The Air India Disaster: Ahakista, West Cork, Ireland
by Anna Marie D’Angelo
In a tiny village in southwest Ireland on the Atlantic is a memorial to the victims of the Air India bombing, Canada’s worst mass murder terrorist attack.
The memorial in West Cork’s tiny Ahakista village to 329 people who died on June 23, 1985 doesn’t seem to be known to many people in Ireland where tragedies are forever remembered in bronze works such as the Famine Memorial in Dublin.
Visiting the Air India memorial is not easy, and the usual response from people in Ireland was “never heard of it” and occasionally, “I remember something about that. When did it happen?” The memorial is not on any tour route nor do tour buses get close so I organized my visit through the hotel in Killarney where I was staying. Killarney is the largest town in the area and a major southern Ireland tourist spot. A local cabbie, who does customized tours, offered a flat rate for the day. The other option, and cheaper choice, would have been to rent a car.
On this August day, it had rained in the morning as it did almost everyday during my three-week stay in the Emerald Isle. But the sky soon opened up to brilliant warm sunshine shortly after we started the 1-1/2 hour drive.
We headed southeast along a portion of the beautiful Ring of Kerry route, on windy roads next to hills with scenic vistas of patchwork green valleys, edging the sparkling Atlantic. We travelled through the charming small towns of Kenmare, Glangariff and Bantry and on to Ahakista, which is on the Sheep Head’s peninsula in West Cork.
The trip was not for the faint at heart. Even with an experienced driver at the wheel, we had three close calls where the cabbie abruptly steered towards the edge of the road and slammed on the brakes to avoid an on-coming car visible in the tall greenery at the last minute. Driving in Ireland is on the left side and these roads were narrow with poor visibility.
When we finally arrived at the remote village, we drove past the small “Air Disaster Memorial” sign without noticing. Knowing that we had gone too far as in, next stop the Atlantic, we flagged a truck driver hauling a huge steel tank. He was slowly making his way around, picking up milk from farms. “The Air India one?” he immediately responded. “Go back up the road.”
Two Dubliners were walking down the path from the memorial. They said they saw the sign and remembered the tragedy from news reports. They acknowledged it was a nice tribute to the bombing victims.
The memorial includes a well kept with a sundial that commemorates the day and hour of jumbo jet’s explosion in the air. There is a low, stone, semi-circle wall with the names of the victims that appears to cup the sundial. (Picture 4)A tidy garden maintained by the village borders the path to the memorial, which is oriented towards the breezy, wide-open ocean.
After visiting this quiet, serene place, I checked out the wee village and its rustic Catholic church. Driver Moses Walsh took us back to Killarney along a different route, through the serpentine Healy Pass, where buses can’t travel. The pass is yet another route with hilly, seaside vistas that are amazing.
At one point, we had to stop for a flock of sheep across the road which gave the weathered sheepherder time to walk up to the van. He quickly fired off about a dozen personal questions in a sing-songy Irish accent including asking where were we from, where were we going and was I married. Driver Walsh had predicted we were going to be there a long time when the sheepherder headed towards us. Walsh was greatly relieved when another car came around the bend and the sheepherder had new people to question.
We continued along a portion of the equally beautiful Beara Peninsula. The relaxing day was rounded out with lunch at pub in the village of Glengarriff and visits to popular tourist stops: Killarney National Park with its impressive waterfall, and to Muckross House and Gardens, a Victorian mansion.
Background on the Air India Disaster
Air India Flight 182 departed from Vancouver to Toronto on the way to New Delhi and exploded in the air over Ireland on June 23, 1985, killing all 329 people on board. A huge search was carried out and half the bodies were recovered and taken ashore in Cork. The memorial in Ahakista was built a year later. No one has been convicted of this terrorist act, allegedly committed by Sikh extremists. [UPDATE: In 2003 Inderjit Singh Reyat, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for assembling the bombs.]
If You Go:
♦ Killarney is the main city in the area which is famous for its lakes, mountains and scenic drives such as the Ring of Kerry.
♦ Killarney is a 4½ hour drive from Dublin. The train takes 3 ½ hours.
♦ To hire a taxi-van and driver for one day for a customized tour of the area costs from 180 to 240 euros ($225 – $300). The van holds seven passengers.
Tours from Killarney:
Dingle and Slea Head Day Tour from Killarney
Ring of Kerry and Skellig Experience Centre Day Trip from Killarney
Cliffs of Moher Private Tour from Killarney
About the author:
Anna Marie was a successful newspaper reporter and editor in the Vancouver area for 18 years. She now does Communications work and continues her writing passion through travel stories that have been published in major newspapers across Canada. Email: anna_dangelo@hotmail.com
All photos are by Anna Marie D’Angelo.
