On the road

Driving on the left hand side of the road was one of my challenges when I came here. Driving in the city was one of the first things I did on my first day in Nasik. Ok, I already talked about it to some of you in my few previous emails, but I have to say that I am so proud of being able to drive:
A. on the left hand side of the road, and
B. in India, that it is worth repeating it.

I could never have imagined how it is to drive in this country. If you want to be successful you have to understand and remember a few basic rules:
1. the biggest always wins
2. horn if you want people to see you (!) (it is written on the back of each and every truck here)

Once you know and use those rules, you will be fine on the road. If you happen to be nice to a two-wheeler, like if you stop and want to let him pass before you, the guy will be so confused that it can get quite dangerous. He won’t know what to do, will hesitate, and the guy behind you will get angry at you, horning like hell. So here you have to be self confident enough to take the decision to go in situations in which you would just stop in Europe. Even more dangerous is to drive at night, as most bicycles and of course people walking don’t have a light, and cars put on their very bright lights, I don’t know what they are called in English, it would be “plein phare” in French, Fernlichte in German I think…. So you are like blind. The “good“ thing here is that most of the vehicles on the road don’t drive too fast. So if an accident happens it will happen slowly, and probably won’t be too serious, at least if you are in the car and not on the bike.

The streets are like a kind of a scene in this country, a theater, and as a European you don’t spend 5 minutes there without being upset by the way people drive. I am not kidding. As long as you can’t put yourself in the skin of an Indian you go crazy here. You have to expect what is for you non-expectable. You have to accept that vehicles coming towards you use your lane, that they take a left or a right and don’t bother what is coming from behind, that they make a U turn as of a sudden… The most impressive thing you will notice here is the phlegm of the people on the roads. Even if you horn like hell because 4 people walk on your lane and you don’t have space to drive by, or because two two wheelers have a nice chat while riding there bike and take the whole space on the road, they will keep quiet and will not move until your car is 2 centimeters from them (and you are lucky if they move even then).
Here you can see people sitting along the streets in a very dangerous way. If you take a right and a vehicle comes from your left and takes itself a right, it won’t wait until you are finished and gone, it will just pass by on your left, which should obviously not be. So you have to transpose the references you have in mind. Normality on the road takes a new dimension: normality here is what you find suicidal.

The roads are full of people walking, cows, cars, very big trucks, rickshaw (2-wheeler taxis) bicycles carrying things twice as big as them (e.g. gas bottles, stairs, etc...), crowded buses, trucks full of workers. In times of weddings you also see a horse once in a while going to the groom who is going to ride him for a few minutes. We even saw a huge elephant in the middle of Mumbai (the picture is not quite good, I hope you see it anyway)!

In India, a bike, I mean a motorbike is sometimes the vehicle of a whole family. So you will see 4-5 people on the bike, the father is driving, the mother is the last behind, between them both, a child, and just before the father, another one or two children. It works! They don’t have a choice anyway. They can’t afford a car, lucky enough to afford a bike, and if they have to go from A to B, they need their own vehicle. Ok, you can take a Rickshaw, a funny scooter with 3 wheels, driver in the front, and behind him a seat for 2 to 3 people in a European environment, where 5 to 6 Indian people will fit without any problem if they have to.

More pictures? Try http://fotoalbum.web.de/gast/Cam_in_india/On the road