Driving in Bangalore (and India)!

Posted on July 19, 2004 4:5 AM EST (from Bangalore, India)

Driving in Bangalore and most other places that I've been to this month during my vacation in India, is a MAJOR pain! There's just too many vehicles on the road and ALL of them driving with very little consideration for others and for the rules. As if that is not enough, the roads are in such bad condition. Bad is an adjective that doesn't even come close to describing the conditions of the roads in many parts of the city. Then, you have everybody, I mean, everybody - pedestrians of all ages, vehicles of all speeds and assorted animals - moving all over the road. And when it rains, things get several times worse.

It is a pain to ride even an easy vehicle like a Kinetic Honda, where you don't have to change gears. I don't know how people manage with manual transmission motorcyles and cars. Heck, I don't know how *I* rode an Enfield Bullet on these streets just a few years back! My friends and I, in a Maruti car, narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a truck, a few kilometers out of Bangalore on Mysore road, just last evening!

This post would amuse me cuz it sounds so much like stuff I used to read, written by Western writers about the crazy Indian roads. But things are so bad and such a pain, there is no room for humor or amusement here. These conditions are just too damn dangerous and inconvenient! It's distressing to think that, little or nothing is being done to improve these conditions, while a lot of things (like adding more vehicles to the roads daily) are happening to make them even worse!