I should not have learned to drive

Passing my test before I left seemed like such a good idea at the time, but it just makes coping with the Indian driving even harder.  There are so many things that just make me want to cringe all the time.  So I’ve started making a list and I’ve only been in India for two weeks

1.       They don’t go up the gears enough.  The car is usually screaming and they still insist on staying in second or something.  They have got to seriously be damaging their cars.

2.      There is no power assisted steering.  And the drivers have had to do some seriously tight 11-point turns and it looks like a work out turning the car around

3.      They over take when there is no need.  Overtaking is really stressful because it often takes you right into the path of a bus.  And that’s terrifying, especially in a rickshaw.  The roads are only single carriage ways but more often than not it’s three or even four vehicles  in a row

4.      The horn.  At home if you used the horn it would be in a serious situation and everybody would get annoyed about it.  Here they use the horn to go round a bend and I think that’s because they can’t stay on their own side of the road when turning the corner!  They just can’t keep their fingers off the horn and if it’s not used at least 20 times in a five minute journey then you must be a bad driver.

5.      They drive so fast through areas where there are so many people.  If someone is crossing the road they don’t slow down, they go around you.  Every time we’re in the car I constantly want them to be slowly down.

6.      The animals on the road don’t seem to bother them.  Dogs, cows, goats, chickens.  I would have really slowed down but nope.  They just beep their horn and go around them.  I’m living in permanent fear that we’re going to kill a dog.

7.      Indicators aren’t a thing.  They never indicate it just seems to be an unnecessary extension on the steering wheel.  If they ever indicate they stick their hand out the window, and hardly anybody sees it.  Our driver from the airport in Hyderabad to Bhravi’s had his hazards on the whole time.

8.      Traffic jams are 100 times worse here.  They don’t sit patiently and wait until the traffic moves again, they try and fill in the gap and jump “lanes” cutting everyone else up.  They could not be closer to the other cars and if they think the traffic should be moving, they use the horn.  Then everyone else does, meaning that there’s just a massive queue of unmoving traffic all leaning on their horns.  It’s literally deafening.   

 That traffic jam wasn't even that bad...

The rickshaw when it was rather empty