Touring as Hell, Part 2: The Tourist in Transit

Early in the life of this blog, I noted the seeming frequency with which it is averred that train travel is “the best way to see the country,” an aphoristic bit of wisdom that has always carried with it the taint of the received, and which I’ve long suspected to be a pearl of sentimental rot—and of course it is, if one truly desires to absorb as much of the world about him as possible. Trains offer comparatively poor sightlines, afford no control (for passengers and engineer alike) over what route will be taken and when and where stops will be made, and, even in India, where they are generally plodding creatures, trains move too quickly to facilitate discovery and revelation. A good general rule for determining the best manner of seeing anything is based on the speed of one’s transportation: the slower the means of travel, the better for seeing. Thus, in the hierarchy of locomotion, the Concorde is worst for gaining knowledge of the world, and walking is best—how else could Gandhi legitimately claim to represent the will of the entire nation of India? He shook the dust of every highway, alley, lane, and cowpath in the country from his dhoti.

Although train journeys in India are painfully slow by American standards (for example, the Mewar Express from Delhi to Udaipur takes twelve hours to traverse its 462 mile route, provided it arrives on schedule—my most recent trip took thirteen and-a-half), they are appreciably faster than travel by car, and thus, even ignoring its other panoramic shortcomings, the train, in comparison to the automobile, is an inferior means of seeing the country. However, this is not to say that the automobile is the better way to travel in India: I feel confident in asserting that, after spending the majority of my time in transit during the past three weeks within the confines of an automobile, the car is a positively abysmal way to get from here to there. It is not merely the slowness that vexes; it is the means of delay that set the teeth on edge. Oh, you do see quite a bit in a car in India, to be sure—but much of it you wish you’d never seen at all.

How does one begin to enumerate the agonies of car travel here? Start with the roads I suppose, which, though, of generally commendable quality, are never wide enough for comfort. When one wants four lanes there are two, and when one wants two lanes there is one, and when one asks for but a single strip of asphalt, one receives rutted, dusty earth. Then move to the traffic, which is first and foremost the monstrous child of a densely populated nation and a woefully inadequate highway system, but also the outgrowth of a country which has not yet (to the incalculable benefit of the rest of the world) attained a level of affluence that permits even a fraction of its citizenry to own automobiles. Its traffic, then, is a gallimaufry of every means of terrestrial transportation conceived of since the Stone Age: horses, donkeys, camels, and elephants; horse-drawn carriages, bullock carts, handcarts, and foodcarts; bicycles, bicycle rickshaws, and auto-rickshaws both large (tempos) and small (tuk-tuks); scooters, mopeds, motorbikes, and motorcycles; cars, jeeps, vans, and light trucks; freight trucks, gas tankers, tractors, and buses; and finally, a host of other mechanical conveyances I haven’t yet names for.

I would certainly mention the complete absence of the enforcement of traffic laws, for I have never seen a motorist pulled over by the police in India, and I also I would be remiss if I failed to figure in Indians’ unique (at least as viewed through the orthodoxy of an American driver’s education course) conception of motor vehicle operation. To wit: in the Indian taxonomy of vehicular components, the horn is valued only marginally less than the engine, and the brakes are employed with only slightly less frequency and relish than the horn; training brights on other vehicles at close range, as with subjecting fellow drivers to a barrage of honking, far from being the height of insolence, is considered a communicative courtesy; every inch of road space in three dimensions is judged of inestimable value and thus contested with the pitched ferocity of a dispute over birthright; and drivers never, ever, under any circumstances, venture any distance in any direction contrary to that of their destination, even if it means traveling the wrong way down a divided street or otherwise inconveniencing every other denizen of the road.

Finally, I would lard the route with wildcards—omnigenous and unpredictable obstacles which are the last agony in this heavily abridged reckoning: speed bumps, police barriers, and miscellaneous toll and tax islands; the omnipresent domestic menagerie (dogs, pigs, goats, buffalo, chickens, and those undisputed kings of the road, cows) and their feral brethren, most notably macaque monkeys; a nation of pedestrians with more daring than brains; and the unforeseeable plaisanteries de Dieu, like the absolute halt of traffic in both directions for several minutes while a towering roadside eucalyptus is felled by handsaw.

A car ride in India, then, is a mouth full of dust and an aching head, a ready wince and a stifled gasp. It is a braced body and an unsettled stomach, widened eyes that can always grow wider and the mute communion of the transported. When it is over, one may ask, “Did you see—?” and everyone will nod before he finishes, or “Can you believe the—” and they will shake their heads before the thought is complete. It is a shibboleth, a cipher to the uninitiated, an experience that is as likely to be captured and reproduced as the first thrilling blush of love in youth—indeed, I took a minute’s worth of video with my digital camera while on the road in Agra, and afterwards we all scoffed at the pale, sanitized simulacrum offered up by its screen.