Driving Day

Four plus a suitcase.

 Tuk tuk cramming is another favourite sport.

 A brick factory.

 Nico draws attention from local people.

 A happy working woman who was checking us out.

 It is amazing that there is not a blizzard of grass coming off of them.

 Rural scenes.

 The restaurants above the toll booth.

 Another cramming sport.

 Women dusting off the toll booth.

Our very narrow street, that Euan had to navigate.

Nico and Euan enjoying our barbeque dinner.

Saturday, March 31^st.

Today was a long hot drive day. We left the hotel at 7:30 after breakfast and drove for most of the day. The first couple of hours were along secondary roads and through towns, which is very slow, because of the traffic and the narrow roads. Despite the fact that they are slow, these are the roads I like because you get to see more of what is going on as local people go about doing what they do.

Eventually we joined the freeway, which is the main highway from Chennai to Kolkata. For most of the time it was like the 400 back home, three lanes in each direction. That is where the similarity ends though. I could write an endless list of things I saw on that highway that you will never see at home, but here are a few highlights:

A man standing on the side of the road, doing nothing in particular, and wearing only a shirt.

A truck making a u-turn from the middle lane to leave the highway using the on ramp.

A truck carrying an oversized container on its flatbed and going the wrong direction in the outside lane. (I can believe how often we see vehicles of all sorts going in the wrong direction in ‘our’ lane).

A husband, wife, two small kids (none of whom were wearing helmets) and a large suitcase on the gas tank on a small motorcycle. 

A restaurant complex built on top of a toll road booth, advertised as India’s first.

And innumerable trucks overloaded with payload, some of which were listing quite badly.

On the back of most trucks are the words ‘horn please’ which means the driver wants the vehicle that is overtaking to give a little toot to advise him of its approach. Therefore there is a near ending series of beeps as everyone is passing everyone they can. At one point a car was overtaking us and gave off an endless series of beeps. Euan lost it and as the car passed he gave back in return. Our horn is much louder than his, and we could see him hunker down in his seat. Again, bigger or louder wins.

We stopped and had lunch at the restaurants above the toll booth and the food was excellent and the view was looking right up the road watching the oncoming traffic. There was an Indian restaurant, a coffee shop, a burger/sandwich place and a Baskins and Robbins.

We arrived in Vijayawada about three. Unfortunately, the street our hotel is on is undergoing construction as they are putting in an overhead highway. Therefore, the road we had to drive down to get to the Empire Hotel was incredibly narrow and Euan had to show patience and skill to drive along the road. The cars and motorcycles coming the other way, couldn’t believe the size of our vehicle. We couldn’t find anywhere to park, so we wound up about two hundred metres down the road. (Later, when we went out Euan showed us the one way sign at the beginning of the street to the hotel. We were going the right way, everyone coming at us and beeping at us were going the wrong way.) We all took our little bags and left the big ones in the truck for the night.

I give Euan full marks for his skill at driving and his will for even wanting to drive here.

As soon as we walked out the door to go for dinner, a motorcycle went by with a rider and a passenger carrying a ten or twelve foot bamboo ladder.

This is a crazy busy area that we are in and because of the construction it is very congested and there are no sidewalks and everywhere you walk you have to dodge vehicles which are beeping at you. So, when we went out for dinner we wanted somewhere fairly close. We had to cross a roundabout in two directions and then found a modern vertical plaza which advertised a Barbeque Pride restaurant that looked good. We went up to the third floor and found a nice clean modern restaurant. Our table had a barbeque pit in the centre and they brought us skewers of prawns, chicken, fish, mushrooms, pineapple and watermelon. And that was just the ‘starters’. After that we could have the ‘mains’ which was a buffet of Indian meals, followed by desserts of fruit, chocolate brownie, chocolate mousse and other stuff. All for about $12. 

On the way back we had to cross two halves of the traffic circle and when we got to the island between the lanes, there was a woman trying to sleep on the concrete, amidst all the chaos, noise and fumes. Euan and I couldn’t believe that is where she chose to stay.