The old spa village of Furnas is our tranquil retreat for a few days before we head to the capital, Ponta Delgada. Here in Furnas is the delightful Terra Nostra Park, a botanical garden created in the 18th century by the American Consul Thomas Hickling. Walking the avenues and winding paths of these gardens we pass monuments, grottos, koi carp ponds, and a whimsical area of animals carved in stone – my favourite is a laughing gorilla stood with hands on hips. Also in the grounds an ochre coloured geothermal lake overlooked by Hickling’s house is popular with many visitors for a restorative swim. Perhaps less popular is the yellowing of swimming gear from the water. I opt not to ruin my swim shorts and instead enjoy an hour lazily swimming in the hotel’s otherwise empty indoor pool.
The track could be a tricky ascent when wet and muddy, and is best tackled in dry weather. A few minutes hard walk is amply rewarded by a view across the verdant valley in one direction, and to the other Furnas lake with Jose do Canto’s chapel visible at the far side. A reminder of the volcanic nature of this land is the eggy aroma of sulphur wafting up from the fumaroles below. A young bull chained up nearby is less than enthralled by our presence. His distressed calls eventually signal an end to our viewing. We start the trek back to the village in search of somewhere to get a cold drink.
After a mellow few days in Furnas we head to the other side of the island where Ponta Delgada lies in the south-west corner. Here trappings of modern life mix happily with traditional Portuguese architecture – monochrome stone buildings of whitewash edged with black basalt. Squares and narrow cobbled streets in the old part of town can become crowded. So it’s with some relief that we find the drivers to be mostly tolerant of pedestrians.
We arrive at the best vantage point, Vista do Rei, where all the brochure pictures of the caldera are taken from. It’s located just off the main road opposite an abandoned concrete hotel, just before the road heads down to the village. Our reward is a superb panorama of the caldera: its twin lakes Azul and Verde, and the village of Sete Cidades nestled on the flat land to the western side. Giant blobs of cloud shadows move across the murky green and blue lakes like giant Rorschach tests. From this spot the adventurous can embark on a long walk around the ridge of the caldera on a narrow path edged by vertiginous drops through trees and other foliage.
I settled in on the first two days, and on Saturday visited Montjuic Park for the marathon expo; to collect my race number and timing chip. The Museum of Arts towers over the front of the park; above cascading fountains framed by rows of steps. Musicians and giant dolls entertained in the square at the bottom of the cascading fountain.
I returned in the night to watch the Magic Fountain show. Every fifteen minutes between 7pm and 9pm the circular fountain at the foot of the hill seems to be awakened by music, spraying water high in the air while changing colours.
After about four miles the circuit took us past Camp Nou; the 98,000-capacity home of FC Barcelona is the largest stadium in Europe. That night I joined 68,000 people at the stadium to watch Barcelona beat Rayo Vallecano 3-1. Climbing to a seat about five rows from the top of the 150-feet-high stadium was hard work, but worth it, with the sensation of emerging into the steep-sided seating above the bright green pitch reminding me of the Lost Horizon story of a Shangri-La hidden in the Himalayan mountains.
Antoni Gaudi was Modernisme’s most famous artist, and a couple of miles later we passed the movement’s crowning glory. La Sagrada Familia is still under construction a century later. The 13,000-capacity cathedral’s size distinguished it from other cathedrals while passing, and on closer inspection so does its blending of nature into the design. Gaudi liked curves rather than straight lines, claiming there were none of the latter in nature; and some spire-tops are decorated with balls of fruit-colours.
The sky cleared the next day, and temperatures rose into the 60s Fahrenheit. I took the train out to Monistrol de Montserrat, and hiked to the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery. To the north-west, snow-capped Pyrenees signified the border with France, while the Mediterranean Sea was visible to the east.
The next day I returned to Montjuic Park, going past the Arts Museum to the Olympic Stadium, which brought back memories of the 1992 Games. I walked past torch-pillars and the Telefonica tower to the tree-filled green zone leading up to Barcelona’s castle. Cannons point up and down the coast and there are great views of the city all the way to Tibidabo Mountain, overlooking Barcelona on the western horizon. The castle has a chequered past, being used to hold and execute prisoners in the civil war and other twentieth-century conflicts.
Some of my personal favorite ethnic eats are in Austria. In Wels a small town in the Northwestern section of the country there is a local market which is very similar to the Westside Market in Cleveland, Ohio. A new building was recently constructed to house the vendors. On the outside of the market vendors sell various fresh fruits and vegetables etc. Nothing there is prepackaged. Inside the building the vendors provide various types of fresh food including meat, poultry, eggs, cheese and even schnapps (whiskey). My favorite vendor has barbecue roast chicken on a spit and as of late a new item lightly breaded chicken wings which go well with a stein (a traditional German beer tankard) of beer. Priced by the kilogram (2.2 pounds) US $3.00-$5.00.
