8 ms·
The man who singlehandedly carved a road through a mountain
- mseepgood 14y agoI did that once as well in Minecraft.
- antman 14y agoHow many points do I need to get downvoting rights?
- masklinn 14y ago2 year ago it was 500: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1853529 It may have been increased since (2 years before it was 50: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=438936 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=438936)
- artursapek 14y agoIt's still 500
- smoyer 14y agoI passed 500 a couple weeks ago and that's when I got downvoting. I've limited my down votes to comments that were inappropriate or offensive. For a comment like this isn't a lack of up votes enough?
- JoachimSchipper 14y agoI think you're too nice. Downvote things that made you regret taking the time to read it; flag anything horribly offensive, stupid, etc. It's the only way to keep the community healthy - http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/.
- smoyer 14y agoOkay ... I guess I have to come clean and admit that the comment did make me smile. In part it was because when I read the headline the first thing I wondered was how many of the comments would mention minecraft.
- nessus42 14y agoSquelching all humor, on the other hand, is not a way to keep a community healthy. This just makes it seem humorless and unwelcoming.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- rrjanbiah 14y agoMinecraft is a game (If anybody is not clear, why it's downvoted)
- ck2 14y agoWow a real-life John Henry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_%28folklore%29 (though I suppose the legend is based on amazing real workers)
- jimminy 14y agoJohn Henry is based on a real man, though his story has been embellished with time, and some of the details are uncertain. Most historians, at least in WV, have little doubt that he did exist. If you look at the Wikipedia page on Tall Tales, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_tale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_tale, it even has him marked as being based on a historical indivdual.
- Mordio 14y agoAnother nice fiction with a similar theme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitzcarraldo
- jlmendezbonini 14y agoIncredible, period. Some pictures for everyone who is curious but is too lazy to search: http://www.theindianblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/dashrath_manjhi11.jpg http://www.theindianblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/d... http://images.jagran.com/inext/Inext_p_SC_2Powerof1.jpg http://images.jagran.com/inext/Inext_p_SC_2Powerof1.jpg http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/406442_353859024699081_543455915_b.jpg http://photos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/406442_35385902...
- seanalltogether 14y agoI wish I could find a satellite map of the road cut into the mountain, I'm having a hard time appreciating how this path was able to cut 67 km out of the journey.
- dchest 14y agoIt's linked from the Wikipedia article. https://maps.google.com/maps?q=24.877093,85.242956&t=h&z=11 https://maps.google.com/maps?q=24.877093,85.242956&t=h&#...
- mkl 14y agoSo it is. Doh, I just spent 15 minutes tracking it down (and I didn't quite get it right - there's another cutting through the same ridge a bit south west which I guess is newer). Here [1] is a 3D diagram in a video (not English) about it, with the nearest town labelled Vazirganj. It's Wazirganj on Google maps, south of the cutting, so Gahlour must be the small village to the north west. [1] http://youtu.be/3E84EIKlY4g?t=3m8s http://youtu.be/3E84EIKlY4g?t=3m8s
- jlmendezbonini 14y agoI had some time to kill so I downloaded Google Earth but still wasn't able to find the village "Gahlour". However, I was able to verify that the distance from the mentioned coordinate and "Wazirganj" is indeed ~8Km as stated by Wikipedia. Google Earth screenshot for those obsessed by this story too: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336184/24.877093%2C85.242956.jpg https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2336184/24.877093%2C85.242956.jpg
- qwertzlcoatl 14y agoHere he is standing next to his road: http://s3.hubimg.com/u/3993454_f520.jpg http://s3.hubimg.com/u/3993454_f520.jpg And a video about this original Minecraft player: http://gktalk.blogspot.de/2011/08/man-from-gahlour-dashrath-manjhi.html http://gktalk.blogspot.de/2011/08/man-from-gahlour-dashrath-...
