On Indian Roads

Travel Dates 15th -22nd March 2008

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In Australia the Indian Tourism people were running an advertising campaign before I left home under the title "Incredible India".

It's true. India is, in fact, incredible. Things happen there that are hard to believe and life for many of the more than one billion Indians continues in ways that some of us, from our insulated Western societies, find hard to understand. So, with the possible exception of the previous post on the airport, if I describe things like that please note that I am observing, not judging. I don’t intend to criticise the culture, merely to record the incidents and sights I encountered. The pictures are in no particular order; just for fun, see if you can guess the number of passengers in the autorickshaw.

During my short visit all of the adjectives applied at some stage – magnificent, squalid, fascinating, horrifying, fabulous, terrifying, heart-rending, awe-inspiring, shocking, stupendous, and more – that’s India.

The first thing I was struck by as I left the airport were the roads and drivers. So that’s where I’ll start. On my other trips, in Europe, the UK, the USA, Fiji and New Zealand I have leased or rented cars and driven wherever possible, sometimes for weeks. I decided that would not be practical on this trip and, after reading lots of good advice, especially on India Mike, I decided to hire a car and driver. That was the best decision I’ve made in a while. I am a very experienced driver and consider myself a professional; remember that I drove cabs "hungry" in Melbourne for nearly two decades. But I could never have safely driven in India.

Raj led me to the Ambassador and we slowly negotiated the airport carpark sometime after 3:30am. I thought that would be the slowest part of the trip; little did I know. Then we sped off on the direct connection road to the Delhi-Agra main road. It was deserted, not another vehicle in sight so we sped along at about 40km/hr, slowing often to avoid occasional animals and also large lumps of concrete or stone which seemed to be haphazardly strewn across the road. Fairly often we would encounter "Work in Progress" sections. There was no need for speed restrictions – the rubble on the road was more than enough to slow passing traffic down. The road seemed to pass through a heavily industrial zone.

I mentioned to Raj that we were making good time and asked if it would be like this all the way to Agra. He said "wait". Then we joined the main road. And came to a halt. Remember, this was before dawn on a Saturday morning. Mile after mile of Tata and Ashok trucks, all belching fumes, some moving, some not, and some seemed to be just parked in the road.

The next couple of hours is a bit hazy. Every so often we would pull out to pass a slow truck, directly facing oncoming traffic barrelling down the uncluttered opposing lanes towards us; I learnt with time that this was normal practice. The opposing truck drivers apparently know this too and seemed just as keen to avoid collisions as we were. It was like a constantly repeating game of chicken, played to rules that everyone knew but me. The lane markings, when they existed, seemed to be used as a general guide to the direction of the road and had nothing to do with where you were supposed to drive on that road. Like the British before them, they drive on the left in India...mostly.

The reason it is a bit hazy is that I was dead tired with no sleep and I used that as an excuse to lay the seat back and doze through much of that first couple of hours. At least that’s what I told Raj; but really I needed an excuse to keep my eyes shut. With time I came to realise that Raj is an excellent and professional driver but in that first couple of hours I was yet to be convinced. He is also a nice guy, so if any Indian traffic cop is reading this, it is all a figment of my imagination.

At irregular intervals we would stop for long periods in queues at toll gates or state borders and I would groggily wake, look around at the vast crowds of Tata and Ashok trucks and doze off again.

I rose from my doze when we pulled into a driver’s café an hour or so from Agra at dawn. Raj invited me to join him in a glass of tea. I ordered it black and unsweetened and the café man had to make me a special pot. I learned from that mistake and for the rest of the trip whenever he invited me to join him I ordered the same as his, stewed with milk, sugar and cardamom. I reasoned that the small quantity of sugar was OK and the milk would be sterilised by the heat. A wise decision, as I later discovered.

That was when a few little things happened that suddenly made me change from being a bit grumpy and tired to realising why I was here in this dusty, smelly, strange place. Out of the dawn a small troop of monkeys silently appeared, completely ignoring us, and wandered around the area as their own domain. Fascinating to me, ho-hum to Raj and the café man. About the same time a loud pop-pop-pop noise came down the road preceding a strange machine that seemed to be the bare bones of a half-finished truck. Which is exactly what it was – a home-made vehicle legally using the public roads. I saw many more of these as we travelled through Uttar Pradesh (the state surrounding Agra) but not so many in Rajasthan. Not like the truck in the photo - that is a real truck travelling between assembly plants.



The car deserves a mention. For about half a century the the Ambassador was the flagship of the Indian car fleet, manufactured by Hindustan Motors . My thanks to an anonymous friend (see the first comment below) for correcting my mistaken impression that Tata made this car. For more details on the history of the Ambassador see the comment. It appears to be based on the English Morris cars of the ‘50s; very similar to the Morris Oxford which was my wife's first car. The age of the Ambassador I was travelling in was indeterminate, maybe it was reasonably new or it could have been quite old, but it was beautifully kept (I obscured the numberplate in case the owner wants privacy). It probably would have qualified for vintage or veteran status in another country. I was a bit wary at first, but I was reassured that I would be comfortable and that it was a better car for a tall person. By the end of the trip I agreed. It was reliable, solid and comfortable and handled the wildly varying road conditions very well.

After the shock of that first terrifying and fascinating ride to Agra I gradually became more blasé about the roads and drivers of India. There was a noticeable improvement in the Agra-Jaipur road, both in quality and speed of travel, once we crossed the Uttar Pradesh - Rajasthan border, and the road from Jaipur to Delhi seemed almost like a fast highway by comparison.