There are other taste treats to learn about and experience. Crossing from Slovenia into Croatia passing through village after village the signs for roast pork (svinjina) and lamb (jagnjetina grilled lamb both roasted on spit) began to appear. The local Gostionas (Restaurants, Bars) were preparing their grills for roasting. As luck would have it, we always seemed to miss many of these establishments. It might have been sheer luck and or just bad timing. We were either too early or too late for lunch or there was not a Gostiona located in the area where we were.
Having been in the former Yugoslavia a few times we learned over the years on what to look for when it comes to roast pork and lamb. Normally vendors and restaurateurs post signs advertising their wares along the road. Driving through Split on the Jadranska Magistrala along the coast toward Dubrovnik about lunch time we just could not find an establishment that had roast lamb or pork. Either we missed the signs or there just weren’t any. Finally we stopped at a local restaurant and we were given directions on where to find janjetina. Down the road and up the side of a sparsely covered mountain, we traveled higher and higher on the narrow pebbled road turning this way and that as the road curved back and forth along the side of the mountain, my cousin sitting in the back seat hanging firmly on to the hand strap fixed to the car roof. We drove on and on for over an hour. Finally we found it. The war had taken its toll. It was a bombed out building and on the side of the building a faded wooden sign advertised jagnjetina. My cousin started laughing hysterically!!! Someone was having a good laugh on us. Consequently we did not have roast pork or jagnjetina this day.
On another occasion we were traveling by bus from Sarajevo to Mostar we stopped in the town of Jablanica to view the local historical sights. We learned from the locals just on the outskirts about one kilometer south of Jablanica was the restaurant Zdrava Voda (Health Water). There on six roasting spits was lamb grilling on an open fire continuously throughout the day enough to quell the hunger for both the tourist traveling between Sarajevo and Mostar and the local population. The price was US $15.00 which included potatoes, salad, and bread. Jablanica is known for this mouth watering delicacy and that there are over 8 restaurants in the vicinity that serve it. www.zdravavoda.co.ba
In Sarajevo the restaurant Cevabdzinica Zeljo, on street Kundurdziluk 18, in the Bascarsija seems to be the favorite place for locals to enjoy a “healthy” meal of cevapcici with onions, sour cream and yogurt. Cevapcici is beef minced meat in a roll served with pita bread and priced under US $7.00. Other versions of this delicacy are made with ground lamb, veal, and pork.
Mainz history goes back to when the Romans built a fort here around the 1st century BC. The name “Mainz” may have derived from the Roman name for the river, Main. But until the 20th century it was referred to in English as Mayence. Besides this temple there are other ruins nearby including the site of the original Roman citadel where there is a cenotaph raised by legionaries to commemorate their hero Drusus. Among the sites are the ruins of an aqueduct and theatre. Some of the artifacts of Roman times can be viewed in the Museum of Antike Schiffahrt and Mainz most important museum, the Landesmuseum.
Mainz is home to a Carnival, the Mainzer Fassenacht, originating in the 19th century. We walked around the carnival square where there’s a statue of Friedrich von Schiller, a 19th century writer and poet for whom the Square is named. The Carnival is held on Rosenmontag (Rose Monday), before Ash Wednesday and is one of the city’s biggest celebrations.
The immense Cathedral of Saint Martin is nearly 1000 years old, built in Romanesque style. It has six individual pipe organs inside all accessed from one large console. The Augustine Church with its magnificent Baroque facade was built originally as a hermit’s monastery in the mid l700’s and is now a seminary church noted for its beautiful interior with ceiling frescoes that provide insights into the life of St Augustine. The Catholic Church of St. Peter is one of the most important Baroque building in the city. Originally a monastery, the present church was built between 1740 and 1756 by architect Johann Valentin Thoman. Inside you’ll see amazing Baroque altars and ceiling frescoes. Christuskirche is an evangelical church in an Italian High Renaissance style. It serves as a music venue as well as church. The old Gothic Church of St. Christoph dates to the 9th century. It contains an original 15th century baptismal font. Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the first printing press was baptized here.
There are several interesting day-trips out of Mainz. The region is rich in variety with idyllic river scenery, historical towns and picturesque villages. The Rhineland-Palatinate is famous as a wine region and the romantic castles along the river and was named by UNESCO as one of the most beautiful landscapes and world heritage sites.
