And an even wilder one...

And that last post reminded me of my experience driving from Lanjigarh to Visakhapatnam late one night shortly before my departure from India.

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From the Travel Diaries: India Overland.


Close your eyes and picture this. A shopping mall, standard kind of stuff found anywhere in the (un)civilized world, say South Hills Village, Kin Kora or St Lukes, a long row of brightly lit storefronts, a mosaic of commerce, the establishments selling flashy clothes, computer games, flat screen TV's and phone cards, CD's, videos, barrows with candy, sunglasses and jewelery, icecreams and fast food and more candy. The usual evening crowd, milling around, wandering back and forth across the mall dividing the shops, buying fast food, generally hanging out for the evening. Its pretty crowded there. A mall. Not designed for vehicle traffic. So far, so good. Got that picture? Shops, population density, ambience generally?

It's early evening, just getting dark. The storefronts are brightly lit. Its dark overhead. Maybe we've had a power failure in the building. Just a narrow alley of shopfronts, bright lights blazing away, and darkness above. People. Shops. The usual stuff.

For some reason there are bicycles here as well. Lots of people on bicycles. Not just your typical mountain bike, in fact none of those. Three wheelers. The sort of things that you see old hippies making a living carrying peope sightseeing. A mall with bicycles.

Now lets add some cows. Yup, cows. A lot of cows. Dogs. Them too, lots of dogs. All mongrels. Indeterminate breed. The occasional goat and pig. So we have a shopping mall with domesticated livestock. And a few water buffalo as well. In this part of the world they count as domesticated livestock.

But what are these people doing? All the usual stuff, shopping, hanging out, eating takeaways. And at the edge of the road, there are some sqatting down going potty. We're not talking children here. Grownups. Right there on the mall. Then you notice that both sides of the mall in front of the shops are completely strewn with garbage. Old candy wrappers and discarded CD's. Mounds of unidentified trash.

It's raining. This is an open air mall. And the mall itsself is just a bit muddy. OK, it's very muddy, with deep potholes right in the middle of the mall, filled with muddy brown water. Trash everywhere. People defecating in front of the shops. We are about halfway there, focus on that mental image. A muddy, trashed shopping mall.



Now imagine driving down the middle of the mall at about 50mph. You have to toot your horn furiously to get the cows and people just to acknowledge your existence, let alone move out of the way.




But you aren't the only one driving at high speed up and down the mall. There are several other trucks and motorcycles and passenger cars as well. Since it's nighttime, then common sense dictates the use of headlights as well as the horn. There are several philosophies here.

(1) Leave your lights off entirely to save battery power.

(2) Leave your lights permenantly on high beam to make sure everyone
sees you coming.

(3) The best of both worlds. Leave your lights off until you see
someone coming, then blind them with highbeams.

Of course any of these approaches in isolation would be quite successful. If noone used lights, then night vision would adapt and you would see oncoming traffic. If everyone used lights, then you would at least be aware that there was oncoming traffic.

But in combination, especially combined with strategy (3), the result is fatal. The only redeeming feature is the horn, which if used regularly and with great enthusiasm, can more than make up for the lack of visual acuity. The pedestrians have learned to move out of the way at the sound of the horn.


And that my friends, about sums up driving at night through Indian villages.

A wild ride...

So I get into the office the other morning and find a gecko clinging to the base of the windscreen of my car. Its about a 25km drive on highway, so it must have been quite a ride.

Functionally equivalent to you or I clinging to the outside of a jumbo jet as it flies across the country!

Anyway, it didn't seem to have come to any harm, and given their ability to cling to walls and roofs I don't think it was ever in danger of being blown off. After about ten minutes it lost the glazed look on its face and scuttled away, and I hope it can make a new home here.