Driving in India

We arrived this afternoon in the holy city of Varanasi, marking the end of our travel by car. Three out of the past four days we have taken four-hour jeep rides to get to our next destination. Driving in India (or riding, I should say), is an experience like no other.

When I first arrived in Delhi - over three weeks ago - I had arranged to be picked up by someone from my hotel. It was dark out when the man carrying the sign with my name on it and I arrived at the small car in the dusty airport parking lot, the driver asleep in the car with his seat fully reclined. As we started out on the late night roads of Delhi, still teeming with cars, the hotel travel agent, riding shotgun, turned around to face me and said, "To drive in India you need three things: good horn, good brake, and good luck." This was, in essence, my welcome to India, and it couldn't have been more fitting.

The roads here rarely have white lines of any kind delineating lanes, and even when they do they are not respected. Drivers are engaged in what is like a never-ending game of chicken; moving from side to side to pass slower vehicles, veering off just in time to avoid head-on collisions with trucks and buses, all the while weaving in and out of the way of bicycles and motorcycles. At the same time, at the side of the road are women walking with large loads on their heads, groups of children playing, and men squatting and having a cup of chai. On more rural roads, herds of cows, water buffalo, and goats are commonplace, and in larger urban areas stray cows intermingle with men pushing cartloads of bananas, rickshaws, tuk tuks, cars, buses, and trucks. Add to all this the incessant soundtrack of horns. Trucks and buses especially, come equipped with special horns that play a high-pitched melody that makes your ears ring. And, unlike in the U.S. where car horns are often discouraged (as with parts of NYC where you incur fines), here, the backs of most trucks have brightly colored signs requesting of those who wish to pass, "Horn Please."

Our many jeeps rides have been without incident, which is good, though I have seen enough dead dogs in the road- in various stages of decay - to last me a lifetime (I would become quite depressed each time I saw one). All in all, I am very glad to have seen so much of the country through the window of a white jeep, but I am also happy to be done with riding on the roads of India.


P.S. Beth took an amazing video today with her digital camera. Two minutes of pure traffic madness on the way into Varanasi. I hope to post this here soon.