A highway, and often tollway, marked by "Work in Progress" (that wasn't), stretches of strangely poor surfaces and occasional speed humps, shared with camels and elephants hauling carts or just loaded with enormous loads, or with cows, goats and dogs wandering aimlessly on them, but a fast highway all the same when compared with Uttar Pradesh. So fast that the trip of just over 250km from Jaipur to Delhi, with a stop for lunch, took less than a day...

And, in case you're wondering, we counted 16 passengers in and on that autorickshaw, not counting the driver and a couple of babies.

A fascinating experience. More fun for a longer time and with more adrenaline rushes than a roller-coaster ride. If I had only spent my time on the roads I would still have enjoyed India.

Cheers, Alan

50 Indira Gandhi Airport, Delhi

Travel Dates 15th and 22nd March 2008
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India.

The whole country is a "Work in Progress". The capital city's international airport lets you know that on arrival.

I arrived in the wee small hours, about 2:30 am from Hong Kong. The Cathay staff on this flight were of the same standard as the flight to Hong Kong; disappointing.

India is a fascinating country and I'm very pleased I went, but the place is chaotic. Indira Gandhi International Airport was a shock. The only airport I've ever arrived at with more stuff hanging from the ceiling, more damaged walls and floors, and less things working was Darwin when I arrived with the damage assessment team in early January 1975 after Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Eve 1974. And every unfinished repair had a "Work in Progress" sign on it. I never actually saw a workman near one of those signs. Not in the airport when I arrived, nor on the roads, nor in public buildings.

Bear in mind that for comparison on this last trip I passed through two Aussie airports (OOL, SYD), Bangkok, Siem Reap, Hong Kong, Delhi, Amman, Cairo, Heathrow, Dulles, JFK, Can Cun, Merida, Mexico City, Dallas and Honolulu. Some were a pain, some were effortless, but DEL was in a class of it's own.

The immigration queue was long and slow, extending back up the non-working escalator into the gloom of the brown-out. After I passed through that I found that there were several hundred drivers behind rope barriers on both sides of the passageway to the exit. After four wanders up and down the throng I was enormously relieved to find Raj. I'll say more about Raj, driving and Indian roads in a later post. If you're looking for a good, knowledgeable, safe driver to see Rajasthan - contact him via http://www.gajrajtravels.com/

Despite the experience of "Arrival" and a week wandering the Golden Triangle before I left for Jordan, nothing had prepared me for "Departure" from this Airport.

I arrived at 3:30 am for the 6:20 Royal Jordanian to Amman. At that time I expected things to be quiet. Wrong. A large crowd was milling about on the sidewalk outside the doors. They were outside because I found that I needed my passport and boarding pass just to enter the building. The sergeant on the door had apparently not heard of e-tickets. So I rummaged through my luggage until I found the email with my Qantas itinerary on it. He begrudgingly let me in.

As I entered the door a guy appeared from nowhere and grabbed the larger of my two bags, literally out of my hands, and immediately threw it on a security x-ray scan machine where it disappeared into the bowels of the scanner. As it appeared at the other end a security man sealed a plastic strip around it to indicate that it had been scanned for checked baggage. I wasn't impressed because I had intended taking both as carry-on; that had been OK on the previous five flights. The security guy would not give the bag to me but only to my helper who had put it in the machine. He seemed to have difficulty returning it until some rupees appeared in my hand.

I eventually found the Royal Jordanian desk, but only after another unsolicited helper showed me where it was; for another tip. There was a remarkable absence of signs, and the only working TV displays in that area did not show Airline counter locations. Maybe they do on other days, maybe it was the brown-out, maybe the guy who got the tip knew where the switches were...

I checked in with the friendly lady at Royal Jordanian; she whisked that second bag away on the conveyor as soon as she had my name to make up a tag. It was only later that I realised that she, and the first guy, had done me a favour. She told me to go to the immigration queue. But I was unaware that she missed a very important point. She didn't give me a carry-on bag tag.

There was another sergeant checking passport and boarding pass before you could enter the immigration queue. It was set up with ribbons into one of those "snake" affairs. The sort where you could slip the ribbon out of a supporting post if necessary. Which is exactly what the cop did about 40 minutes later when a VIP of some sort arrived, showed his passport and a few hundred rupees, and went to the front of the queue. No-one said a word. I got through about twenty minutes later. It took me a long time in the original queue to enter the country - but even longer to leave it.

Then I went through another passport and boarding pass check as I left immigration, to enter the queue for the gate lounge security scan and carry-on check. That was when I saw the "Only One Carry-on Bag Allowed" sign and silently thanked the people who sent my other bag to be checked.

Eventually, I reached the sergeant at the front of the queue. The sergeant became agitated and would not let me pass. He seemed to speak little English and I could not understand him. The English tourist behind me told me that he wanted to stamp the tag on my carry-on - and I had failed to put a tag on the bag.

After a lot of discussion in mutually incomprehensible languages a supervisor arrived and told me I must return to the RJ counter to get a tag and go through the long immigration queue again and rejoin the security queue. I gave up arguing and headed off and luckily found an RJ person who offered to go back and get me a tag - but just then the English guy called me back and said he could give me a BA tag. The sergeant accepted that - with no name, no flight number, and the wrong airline. All he wanted was a tag so he could stamp it. Despite all this, the queue had moved so slowly that I had not lost my position. I am extremely grateful to that anonymous British gentleman. May all of his dreams come true.

When I finally queued to board the aircraft, another cop was beside the flight stewards checking those carry-on tags. It didn't matter that mine was blank and for a different airline - it had a stamp! So I was allowed on board.

I have a vague feeling that I've missed one of the security scans in that description; but I think you will understand that I was immensely relieved when the plane took off for Jordan with me on board. This was the dawn through the smog through the cabin window.

I'd love to visit India again, but I may go by ship:-)

Cheers, Alan