Driving around in India is not similar to driving around in America or Europe.  In fact, not only is it not similar but even the differences are not similar.  Let me give you an example or two from our own experience. 

Our plane touched down in Bangalore just after midnight.  The flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, arrives two nights a week around midnight.  A few years ago, the old airport was all they had and it was all we had too.  There, once you arrive and pass through immigration, you go along to the baggage area and in an impossible tangle of pushing passengers, old iron luggage carts, and a circus-like display of luggage tossing by the uncaring but nicely uniformed men at the conveyer belt, you are expected to quickly grab a cart, find and separate your now dented and scuffed suitcases from the stack of unclaimed bags and make your way through a variety of customs searches, x ray machines and telephone prepaid card salesmen to the exit area.  The night air seems hot and humid, mixed with new smells, exotic and not so exotic, emanating perhaps from your fellow travelers who are bumping and pushing you along at very close quarters. 

Something inside you feels cold and panicky as you contemplate the urge to use the restroom and balance it against your fear of leaving your luggage cart unattended  while using the rest room – a feeling you will get used to in the weeks ahead.  The adrenalin has shocked your system into wakefulness and now you can manage to get your dollars changed at the government exchange counter, the safest, but worst deal.  Then at the next counter, you pay for a taxi to Mysore, a five hour drive on the long and winding road.  You push your cart outside, straining not to let it run away on the down-sloped exit ramp lined with hawkers, hustlers, madmen and saints.  A miracle occurs and a man who turns out to be your driver checks the number on the receipt you have clutched in your hand and ushers you toward his cab parked 100 yards away.  He beckons two young men to come over and push the cart for you and load the suitcases into his trunk, which you gladly permit, not realizing you will now have to tip each one of them as well as any of several others who will somehow manage to get a hand or foot on your bags in a way that looks like they’re helping.  The doors are finally shut and you sink back into the hard sprung seat of the 25 year old vehicle – an Ambassador Mark III - a beloved and deathless relic of India’s automotive past, complete with an Isuzu engine, and you start into the warm and humid night with wide eyes.

Once through the outskirts of Bangalore, the open road is upon you.  At this time of night, there are only a few other cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles and an occasional ox-cart about to keep you and the driver company as you zoom along.  You notice your car slowing on the long upward climbs and speeding up on the equally long downhill runs, but what takes away some of the pleasure is what you come to think of as your drivers obsession with passing other vehicles.

For example, if three cars and a bus passed your car on the uphill, then your driver would be hell-bent to pass those same three cars and a bus on the downhill.  This is repeated again and again and again.  In America amongst the population of Indian taxi drivers, this is called “Obsessive Passing Disorder” by those authorities devoid of any spiritual awareness.  As if this weren’t bad enough, the manner and passion of the passing ritual, complete with “Obsessive Horn-blowing Disorder” are more than enough to provide  you with keen insight into that key element of Indian religion; reincarnation.  The drivers surely cannot drive this way without the absolute conviction that if anything happens, they will live again.  The wreckage of the vehicles of the non-believers litter the roadside landscape.  But back to the manner and passion of the passing ritual. 

The passing run is made with a very carefully timed sweep towards the outside rear fender of the intended target vehicle and just as contact seems inevitable, a sudden lurch around the passee into the lane of oncoming traffic occurs.  The driver leans on and off the horn constantly during this maneuver, partly to warn those concerned and partly to celebrate his triumph.  Squarely now in the wrong lane, you realize quite suddenly that those lights ahead of you may in fact be the lights of an oncoming car or truck.  It turns out that they are the lights of an oncoming bus.  Your car approaches the on-rushing vehicle and your skin starts to prickle and your neck muscles tense.  Your fists clench and unclench, in sync with your jaw muscles.  At what surely must be the last possible moment that a collision could be avoided, the passee suddenly slows slightly, and as if by some prearranged and imperceptible signal, your driver jerks the car back into the correct lane, missing the hurtling bus by mere feet and the front fender of the passee by scant inches.  You realize at this moment you will not rest or sleep during the balance of this ride.

This ritual is repeated again and again throughout the night until thankfully, the graying of the dark sky signals the approach of morning.  The driver informs you that you are almost in Mysore and the road tells you that too – there is a series of seven speed bumps placed only feet apart to warn you of your entry into the City of Palaces as well as potholes galore to welcome you.  In the brighter light of dawn, you watch people on the roadside starting their day, moving their cattle, goats, and goods stacked on bicycles and you become slowly aware that there is a precise pecking order of who or what has the right of way on Indian roads.

Cows have the first right of way at all times, whether they are sleeping on the road, wandering to pasture, or just out for a leisurely stroll.  A cow, any cow, can bring even the largest truck to a grinding halt with the flick of its tail or the toss of its head.  In the right of way pecking order, cows are followed by elephants, then large trucks, buses, official vehicles, smaller trucks, jeeps, ox-carts, cars, motorcycles, scooters, auto rickshaws, cycle rickshaws, goats, bicycles loaded with goods, carts, bicycles without goods, dogs and finally pedestrians.  I’m not sure about camels or pigs but I’m sure the driver knows.  He knows this list backwards and forwards, knows when and how long to sound the horn or flash the headlights and at the same time, he is able to see great distances in all directions at once which enables him to anticipate and avoid any unwanted contact with any of the above.  This may look like chaos to the casual observer but it is actually a demonstration of the highest order of hand/eye coordination in the spiritual/physical realm.  

To your profound relief, your hotel looms into view and your car pulls up at the entrance.  Though it is only a little after 5 AM, a uniformed, smallish man comes out immediately and takes all your bags out of the car into the lobby of the hotel.  Not sure whether to thank the driver, hug him in relief, or drop to the ground in supplication, you decide to thank him, you tip him and off he goes to take that same road back to Bangalore.  Incredible.  We sit quietly on a low wall just outside the entrance while our room is being arranged and sip jasmine tea that has been brought out to us.  The tension melts away and the wonder of life in a new place imbues our thoughts.

I should, at this point, add a short but illuminating note about the near encounter with an elephant during our twelve hour drive back from Vailankanni/Nagapattinam after completing our Tsunami relief work in the devastated Tamil fishing villages.  We were packed like sardines, luggage and all, into a Toyota Qualis (SUV) and were at last heading back to Mysore.  There I was with my dearest Agnes, five extraordinary Tibetan Buddhist monks in full robes, a brilliant young woman from New Delhi and a heavily tattooed British rock star.

I won’t even mention here the part about the ancient Chennai-made Royal Enfield Bullet motorbike that accompanied us on the entire journey back.  More than halfway there, as night was falling, we arrived at the foot of a mountain range that had to be traversed.  The local police approached us before we began our climb, stared incredulously at our motley crew as we got out to stretch, then politely informed us before we attempted our assault on the mountain switchbacks that we must be very careful because an elephant was loose on the road up ahead.  Needless to say we motored up the foothills wide-eyed and cautious, caught between the fear of colliding with a charging pachyderm and running off the road and tumbling over the precipice.  In one of those tense moments, one of the monks who had been listening through ear-buds to music on his cell phone abandoned, either by chance or design, all awareness of where he was and began loudly singing the words in broken English of “Hang on Sloopy, Hang On.”  For some reason, at that very moment, the rest of the trip back melted peacefully into a slumber for me, interrupted only by our arrival in Mysore again.  The magical Green Hotel never looked so good.  We never saw the elephant.  Some of our photos are in the India “Photographs” section of this site and the hotels are reviewed under the “Travel” section.

Geoffrey