Entry 1 - such a long journey

Okay, time to begin recording, reporting and relating some of what I have seen and done and experienced in India.  The first blog, with others to follow.

First, the trip to Mysore.  Our arrival.

Well, we have arrived in Mysore.  Perhaps by the grace of Adam Christie and the University travel agent initially, and in the final stage by the grace of who knows which god, as I am not yet sure what Indian god protects anyone who sets onto a road in a truck, bus, car, autorickshaw, motorcycle or scooter, or just sets foot onto a road with the intention of crossing it.

Things were planned carefully for a straightforward trip to Mysore, which was going to be a long journey.  But then it got longer still.  With Air India pilots on job action, some international flights were cancelled, and ours was one of them. We were due to leave on May 31, from Toronto, and fly to Delhi on Air India; presumably there would be a brief stop along the way for refueling, but for the passengers, non-stop.  Instead, having got up at 4:00 am on Thursday, we departed Sackville at 5:00 am for Halifax airport and flew to Toronto.  The five of us from Halifax then met three more in Toronto airport, one having flown overnight from Vancouver, one at noon from Ottawa, and one coming in from her Toronto home in the afternoon.  We were in Toronto airport twelve hours, and flew out shortly before midnight on Etihad Air to Abu Dhabi.  We arrived there in the early evening, mid-east time, and after a layover of a couple of hours, we flew to Delhi, arriving at 3:30 am Indian time.  We didn’t fly out to Bangalore until late morning.  Then the long journey began; such a long journey. 

After arriving in Bangalore airport, everyone together and luggage intact, we met our last student who had come in from Delhi earlier, having flown from Japan.  Two drivers met us with two vans, one for passengers and one for luggage.  We would be there soon, we thought.  146 kms.  The maps and highway signs all agreed – 146 kilometres from Bangalore to Mysore.  This won’t be long, I thought.  The driver said that because of traffic we would take a slightly longer route that would take us around the city and not through its middle.  Total distance, now just a little less than 200 km.  Total time for ground transportation – about five hours and a half hours , including a brief stop for lunch.

So shortly after noon we left – and we arrived at Mysore about 6:00 pm, exhausted from our 56 hour cross-continental trans-Atlantic journey, but doubly so from the last piece.

I can’t even begin to describe the journey from Bangalore to Mysore.  Roads are narrow, and congested, and highway signs, it appears, are a suggestion of what should happen, not instructions for what must happen.  Lane markings on the roads mean nothing.  Shoulders are for driving on, in either direction.  Random cows wander across, or down, the roads.  And everyone is honking, constantly.  Motorcycles are everywhere, filling in the smallest spaces between vehicles.   No one drives very fast, but no one can – and it is probably just as well because no one wears seat belts – no one has seat belts to wear. 

To begin, it is right hand drive in India, as in Britain, so sitting in the front seat on the left side takes some getting used to – I think I wore a small indentation in the floor right where I wished I had a brake pedal and tried to use it. It took almost two hours to clear Bangalore.  And in that first two hours I think I saw all the standard, typical India scenes that come to mind: women in saris and bare feet working at construction sites, and carrying building materials on their heads; cows wandering randomly through traffic; a white egret in a pond surrounded by sugar cane; mango vendors pushing their carts along the roadsides selling fresh mangoes; buffalo and bullocks ploughing a field with a wooden plough; a family of five on a motorcycle, Dad driving with a small child in front on the gas tank, holding on to handlebars, a slightly larger child behind, and at the back, Mum in a sari sitting side-saddle and clinging to a toddler; the list goes on.

The roads are in incredibly poor shape, and wind and twist, and are full of vehicles – buses, huge trucks, three-wheeled taxis and delivery vehicles piled so high with waste materials they look like they might fall over at any moment; cars; ox-pulled carts; and of course hundreds and hundreds of mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles of almost every description.  And they are all moving, constantly, weaving and dodging, finding an opening and taking it, passing and being passed.  There are no designated passing zones; one simply goes, sometimes forcing the oncoming traffic to drive onto the shoulder.  And everything travels so close together – there is little personal space between people in a crowd, and even less on the road. At one time we came to an abrupt halt behind a large truck, so close that a pedestrian weaving his way across the road could not even pass between our van and the truck in front (and you have to appreciate this is a larger twelve-passenger van with the motor under rather than in front of the front seats –the front seats surmount the front wheel, with only twelve inches or so of vehicle in front of the windshield).  We stopped suddenly, and close to the truck in front, and when I opened my eyes again all I could see was the painted slogan on the back of the truck panel; “Safety First.”

We did eventually stop for lunch, although I think the students had heard so many horror stories about eating out and getting sick that although they were hungry, hardly anyone ate anything.  Those who ate were fine.  Food was served on banana leaves instead of plates, and was mild and delicious.  The cold (bottled) water was wonderful.

The traffic which does not so much flow as surge, the relentless honking, the heat (it was well into the high thirties and humid), the smells (flowers, spices, gas, sweat, burning garbage, food, sewage), and our general tiredness made it seem a very long journey indeed. Even the sights – temples, rice paddies, farm carts pulled by bullocks, coconut trees and mango orchards, people everywhere – started to become overwhelming; there was too much to take in.

And at last we made it into Mysore, just as the sun was setting.  We had not even properly arrived at our destination, but we had already experienced India in many more ways than we could imagine, as we were now only really beginning our passage to India.