We had carried an article on the hydel power constru-ction sites in far north in our issue of September 2008. Here is another follow-up article from an engineer who had been to these projects several times. The saga of Vijaya Bhaskar and Manoj Kumar Garnayak continues here.

Our mythologies talk of the river Ganges being brought down to the earth through the tremendous, untiring efforts of King Bhageeratha, which have earned the task the sobriquet of Bhageeratha Prayathnam. Today to get electricity generated from the water of the same Ganges, the hydro engineer has to put in similar efforts!

Larsen & Toubro Ltd. is engaged in the works of two hydro power projects on the Ganges, in its upper reaches- the Tapovan Vishnugad project on the River Dhauli Ganga, a tributary of Ganges, near Joshimat in Uttarakand; and the Singoli Bhatwari Project on the River Mandakini, another tributary of Ganges, near Rudraprayag, Uttarakand, somewhat downstream of Joshimat. The common factors about both these sites, apart from their being near pilgrim centres, are the remoteness from major urban centres and the difficult infrastructural and living conditions. The construction teams are led by L&T's intrepid engineers, Vijaya Bhaskar in Tapovan and Manoj Kumar Garnayak in Singoli. The story is the same for all engineers working in the remote hydro projects and Bhaskar and Manoj are only typical protagonists in our story!

The sacrificial horses…
At the Tapovan site Bhaskar's team is boring a 12 km long tunnel though the Himalayas to bring the diverted waters of Dhauli Ganga to the power house to generate electricity. This long tunnel in rock is mainly excavated using a tunnel boring machine (TBM) and some portions by using smaller machines called Road Headers or by the drilling and blasting method. Before Bhageeratha's time, a sacrificial horse (of an Ashwamedha Yaga) got stolen and taken down to the netherworlds or Pathala. Bhageeratha's ancestors bored a tunnel to Pathala, to locate and retrieve the sacrificial horse, (though with a tragic result for them- they got burnt to ashes and Bhageeratha had to bring down Ganga from the Heavens to propitiate their souls) and his successors are boring a tunnel underground to bring horse power to mankind!

The winding roads…
We see in European mountainous countries such as Switzerland, more or less straight roads using many tunnels to cross the high mountains. However, our more economical people have designed our roads to ascend and descend the mountains en route by passing through winding routes around the hills and not through them! This means that our routes are going to be much longer to cover the same distance as the crow flies. These mountainous roads have to be carved out of the virgin rock slopes and every foot width counts and it costs a lot of money to blast out the same, but every additional foot means more safety! In many places where the runoff water from the upper slopes crosses the roads or where there are poor soil conditions in the upper slopes, there are possibilities of landslides. It is common to see dozers on the roadside in these parts, which swing into action as soon as news of a landslide trickles in to the concerned border Roads set-up . The frequent runoff also spoils the bituminous roads quickly. The combined result of the above is frequent disruptions to through traffic and uncomfortable rides over the undulating and winding roads. People often get stuck up on either side of a land slide for hours, or even days together!

Riding a TBM
The TBM is a big machine and has an overall length of around 235 m and a front diameter of 6.75 m. To reduce the dimensions and weight of the components to be transported over the winding narrow roads, the large main cutter-head had to be transported in three cut pieces to the jobsite. The largest piece has a length of 7 m and a width of 4.5 m! Transporting it from the good plains roads from Hardwar up to the site located some 300 km away was a big problem, as the narrow roads had too many sharp curves for the long road trailers and the frequent landslides could block the road without any warning. So much so, the TBM spent more time crossing over from Hardwar to the site than from Germany, where it was manufactured, to Mumbai Port! Possibly Bhaskar should have bored his way through the intervening hills all the way from Hardwar to the site to make it faster (and also helped posterity in the process)! I am sure Bhaskar would have more readily agreed to locate and retrieve a sacrificial horse anyway than transport a TBM over this distance!

Troubles come in droves…
The remoteness of the site has mellowed down in the recent past with the advent of the mobile phone. However, there are only a few communication towers and the signal, more often than not, plays hookey! Sometimes Bhaskar's friends have to travel a long way to make a phone call to civilisation! The winters are tough with snow fall descending on the upper reaches and blocking the roads, apart from chilling the very marrow in the bones. Probably the TBM is still able to work because it is manufactured in the cold climes of Germany! But the engineers and workmen find it tough to operate it in the cold winter.  At nights the people at the site have some unusual visitors- bears and tigers! In the wild animal reserves the humans come on a safari to see the animals, but here the animals come on a safari to see the humans doing some strange things! And the blasting doesn't scare them away so easily either! On the part of the human beings, the resident hill folk have been used to an insular life all these years and the onset of 'progress' can have a disturbing effect on them. No wonder they get disturbed about their habitats getting invaded and often there are confrontations between the oldies and the visitors. Many a time people at the exposed site have the maximum visibility and have to bear the brunt of such interactions. Still Life has to go on…! Like the sages of yore, our site engineers also work with single-minded concentration, come snow or sunshine, whether wild animals visit them or wild crowds trouble them!

The saving graces...
Bhaskar and Manoj would cite the tremendous beauty of the hills and the valleys and the challenge of the engineering task as the motivating factors for working on these tough projects in the face of the daunting travails! There is tremendous team spirit among the engineers and the workmen and they keep surmounting one problem after another, in their steady march towards completion of the prestigious hydro power projects- to get horse powers from the river brought on by the sacrificial horse!