- jlmendezbonini 14y agoAn english captioned version of the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z57-0Pb4IZw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z57-0Pb4IZw You want to have TWO videos running in parallel because the captions cover the whole video at times. Also, I noticed that he's wearing some sort of white "bandana" with writings, can anyone care to translate it if it's readable enough from one of the pictures posted above? --- Improved phrasing.
- plinkplonk 14y agoPart of the writing on his head gear seems to be his name. You can clearly see "Dashrath" in Hindi(His name is Dashrath Manji). I suspect the rest of the writing is a concise description of his achievement, including the dimensions of the road.
- Revekius 14y agoIs this even relevant to hacker news? I mean I could see that technically he is "hacking" through a mountain, but really?
- tammer 14y agoPersonally, I find this to be quite inspirational, especially when compared to entrepreneurial endeavors. While the comparison is mostly metaphorical, often metaphors are more on point than any 1:1 comparison.
- runawaybottle 14y agoPlus, it's Saturday ;p
- Avshalom 14y agoman, fuck metaphors, this was awesome. No further justification needed for sharing.
- rickdale 14y agoYou are missing the point. A lot of hacker news is about accomplishing goals that others would tell you is impossible or not worthwhile. This article is meant to inspire to you to keep dreaming. It's one thing to climb a mountain for someone, its a whole other feat of accomplishment to carve a hole through one. The determination this guy had should be taken as a lesson; not in hacking, but in attitude and life and then applied to hacking.
- neilk 14y agoDuh, Minecraft.
- _delirium 14y agoReminds me a bit of this tunnel, though it had a rather different motivation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burro_Schmidt_Tunnel
- Someone 14y agoAlso similar, but by a group of people: http://www.ssqq.com/archive/vinlin27a.htm http://www.ssqq.com/archive/vinlin27a.htm (it will not win the 'best site design' or 'best written story' awards, but that site surely does have some gripping content) (that road featured in BBC's Top Gear about a year ago)
- jonah 14y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDaUuesmgU8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDaUuesmgU8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttS0wkJpXs&feature=player_detailpage#t=16s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttS0wkJpXs&feature=playe...
- anonymfus 14y agoAlso interesting village subway by Леонид Мулярчик from Russia, 20 years of elder man's work : http://victorprofessor.livejournal.com/106201.html http://victorprofessor.livejournal.com/106201.html http://suriso.livejournal.com/381310.html http://suriso.livejournal.com/381310.html http://video.yandex.ru/users/paninbar/view/1/ http://video.yandex.ru/users/paninbar/view/1/ Hand made everything: tunnelling shield, waterproofing, electricity supply and stairs at entrance halls. More than 200 metres of tunnels, including fire-safety tunnel. All grunt removed by shovel and handmade conveyer belt. Guy ever installed security cams and cash register. Only cars and rails remained to make before he died a month after heart attack from visits of journalists. Also he wanted to place water supply and canalization pipes in subway but can not to win over authorities.
- mileswu 14y agoI wonder how much it would have cost to do this with mining/tunnelling/etc. modern equipment. And whether it would have been cheaper to pay him $10/hr for 22 years of work, or whether the 'modern' way would have cost more.
- masklinn 14y ago$10/h is way too much, India's nominal per-capita income is $1219 ($3.33/day) and its poverty threshold (below which a quarter of the population lives) is 40 cents a day. And this is for the mid-00s, not for 1960. A "normal" pay would probably have been closer to half a dollar to a dollar per day (if even that), 300 days a year or so. So we're talking $3000~$6000 total, tops. This is basically a big straight trench, so you could probably have done it in a few days or weeks with an excavator. An excavator rental costs between 800 and 3000 a week depending on the excavator class (size and engine power, minis in the 15-40hp range will be at the lower end, the stuff you can see on construction sites will usually be in the 150hp range and closer to the higher third, I'm excluding the ridiculous stuff such as the CAT 6090 or the baggers which make sense in neither scale nor cost for this comparison) So the purely monetary cost would probably be about the same if you had an excavator close-by which you could rent (and you were a skilled operator). edit: actually for that kind of works you'd probably use a backhoe loader rather than a straight excavator, but the costs should be in the same range edit 2: but to answer the question as asked, it would be way cheaper to use even a full-blown set of heavy earth-movers (and crew) than to pay the guy $10/h, 10h/day, 300 days/year for 22 years (which would cost $660k)
- nekojima 14y ago"300 days/year" Why does he get 65 days off a year? This is not North America, Europe or industrialized Asia. Most of day labourers I've spoken to in Asia consider themselves lucky if they get two or three days off a month. At that low level, for most of us, they lose a precious few days of work which is often vital for them to have enough money to eat that day.
