We Drive on the Left here?
Hi Al:
It was great talking with you the other night. I know we spoke about a lot of other things than cars (like boating!), but the auto-trader and cars is a big part of our shared history. This rambling blog entry is a follow up to my comment about driving in India being like leaving a rush concert at the gardens with a bunch of group home teenagers in the car. We are renting a Mitsubishi Lancer from the Routes rental company. This has a 1.6 l diesel engine, power windows and AC. The car rental company provides us with a driver 6 days a week through a temporary employment agency. Lokesh (our driver) and I were talking this morning, and we arrived September 4th and he started driving for us around the 15th. I have been driving a small amount in India. Mostly picking up and dropping off Ben and friends at the mall. The malls are full of bossy security guards that “help” you park. I don’t think that these guards have ever been in a car, much less driven one. Our driver has Sundays off, but we take a cab to church. I don’t think that I could find the way independently. Delhi has an outer ring road, but it seems like an outer string road as it doesn’t seem to be a continuous road at all but more like a series of turns and dog-legs. There seem to be a few approaches to Delhi from Gurgaon and it is quite a while till you get to this ring road. There are “farm houses” on the outer edge of Delhi, before you get to Gurgaon. These are really estates, which rent for one hundred thousand rupees or more a month. An average take home salary seems to be under 10,000 rupees a month. There is also an amusement park that we can go past if we take the most direct route in to Delhi from the office. Dianne is at a ladies group meeting as I write this on the outer ring road. Last night Dianne and I drove out to pick Joel up from his school. It is in the other direction from Delhi towards the country. You go around 4 roundabouts, and reach Sohna road, named after the place it leads to. You turn into this very unlikely looking market place, full of shops that are closed on 3 sides and open to the streets on the 4th. They have steel shutters, kind of like a garage door so that they can be closed up at night. The surface of the road is fist size boulders in clay, and 2 cars can’t pass abreast on it. Once through the market the road opens slightly and becomes paved. People here drive with their high beams on all the time. They just use the high beam switch to flash them rapidly at oncoming cars to say that they will be passing a tractor or slower moving vehicle in the oncoming vehicle’s lane. The horn is used continuously to warn people that are about to sideswipe you, but also to clear slower moving vehicles/people from your path. It is also used on blind corners. Both the horns and flashing lights are used to the point of habituation. People will pull in front of cars flashing furiously if they think that they can make it. Once you drive on the road through fields of very fat oats and mustard/oil seed, you come to a village. The road narrows again through the village and has these speed bumps combined with enormous potholes that make the speed bumps redundant. Then more fields and a large twisty hill. The top of the hill is set up with ~3 acre plots for more of these “farm houses’ but there are only a few and a lot of fancy gates surrounded by weeds. There is a gatehouse with security guards as you enter the residential/school area. Even though it is only 20k the road is very long. There are signs for the school every few k so that you don’t give up hope altogether. The school itself is beautiful. It has won architecture awards. Joel is very much in to a school play so we needed to get him late after rehearsal a number of times. Tuesday night Dianne saw some more lady friends so we needed 2 cars. Lokesh went with Dianne and I took a cab to get Joel. The driver’s only English words were left right and straight and he had no idea where to go, so I having told him, I decided it was as easy to drive myself on Wednesday when the car was available. The pictures are from various drives and walks around our house and in towards Delhi. The road is shared between people, cows, tractors, the odd herd of sheep, camels pulling carts, people riding elephants, bicycle rickshaws, scooter rickshaws, plain bicycles, scooters and motorcycles, trucks cars and buses. There are almost no tow-trucks. If a car loses a lower ball joint or something on the bumpy roads it will be fixed in place. Once I saw a truck propped on tires on the road, with a brand new differential underneath it. I guess that they had to go for more parts, because no one was working on it at the time. Whole families ride on scooters. There will be a 5 or 6 year old standing on the running boards between Dad’s arms, perhaps another child on the seat between mom and dad and then mom on the back riding side saddle with a sleeping baby in her arms. Likely only dad will be wearing a helmet. All manner of vehicles are used for deliveries. One time I saw a guy barely on the back of a motorcycle with a box between him and the driver. We were all driving past an accident where someone had hurt their leg on a scooter. Remember those terrible first Toyota minivans. A similar looking vehicle is made in India, and used for cabs and ambulances. One of these was coming his way. People do make way for fire trucks and ambulances. VIPs also have flashing lights and sirens on their cars, but they just add to the cacophony, no one makes way for them. Stop lights are often used just as an indication as to whom should yield. If there are no cars coming people only barely slow down. They have a really cool Toyota Qualis that is like my MPV with real doors. It has a 2 L diesel engine and caries up to 10. Toyota just replaced it with a much more expensive model, so I guess that the chances of it coming to Canada are about the same as for the Indian doctor I had and really liked ... slim.
