The truck drivers in India like to have banners painted on their vehicles and they all have a banner on the back saying ‘Blow Horn’ as a matter of law I think. A banner I saw today across the front of a truck read ‘Love is a sweet poison’. I can’t imagine many British truck drivers having such poetic notions emblazoned across the front of them.
The plan is to drop Meg and Dave at Chandigarh today, but it is still 170km away from our starting point which is a long way on these roads. However, we do achieve the feat in the late afternoon as we get into flatter terrain and JC makes use of the road rule ‘biggest has right of way’, which is of course the only rule.
On these long slow days on the road there is nothing to do but make various observations. One is that Vodafone seems to pay for a lot of shutter doors here, these shops being little more than run down garages, which can’t all possibly be selling Vodafone products. While daydreaming, another observation comes into my mind: How would a Muslim vampire react if faced with a crucifix? Or indeed a Sikh or Hindu one?
We also see the first of many trucks, or at least half trucks, going along the road which consist of no more than a chassis, engine, wheels, a steering wheel and a couple of seats for the driver and a mate. I would say they are open top trucks, but they don’t have a midriff either. They definitely wouldn’t pass a road worthiness test, but in a land where you are quite likely to be going down the fast lane of a highway and find yourself confronted by a donkey and cart facing you, it is little surprise that there isn’t any. These vehicles are on their way to the truck wardrobe department presumably.
Another incident involved a boy lying in the middle of the highway who suddenly jumped up to barely evade a car only to leap into the path of our truck. JC swerves to miss him by a fraction and then stops, leans his head out of the window and says in the calmest voice he can muster in the situation: ‘WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!!!!’ A grizzly beggar man standing on the central verge, who may or may not be responsible for the well being of the child, just smiles. With road travel here, you do not exist if you do not blow your horn, whether your potential victim is in a vehicle, on a bike, walking along, or lying in the middle of the road. This fact leads me to seek refuge at the back of the truck, as this incident only serves to increase the frequency of the loud squawk of truck’s horn at the front.
We have dinner and camp at a service station by the side of the road. Jen and I take a seat on a swing bench and watch the traffic go by to the backdrop of the sunset. An Indian Police car, all of which look like and may actually be Morris Minors, passes by and Jen observes that ‘it’s just like Heartbeat’. It must be said that Morris Minors will still be notably faster than other vehicles on these roads, with the possible exception of our truck.
Not all of our party are very happy about having to camp in a dusty service station restaurant room, though personally I prefer it to putting up my tent, if only because I’m fairly lazy.
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