Rishikesh Bound

This weekend, like most weekends, we set off for an adventure. We wanted to go with Amit, our normal driver, but he is off to his Shadi (wedding). Amit is soft spoken, and his English is admittedly poor. He's a pretty young guy but incredibly kind and patient with us foreigners. Amit taught me how quickly we latch onto familiarity, especially in a place like India where so much is foreign. Though communication was a challenge with Amit from the get-go, Becky and I both had immediately latched onto him as a source of great comfort.

With Amit gone, and with Rishikesh in my sights, I needed wheels. In India I'm like a 15 year old. I'm constantly making vapor plans and I'm totally dependent on an enabling third party to indulge my whims.

Kate and Angela have been staying with us this week. They're on the same assignment as Becky and I though they have been stationed out of Hyderabad for most of their trip to date. Their driver, Mahinder has a bit of a bad reputation. On their trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal the previous weekend, Mahinder's car had broken down en route. Though the fan belt's demise was out of Mahinder's control, I got the sense that he could have done a better job warding off the attention that Kate and Angela attracted once the vehicle was completely disabled.

We asked around, but under the circumstances, it was Mahinder or staying home.

Mahinder picked us up around 3 PM from work on Friday so that we could beat the Delhi traffic.

The drive was mostly without incident for the first few hours and because I had brought my iPod adapter, we were able to listen to some tunes.

We arrived at a railway crossing about half-way to Rishikesh and traffic was at a stand still. The gates dropped, and we were next in line. After two trains passed, the gates opened and a chorus of horns erupted. An oncoming bus lurched onto the train tracks blocking about half of the road. Meanwhile, a small Geo-metro like vehicle had attempted to cut in line around us and was sitting directly in the Bus's path. The scene that transpired was almost impossible to believe. The little car sat for five full minutes face to face with the bus, blocking traffic all around us. People got out of their cars, yelled, all to the tune of meep meep meep from every direction.

Finally the smaller car backed down, and allowed the bus to pass, leaving a momentary vacancy on the railroad tracks that everyone was quite excited to fill. Mahinder was no exception. As we pulled out onto the train tracks, and abruptly stopped with nowhere to go, the four of us started to get apprehensive. We sat here another few minutes before I noticed headlights from down the train tracks coming our way. After a brief expletive, we hopped out of the car leaving Mahinder alone in the vehicle. As we retreated towards safety, and the chorus of horns grew louder, people started to realize that it was time to move. Those blocking traffic drove into a ditch and got out of the way. Those next in line, were able to follow suit. Finally traffic had cleared, we hopped back into our Innova van and were back on the road.

With a sigh of relief and a bit of nervous laughter, we cranked up the tunes and thought fondly of the drink we'd share when we arrived in Rishikesh later that night.