- masklinn 14y ago
- dhughes 14y agoThat reminds me of my neighbour's wife who on a rainy evening dug a new driveway, with a shovel. This was a bungalow and on one side was their driveway and on the other was the lawn. She dug back ten meters and down about three meters, by hand, with a shovel, in the rain. Yes my neighbours are crazy.
- ricardobeat 14y agoShe probably planned to do it like that, rain softens the dirt.
- lostlogin 14y agoI used to use this theory. I now prefer summer, sun and rock hard clay (had to sledge hammer the spade in for the first few cm). Why? Because the destruction you cause tramping clay everywhere is terrible - 2 or 3 kgs stays attached to you and you can't even shake it off the spade. No one who digs clay (as opposed to soil/sand where I don't really have an opinion) would choose to do it in the wet. My 2c. Now I'll go back (quite literally) to finishing this trench before the rain arrives.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dhughes 14y agoI doubt it, they did everything at night. Kids all milking the government. One daughter with a tube in her nose yet she and her four kids from four men go with her new husband #5 and collect old bikes which they pile up in their Habitat for Humanity free home. The wife on disability too and morbidly obese supposedly with back problems dead lifting entire BBQs (junk) into the back of a pickup truck. The father an ex postal worker encouraged to retire after smashing a windows at work (where everyone hated him). Renting their house but living in an RV on the street, engine blew so they now live in a motel. I counted 15 cars in their yard, one in working condition, and their have more at their country "compound". On and on and on. Watch the movie The Burbs, it could have been filmed next door to me.
- jbp 14y agoOn a similar note, few months ago I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3827675 (Indian Man Single-Handedly Plants a 1,360 Acre Forest)
- mikemoka 14y agoRemember this story when someone goes on and tells you that something can't be done.
- unix-dude 14y agoThis reminds me of that Chinese guy who built stairs up and down a mountain for his wife. Dedication, true dedication.
- MattSayar 14y agoSo everybody agreed this was a good idea and that the road was necessary, yet nobody bothered to help this guy? He's a very self-driven guy.
- caycep 14y agoagreed - wish someone would have built a public works project around him, and built that road in a year instead of his entire life...
- 31reasons 14y agoWe are talking about a remote village in india's most corrupt region. He was lucky no government official asked for bribe.
- neilk 14y agoYep. Every person who knows India would find it incredible too until they see that it happened in Bihar. It's sort of like Florida for Americans, except imagine that Florida was still under feudalism.
- 31reasons 14y agoNo analogy exist in the known western world. To do so would be an injustice to the word 'corruption'. In fact there is so much corruption in india, we should invent the new word for it, more like "Slow Cannibalism".
- technolem 14y agoHow about corrosion? It implies the society is being more or less eaten away by a corrupting influence.
- sree_nair 14y agoCan't agree more here. He is Lucky he was not asked Bribe, not arrested for destroying the ecological balance / taking up this work without permission.
- smugengineer69 14y agoThere is a famous Chinese four character idiom about exactly this scenario: 愚公移山 (Yu gong yi shan), or "the foolish old man moves the mountain". Here's a link to the (short) translation of this story: http://english.cri.cn/4426/2007/01/15/167@185195.htm http://english.cri.cn/4426/2007/01/15/167@185195.htm . I particularly like the role of the "wise man " in this story, who is actually the naysayer here. The names of the people in the story illustrate the common perception of these two roles: the old man YuGong's name means "foolish old man", and "Zhi Sou" means "wise old man". Who's the foolish one after all?
