlined. Curves, dips and buses made seeing oncoming traffic almost impossible, but this didn't stop anyone from passing. Drivers would honk once, gun it, and pull out at full speed, running headlong into oncoming traffic.

At one point, we pulled out to see a bus heading straight toward us, being passed by a truck. Four vehicles screamed toward each other on a two lane road. One truck and one bus pulled onto the shoulder; we swerved, and our little car's side mirror cleared the oncoming truck by inches.

Our driver, Michael, had a Virgin Mary icon propped up on his dashboard, but Michael was covering his bets: behind his picture of Mary and the Baby Jesus was a soapstone carving of Ganesh, a plump Hindu deity with an elephant's head. Figuring I was going to meet the creator soon, I spent the next 6 hours in an intensive Hinduism tutorial. I'm not sure I found my faith, but it was a distraction from the terror.

They car we were in, a diesel-powered Ambassador, is made in India. It looks like "Shrinky-Dink" version of a 1940s Jaguar -- all curves and English pomp -- but Ambassadors top out at 60 miles an hour...down hill. These cars have no pickup, and when you are trying to pass a bus while staring down an oncoming tractor trailer, they don't inspire confidence. Ambassadors have two advantages: a high clearance and they're study; both came in handy when we were forced off the road.

And, about every half hour, we'd pass a wreck of head-on collisions: trucks sitting in ditches with their back ends sticking straight up in the air, buses with their front ends shorn off. There are no ambulances this far outside of the city. Instead, truckers carry blue stretchers underneath their seats. The wounded -- and worse -- would be lined up along the shoulder, waiting.

It took almost 12 hours to reach the little village where we were headed, Ensherana Hally The sun was setting; I had been traveling for days -- but this story was just beginning..."
--Stephen Henn