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India, the mother of all junkyards
Published on Wed, Jun 21, 2006 at 09:28 in 
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Alang (Gujarat): Want to buy a lifeboat? How about a ballroom chandelier or soap once offered to passengers of a cruise ship?
The dusty markets in Alang, Gujarat, are full of maritime souvenirs, salvaged from cargo ships, oil tankers and cruise liners that have been picked clean along the nearby beach.
The four-mile-long (6.4-kilometer-long) flea market looks like a museum of, say, the US steamer Universe Explorer or luxury cruise liner China Sea Discovery.
The scavengers seem to have missed nothing, the big clocks and a captain's log, deck chairs, stained couches, piles of romance novels, white urinals, broken video games, safety posters in Russian, menus in Greek — it is a micro maritime world.
Nothing is too obscure to fetch a price, and vendors say buyers come from all over the country.
However, the big money comes from the guts of the ship — generators, compressors and air conditioning units for sale to factories while industrial blenders and buffet tables for restaurants.
Lifeboats, lifejackets and searchlights end up on smaller boats plying the coast.
Meanwhile, the biggest prize, steel and other metals, is sold to mills.
“Everything is valuable for us,” said Shiv Breaking Company’s Haresh Parmar whose firm breaks down ships and resells them.
Fifteen years in the business, Parmar recalls salvaging a piano from one ship, some original art work and an antique helm.
But says that he gets most excited when he obtains a ship from the United States or Japan. They contain good quality steel, and older ships have valuable brass and copper fixtures.
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