Arambol to Udaipur

From Goa to Kolhapur to Ahmadnagar to Ellora to Mandu to Udaipur, I have been travelling the secondary highways. Several things worth noting.

1. Indian drivers are insane. If they’re not, they should be. I think Darwinism applies here and often enough in dramatic fashion. Certain genes disappear abruptly from the pool simply because the body containing them should never have been behind the wheel of a vehicle, and this includes toy trucks for three-year-olds. A few examples:

A. Driving the wrong way down a superhighway on a scooter while talking on the phone.
B. A big truck passing a bus going uphill around a corner on a mountain road with a steep drop on one side.
C. Sounding one’s horn before pulling out into traffic without looking to see if there is, in fact, any traffic.
D. Changing the flat tire of a truck stopped fully in the driving lane of the highway, not on the shoulder of the road.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

2. In the smaller places the people have never seen a foreigner except on
TV, so me with my white skin, ultra-cool motorcycle and shaved head become an exotic attraction, like aliens coming to town. In all the little truck stops and villages where I stop for water or food, a crowd quickly gathers around me. There’s usually one person who can speak some English, and someone runs to find him. He asks me questions and then translates the answer for the listeners. The questions are all the same: Where from? Married? Travelling alone? Going where? The welcome they give me is one of genuinely warm curiosity and it’s a real pleasure. This warm welcome is not restricted to small places. In cities the Indian people are very welcoming and, above all, very helpful without expecting anything in return. For them, a guest is a guest and must be given tremendous consideration. Interestingly, the younger ones tend to ask for your cell phone number. I don’t think they’ll really call me. I think it’s a point of pride to show to their friends, like a trophy. Look, they might say, I met this Canadian dude on an Enfield and we talked for a while. See? Here’s his phone number.

In one of these places, Songir Fhata (between Ellora and Mandu), a guy named Bharat spoke English well where I stopped for lunch at his highway restaurant. We talked for a while, the usual crowd surrounding me, and then I ordered food. Most of the crowd dispersed then, but I noticed a couple of people watching me eat and I wondered if it was because they wanted to know if I knew how to eat properly in their country. You eat with your hand, scooping up food with bread. Use the right hand only, never the left one. I sensed they were waiting to see if I’d eat with my left hand, a monumentally horrifying transgression for them since the left hand is the toilet hand. When they saw that I wasn’t going to do that, they drifted away and let me eat in peace.

3. This is a country of extremes and this includes the quality of the roads. Some are like billiard tables. Some appear to have suffered war. Between Ellora and Mandu I started out on a good road the shortly led up over a hill. Twisting, turning - real mountain road with a very steep drop. Guardrail in some places was just big, concrete blocks painted red and white. Enough space between them for a motorcycle to go flying into the void. Stomach-clenching ride at times. Trees all barren, morning sun and yellow grass reminded me of Canada in the autumn, but the heat made it all different. Summer dressed in autumn clothing. After the hill things smoothed out for a while as I headed toward Dhule and Ellora beyond that. But only for a while. Must have been some highway work going on ahead because signs indicated turning off this highway onto another. This has to be the world’s worst highway. Speed 7 to 10 kms per hour maximum. A secondary highway but not built for big, heavy trucks. Yet they had to take it, too. Result: they’d destroyed it. Potholes is not the right term. It had simply been bashed to pieces, destroyed. Don’t know how long this lasted. Perhaps 40 or 60 minutes. Halfway along I came to an intersection where a traffic cop whistled me to a stop. In rudimentary English he asked for license, papers and then said India needed money and I had to pay a fine of 5,000 rupees, an outrageous sum. I said No and began to put my papers away. He repeated 5,000 rupees several times before lowering it to 500. I still said No and told him I’d give him 100, which I did. He grinned and insisted on shaking hands, as if this sealed some kind of deal or agreement between us and everything was alright. 100 rupees is nothing to me, but the principle is something else. I don’t come from a place where corruption is so flagrant and open. Canadians and the Swiss believe that those who uphold the law should also be its best proponents and the best examples. This is an ideal and reality deviates to greater and lesser degrees. I suppose it was the pettiness and the flagrant abuse of power that bothered me: Here, stop, you have to give me money because I’m wearing a uniform and have power over you. What if he had really insisted on the 5,000 rupees? And what if I’d refused? It’s still not a great deal to me, about 120 Swiss Francs. For some reason I was prepared to refuse all the way. There were a couple of locals there watching us who might have helped him out. He had no radio and no evident weapon. He was much smaller than I and I doubt his motorcycle would have kept up with mine. What was his capacity to enforce his decision and what was mine to refuse to obey it? In the end we came to the standard agreement - 100 rupees of baksheesh - and I left.

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