Discovering Digboi’s 3 Must-Dos by Mandvi – Part 2

Verdant Valley Burns Bright

A small lush paddy field is lined with slender areca nut trees. What more does a man need? 

A little distance ahead a strange vision appears in a vast field…a fire rages in a brick house with no roof. I doubt any roof would survive that blaze! (On the way back, we see a drilling rig parked nearby).

The open fields end as we hit the small town of Digboi, its center dominated by the curving high walls of India’s oldest continuously running oil refinery since 1901.

A road skirts along and on the other side of the road bumpy hillocks rise, covered in thick foliage.

Digboi’s Date with Destiny

I’m not a museum person but I have encountered the most passionate people in museums. Digboi’s Oil Centenary Museum is no exception.

The person in-charge walks us through the deserted museum lovingly pointing out each archaic piece of machinery on display. He is clearly an Anglophile.

(Only to be beaten by the even more passionate incharge of Margerita’s Coal Museum. As far as he was concerned no progress has been made after the Brits left Margerita…ironically named after an Italian queen!)

In the museum’s center, life size figures recreate a throwback scene of towering trees, an elephant and a thatched oil well.

Bric-a-brac of everyday life, pictures of social life, of momentous events and visits, of Joymala- a giant elephant at work, line the walls. Outside apart from machinery and a filling station scene is the 1st oil well.

The smell of oil faintly permeates the air as it seeps from the ground to make rainbows in the puddles of water. A tall narrow pipe behind the trees nearby spews fire…an oil well I suppose. The legacy continues.

To be continued……….