A stroll through factory of death in Bhopal

First it was an acidic smell, then a slight itching of the throat, a burning sensation as I sucked in the southern Indian air.

This was Bhopal, and history had come to visit.

I was looking for an innocuous pipe, one of a maze that juts out from Bhopal's plant. The leaking pipe still stands, 24 years after it spewed toxic gas into nearby slums, killing at least 8,000 people in one of the world's worst industrial disasters.

In search of that pipe, I had strolled through this plant just outside the city with a Government permit in hand, accompanied by a bored-looking policeman and my guide, Sanjay.

By an old rusty tank near one of the plants, I suddenly smelt something acidic, what survivors had told me hit them as clouds of gas drifted over their homes before they started choking, panicking, and going blind.

"It smells like benzene," said the policeman, as if that piece of wisdom would reassure me.

I was later told the odour could be from a chemical used to make Sevin, the pesticide then manufactured at the plant by U.S.-based Union Carbide Corporation