Highway Driving in India

It's said that you need three things to drive in India: a good horn, good brakes, and good luck.

Horns are used incessantly in India to indicate that you are about to overtake and virtually never to show impatience or irritation. In fact, trucks usually have signs on the back requesting you to 'Blow Horn' or 'Horn Please'. A rear view mirror seems to be the appendix of an Indian vehicle, a vestigial organ of no discernible current use.

Turn indicators are also vestigial organs. However, manual turn indicators are sometimes used. On the busy road connecting Mumbai to Delhi we were trapped behind a long line of transport trucks which our driver deftly passed, often a few at a time. We were puzzled by the man hanging off the left hand side of a big touring bus in front of us standing on the running board. (Remember we're driving on the left hand side here). We finally figured out his task; after the big bus had overtaken a truck, his task was to warn trucks that the bus was coming back in to the left lane and the truck had to slow down to let him in.

Brakes are important because you never know when you're going to have to slow to a crawl for a piece of road that has been completely washed out by the monsoons or for a speed bump which may appear even in a 4-lane highway.  And then there are cows, sheep, goats, bullocks, camels, water buffalo, pigs, chickens, and dogs which may amble, stand or lie in front of you. Then there are the vehicles overtaking a car from the other direction and straying into your lane. The oncoming vehicle is expected to slow down to give the driver time to return to his own lane, or perhaps take to the shoulder to let him keep coming. Size matters in these contest. Everyone gives way to buses or trucks. Then come jeeps, cars and vans like ours. The auto-rickshaws are lower on the totem pole, and motorcycles and bikes bring up the rear.

Our driver was always alert, cautious and we were very thankful to have such a competent driver in these conditions.

Most of the accidents we saw were overturned vehicles, not too surprising, given that so many vehicles are wishfully loaded - 'I wish I had a vehicle that could legitimately carry this much stuff'. 

Whereas in Canada a pedestrian can be fined for jaywalking, in India, pedestrians always have right of way.  Simply walk into the road, raise your hand just above waist height and give a gentle to and fro waving motion and the cars (mostly) stop for you.

Driving - and crossing streets - in India is an adventure!

** Apologies to anyone who has read before.  I accidentally deleted several posts and am restoring them

Why Do Cows Lie in the Road?

Coming to India, one has been prepared to expect cows on the road. The odd one, here and there. What I hadn't expected was the sheer number of cows, on the streets and alleys in large towns and small, and on the highways. And not just walking around - lying in the middle of the road! Rather dangerous, one might think, even in India where cows are sacred animals and carefully avoided. 

The explanation? In the extreme heat, some of the chemicals from the asphalt are emitted from the pavement, and those chemicals deter mosquitos and other bugs.

** Apologies to anyone who has already read this - I accidentally deleted a few posts and am now reposting them.

Divali in Mumbai

If you look up Divali on Wikipedia, it is described as a festival of lights honouring good over evil, celebrated by both Hindus and Jains.  There are five days to the festival, each with separate significance.

But in Mumbai, everyone we asked described Divali as the festival to honour Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.  This festival has been highly commercialized because it is considered an auspicious time for important purchases and proper observances will set you up for a prosperous upcoming year.  Hence we saw huge billboards and newspaper ads encouraging people to get out there and shop: cars, furniture, home renovations, but most of all gold, both as a jewelry and an investment.

Divali is called the Festival of Lights but it seemed to me it could equally be called the Festival of Flowers.  Buildings and cars were festooned with flowers, mostly marigolds, and rangolis were painstakingly shaped with flower petals on floors everywhere.   Markets were full of clay saucers, to be filled with tiny candles floating in oil, and placed decoratively inside or outside buildings, or within rangolis.  We saw a rangoli etched out with glittery powder and sprinkled with candles on the pavement in front of one shop, which was very pretty as it sparkled in the night.

We had spoken to some hotel staff about Divali and when we arrived back from breakfast, we were greeted with wide conspiratorial smiles.  When we opened the door to our room, we were surprised and delighted to see that our room had been decorated for us, with a rangoli, and an elephant (representing Ganesh, the elephant of good fortune) decorated with flower petals.

Divali lasts for five days and Mumbai is reputed to celebrate most vigorously, especially with fireworks and firecrackers.  We were at Marine Drive to enjoy the first night of Divali.  Marine Drive is a boulevard that borders the bay in Mumbai, with wide sidewalks for strolling and a cement wall for sitting to appreciate the view.  It gracefully curves around the bay and is dubbed 'The Queen's Necklace' at night. 

