Driving Tales

The drive from Jaipur to Rithampur was a pleasant journey compared to the trip from Delhi to Jaipur when we were surrounded by smog, traffic, vomit etc. We rolled through small villages with barely any cars, mostly camels and buffalo for pulling the famers goods around (Laura would also like to mention the cute wild pigs with cool hair do’s). After about 40km the tarmac road ended and we continued the journey over a rough dust and rock track for quite a distance. This part of the road was a long way off being finished and it was clear to see why. There was a sever lack of heavy machinery that you would usually expect to see in a place where a road was being built. We past just one digger on the entire stretch of rough track driven by a young boy and his friend clearly enjoying their big toy. The main work force on the road was a group of women dressed in saris and armed with large hammers and pick axes. The women were on their hands and knees breaking the large rocks into gravel to help smooth the road out. There was a young looking boy wearing a red shirt watching over the ladies who I assume was in charge. The sight could have been out of a movie where criminals are given the punishment of hard labour for their crimes.

After we passed the women at work, I asked Warren to pull over so I could use the gents. I hastily stomped out of the car over the dust and rocks into a ditch that I thought was suitable for my purposes. I didn’t look where I was going and stepped on a bunch of dried up twigs all of which happened to be mostly thorns the size of knitting needles. The pain was bad but I needed to go so I carried on. Once I was all done I tried walking back to the car but realised that a number of the thorns had gone straight through my right flip-flop and into my foot. Whilst hopping on my left foot I began pulling the thorns out of my right flip-flop as Laura and Warren looked on amused.

Another driving story I’m afraid, but it is just so drastically different here I feel it needs explaining. In Ruthampur we took an afternoon safari through a forest that was straight out of the carton Jungle Book. We were told there was a 99% chance that we would see a tiger but Sher khan was nowhere to be seen. Lots of monkeys, peacocks and deer which didn’t seem to mind the enormous 20 seater off road truck we were bouncing up and down in. At the end it was quite a sight watching other tourists getting off the truck looking seasick and covered in dust.

Tiger: 1 Joe & Laura: 0

After a relaxing night’s sleep in the leafy jungle hotel we hopped back in the car with Warren and headed off towards Agra in the hope of catching the sun setting over the Taj Mahal. It was a long drive interrupted by many stops to fix the cars dodgy electrics, but the views were full of colours and wildlife. Once the car was back up and running we began hurtling down the main road at about 90kmph. A lady in a pink sari started to cross the road in front of us without look for oncoming traffic only meters in front of our car. Warren slammed on the breaks and we skidded to a halt just missing the lady. After we had recovered from the shock of nearly hitting a pedestrian at great speed Warren, completely unperturbed by the incident told us that if he had hit the woman he would have kept on driving until he got to a police station as if he stopped the local villagers would have killed him and torched the car. Laura asked what the villagers would have done to us – ‘the innocent tourists’ he replied “kill you too”.