- jakejake 14y agoGreat story. I was a little disappointed that in the end god actually moved the mountain. I can see religious people missing the entire point of the story.
- seunghomattyang 14y agoThis is the literal deus ex machina.
- piyush_ranjan 14y agoI feel very proud of this as I came from the same state of India where Dashrath lived and built this road. I remember reading this story somewhere in mid 90s in the newspaper and to this date Dasharth's story is a deep inspiration for people like me who come from that part of the world. To fully appreciate what he accomplished you will have to understand the way things are or at least were in Bihar at that time. He came from a family of "mushars" which is a community of "Rat eaters". In the caste system, they are the lowest rung of the society. Nobody cares for them and they are really really poor. To top it all Bihar itself is the most poor state of India. Some districts of the state have worse malnutrition figures compared to some sub saharan african countries. In all this, he had the courage to break a mountain and create a passage for his people. Even his own village people did not support him initially. I am sure the idea would have sounded fool hardy and people would have thought he has lost it. It is pure 100% will power that one must have to accomplish something like this.
- batgaijin 14y agoI would have used dynamite, but to each his own.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoOf course that's not possible when dynamite isn't available (either by cost or by regulation). Given that the entire village benefits, one always wonders about other people helping out (or not). And of course it is a testament to people just doing what they set out to do, regardless of the personal cost. I'm reminded of a more modern context in the shape of the Craigslist/Padmapper debate, one guy may have built a new Craigslist right now and is out there signing up people one or two at a time to post on it, and in 20 years that person may carve a new path into classified listings. But who really thinks about embarking on tech projects these days which might take 20 years?
- batgaijin 14y agoNot a Fight Club fiend, eh?
- SeanDav 14y agoI am sure that every poor person in India has the spare money to buy dynamite, the expertise to use it, access to it and the legal permissions. /sarcasm Why do some people try to denigrate something which is wonderful with smart alecky comments.
- neo_mhacker 14y agoyes what this person did was wonderful, but it shouldn't blind us away from what the govt. should have done in the first place. He did the work of an entire department under the Bihar state govt. It is kind of annoying that how the govt. didn't even realize it was their job. It makes me think it didn't because they honored him with a state funeral. They should have established a procedure and let the public know that its their job to do such things and how the public should approach them, instead of just making him a hero; making him just a hero implicitly says that acts like that are _encouraged_.
- instakill 14y agoSomeone's been reading the Quora newsletter.
- oulipo 14y agoIt would have been easier to just build an hospital in his town..
- FrojoS 14y agoWhat is a hospital with no doctors good for? I have to admit though, that my first thought on the story was: "Why build the road? Just move to the city!" In this case, I admire the endurance of this man and pity the destiny of his wife. But in general, the process of bringing more and more infrastructure to ever more remote place is what destroys the natural environment of this planet. I strongly believe in the efficiency of density and scale and that humanity should limit them self to cities. Leave the rest of the planet to other species!
- neo_mhacker 14y agoI don't like this sarcasm. If it wasn't, building a hospital has a lot more to do than to just build a building!
- known 14y ago"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw
- jquery 14y ago<pedant> I've always disliked this quote. One, it's a false dilemma. Two, it could just as easily apply to criminals as it could to innovators, but I wouldn't call that "progress." I will grant that if the quote applies anywhere it applies here. </pedant>
- neo_mhacker 14y agoI admire his persistence and good will. But more importantly this shows how India sucks at having a procedure for its people to request basic needs!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- aritraghosh007 14y agoThis question on Quora has a reference to many such other stories (including this one) http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-gripping-stories-in-human-history http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-gripping-stories-in-h...
- olalonde 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_resilience
- lsiebert 14y agoSaw this on metafiltet yesterday, a testament to the human spirit.
- JoeAltmaier 14y agoWondering: how many years would it have taken to petition the govt to make the road?