On Divali along Marine Drive there were clusters of people were setting off things every few feet - six-foot high sizzlers on the ground, noisy crackers that startled you with loud bangs, beautiful fireworks shot into the sky.  The cacophony was continuous and the air was filled with smoke.  You had to keep your wits about you, as you might be standing looking at one display, to find another being lit right behind you, or perhaps a dud firework that had been shot high in the air coming to land near you.  I found this short video on YouTube which captures the randomness of the firecrackers and fireworks very well.

It was such a contrast to Canada, where everything is so controlled, with planned fireworks by municipal authorities, let off by certified fireworks people, and with the crowds a specified safe distance from the point of lighting.  Here very young children would dash up to the fireworks with sparklers to light them up.  It was up to the crowd to be alert and stay clear of the explosions on all sides.  It was similar to the Duresha celebrations where giant effigies 90 feet tall were burned, and people were standing very close.  The effigies were supported by guy wires to force them to fall in place, but any surprises would have been quite devastating to the crowd.  It was great to be part of something so different. 

One lovely custom of Divali is that on the third day, brothers are supposed to visit their sisters.  The sister ties a rakhi, a colourful thread, around the wrist of the brother, signifying the strong bond between brother and sister.  The brother brings a gift to the sister.  One of our guides said that he had given his sister a card.  That seemed a bit modest compared to what we'd heard about.  It turned out to be a credit card!  His sister is studying in university and he had offered to help her, but she had declined preferring instead to earn her own money as a tutor, he said proudly.  I think he is quite confident his credit card won't be abused.  In a society of multi-generation families, where the wife lives with her husband' family, this custom to strengthen the bond between brothers and sisters is quite heartwarming.

Indian Village Life

Chhatra Sagar is a beautiful 'camp' near the small town of Nimaj. It consists of eleven luxury tents which sit on top of a dam overlooking a reservoir which looks like a lovely natural lake, with wild life galore. The lake was created in 1890 by a powerful noble of the desert kingdom of Marwar, making the area a beautiful green oasis in this dry land. This year, India has enjoyed a particularly good monsoon season, and so we are seeing Rajasthan at its very greenest and all bodies of water totally full.

The site was a favourite place for visiting dignitaries for whom temporary camps were set up. The great grandchildren of the nobleman who built the dam now run it as a permanent camp for tourists, with lovely tented rooms. Raj, was a cousin whose family was from Udaipur, and he was our gracious, rather shy, host during our visit.



We took a tour through the family's farm and learned a lot from Raj about the crops and habits of farmers. The hotel here pays people in the village to show their various trades as we take a tour; they contribute to the village in return for the villagers allowing copious pictures (taking pictures here is sometimes chargeable) and not petitioning the visitors for money or gifts. It meant that we saw some real people doing real things, without the begging associated with India.

The fields here grow three crops a year. We saw many different crops in the irrigated fields - millet, henna, anise, sesame. In Shahpura we had seen a large lake that had filled during monsoon. Within a couple of months, that lake would have dried out, and the farmers would grow wheat in that area.

For small farmers who can't justify owning or renting a harvesting machine, millet is laid out on the road, and cars passing over it do the hard work of separating the grain from the stalks.




Fences made of stone separate the fields. Stone quarries are common and we saw many companies cutting the stone for building material and for making fences, especially as we got close to Udaipur.




The fields seem to be worked mostly by women in their colourful dresses and shawls. When Wayne remarked to Raj that he saw a lot of men sitting around relaxing but no women relaxing, Raj laughingly pointed out that the men did the hard work - supervising the women.

We saw a mix of farming methods from hand farming with wooden tools, bullocks pulling a plough, to some small harvesting machines. Medium-sized farmers will rent these harvesters from the bigger farmers. Interestingly, many of these harvesters were Massey Ferguson, even some quite new ones. We had not realized this old Canadian company was still manufacturing.




We saw many women walking with water containers, having collected water from a lake or pond or the village pump. Electricity was much more common than running water. Some pretty modest homes boasted TVs, or even the odd dish. There were lots of motorcycles, and of course ubiquitous mobiles.

We also visited the village itself, with a chance to see right into the homes that did not have walls on the street side. The homes were certainly modest, but not as modest as one might have expected. The most interesting part of the home was the power outlet, mostly dedicated to powering electronics - cell phones deemed more important even than light. I loved the contrast of the clothes line of bright Indian fabric packets, containing cell phones.





Here are some other views of the homes: