On The Road

Here I am showing only four of the pictures that I gathered on the road in India. We went by car (Toyota Innova) from Delhi to Agra, Jaipur, Jodhpur and will go to Udaipur tomorrow. It was explained to us today that the suffix "pur" means the city was established by Hindu's, whereas "bad" means the city was established by Muslims.

The first picture shows a farmer next to the road, who is driving somewhere on his cart pulled by his cow. The cow is far from the only means that is used to pull a cart. I see more camels and horses in this area. Most of the animals that are pulling the cart have some kind of ornament on the horns or nose.



As I noticed earlier, driving around in India is hell. I would be glad to get back to Brazil where driving is at least quite sane :). Humours aside, here is a picture I snapped that shows you the sight you will see driving on your side of the dual carriage way and how they turn on their headlights as if they are in their right. If you imagine the possibility of other ongoing traffic on your side, you can imagine the complexity if the truck drives on the fast lane in the opposite direction. So there is no way you can relax for a moment, then it's a cow, then it's a truck in the other direction, then it's the traffic on your side cutting you off, then it's a donkey, then it's a guy running across the road without looking...

The drivers here seem to only believe in the elements of "good luck" and "bad luck". It's a little bit strange how this works out. I see cars that are sometimes swirling across the road where obviously the driver is suffering from exhaustion or simply is too sleepy to carry on. Rather than stopping and throwing some water on their head, walking around, get back in the proper state of awakenedness, they simply carry on as if it's bad luck to fall asleep behind the wheel. Our driver also suffers from severe drowsiness after lunch. When he scratches his head, his eyelids start to fall down and we have to almost order him to stop, because he won't do it himself (pride? duty?).



Well, the other things you encounter of course are trucks, sometimes voluminously overloaded. This is an example of such a truck loaded with cotton. Some of them have the cotton sticking out on both sides, this one was rather badly loaded. :)

It is always possible that the truck breaks down. Here is an example of the numerous broken down trucks that you encounter along the way. Every 200km I guess there are about three at least. Some trucks have simply flat tires, others have broken axles, others have fallen over in a ditch due to sleepy drivers (or drunk, as my driver told me. It seems that some people do actually drink along the way in some very dark bars and then get back on the road).



So, this is only a four-picture sample of what you encounter along the road. The scenery of course also changes. I have seen woods, lines of birch-trees (I guess birch, not sure), desert, prickly bushes, sand and mountains. Sometimes the land is flat, sometimes you can see distant mountains.