thanks
Rich
It was great talking with you the other night. I know we spoke about a lot of other things than cars (like boating!), but the auto-trader and cars is a big part of our shared history. This rambling blog entry is a follow up to my comment about driving in India being like leaving a rush concert at the gardens with a bunch of group home teenagers in the car. We are renting a Mitsubishi Lancer from the Routes rental company. This has a 1.6 l diesel engine, power windows and AC. The car rental company provides us with a driver 6 days a week through a temporary employment agency. Lokesh (our driver) and I were talking this morning, and we arrived September 4th and he started driving for us around the 15th. I have been driving a small amount in India. Mostly picking up and dropping off Ben and friends at the mall. The malls are full of bossy security guards that “help” you park. I don’t think that these guards have ever been in a car, much less driven one. Our driver has Sundays off, but we take a cab to church. I don’t think that I could find the way independently. Delhi has an outer ring road, but it seems like an outer string road as it doesn’t seem to be a continuous road at all but more like a series of turns and dog-legs. There seem to be a few approaches to Delhi from Gurgaon and it is quite a while till you get to this ring road. There are “farm houses” on the outer edge of Delhi, before you get to Gurgaon. These are really estates, which rent for one hundred thousand rupees or more a month. An average take home salary seems to be under 10,000 rupees a month. There is also an amusement park that we can go past if we take the most direct route in to Delhi from the office. Dianne is at a ladies group meeting as I write this on the outer ring road. Last night Dianne and I drove out to pick Joel up from his school. It is in the other direction from Delhi towards the country. You go around 4 roundabouts, and reach Sohna road, named after the place it leads to. You turn into this very unlikely looking market place, full of shops that are closed on 3 sides and open to the streets on the 4th. They have steel shutters, kind of like a garage door so that they can be closed up at night. The surface of the road is fist size boulders in clay, and 2 cars can’t pass abreast on it. Once through the market the road opens slightly and becomes paved. People here drive with their high beams on all the time. They just use the high beam switch to flash them rapidly at oncoming cars to say that they will be passing a tractor or slower moving vehicle in the oncoming vehicle’s lane. The horn is used continuously to warn people that are about to sideswipe you, but also to clear slower moving vehicles/people from your path. It is also used on blind corners. Both the horns and flashing lights are used to the point of habituation. People will pull in front of cars flashing furiously if they think that they can make it. Once you drive on the road through fields of very fat oats and mustard/oil seed, you come to a village. The road narrows again through the village and has these speed bumps combined with enormous potholes that make the speed bumps redundant. Then more fields and a large twisty hill. The top of the hill is set up with ~3 acre plots for more of these “farm houses’ but there are only a few and a lot of fancy gates surrounded by weeds. There is a gatehouse with security guards as you enter the residential/school area. Even though it is only 20k the road is very long. There are signs for the school every few k so that you don’t give up hope altogether. The school itself is beautiful. It has won architecture awards. Joel is very much in to a school play so we needed to get him late after rehearsal a number of times. Tuesday night Dianne saw some more lady friends so we needed 2 cars. Lokesh went with Dianne and I took a cab to get Joel. The driver’s only English words were left right and straight and he had no idea where to go, so I having told him, I decided it was as easy to drive myself on Wednesday when the car was available. The pictures are from various drives and walks around our house and in towards Delhi. The road is shared between people, cows, tractors, the odd herd of sheep, camels pulling carts, people riding elephants, bicycle rickshaws, scooter rickshaws, plain bicycles, scooters and motorcycles, trucks cars and buses. There are almost no tow-trucks. If a car loses a lower ball joint or something on the bumpy roads it will be fixed in place. Once I saw a truck propped on tires on the road, with a brand new differential underneath it. I guess that they had to go for more parts, because no one was working on it at the time. Whole families ride on scooters. There will be a 5 or 6 year old standing on the running boards between Dad’s arms, perhaps another child on the seat between mom and dad and then mom on the back riding side saddle with a sleeping baby in her arms. Likely only dad will be wearing a helmet. All manner of vehicles are used for deliveries. One time I saw a guy barely on the back of a motorcycle with a box between him and the driver. We were all driving past an accident where someone had hurt their leg on a scooter. Remember those terrible first Toyota minivans. A similar looking vehicle is made in India, and used for cabs and ambulances. One of these was coming his way. People do make way for fire trucks and ambulances. VIPs also have flashing lights and sirens on their cars, but they just add to the cacophony, no one makes way for them. Stop lights are often used just as an indication as to whom should yield. If there are no cars coming people only barely slow down. They have a really cool Toyota Qualis that is like my MPV with real doors. It has a 2 L diesel engine and caries up to 10. Toyota just replaced it with a much more expensive model, so I guess that the chances of it coming to Canada are about the same as for the Indian doctor I had and really liked ... slim.
thanks
Rich
1 Comments:
Hi:
I am fishing for comments here again. One of my colleagues said that I was telling about the "real" India. My intent was only to tell about driving in India, and to show a couple of pictures of malls that my, since childhood, friend asked me to take.
thanks
Rich
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