Arvind Kamath Blog on Travel and Leisure

My encounter with Earthquakes  As I write this article, more than 10,000 people are feared to be killed in the major earthquake that hit Nepal on 25th April 2015.  Despite the best of technology available to mankind, did anyone predict this earthquake even a few hours before calamity struck this nation? Till date man has not been able to invent a warning system that signals the onset of an earthquake or tsunami unlike hurricane or cyclones, which are predicted days before they strike and with fancy names too.  When cyclone Phallin (classified as Category 1 hurricane) was scheduled to hit the states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in October 2013, the various relief agencies in India worked overtime to evacuate  more than 550,000 people to safer areas thus preventing a major disaster. This was possible thanks to advanced technology that can track cyclones.  Such calamities remind us, that we are too small before Mother Nature’s fury. Even animals have better instinct when it c

India - A new leader emerges in Global Humanitarian Aid  We are exposed to a media, that focuses on identifying countries that has supported or not supported the NATO or US led forces. Has the media ever focused enough on countries that also come to the rescue of other nations when in crisis, both man made or natural ? Very rarely do we come across news,  that highlights the humanitarian effort carried on by nations protecting human lives, in foreign terrain. Till a few years ago, India had possibly the worst possible infrastructure available to tackle disasters within the country. A cyclone or earthquake in any part of India meant loss of thousands of human lives.  Moreover the rescue effort took its own sweet time with absolutely no strategy in place to tackle emergency requirement.  Cut to October 2013, when India was staring at cyclone Phailin, equivalent to a category 1 hurricane, the state of Odisha expected around 12 million people to be affected. Never in t