Driving Through Gujarat

Going from Ahmedabad into and across Kutch and down to Dwarka has meant some long days of driving. We are lucky enough to have a wonderful driver with us for 5 days so we can relax and enjoy the scenery. 

When you are new to Indian roads, they all seem chaotic and maybe a touch psychotic, but I have come to appreciate the style of driving. Go where there is room, try not to hit anyone or anything else, and communicate clearly your intentions using your horn. It makes so much sense out on the highway. Less so in the complex city interchanges. 

The haying is newly done so we are seeing many hay wagons piled almost beyond the limits of physics. Cotton is being picked or has just been picked so today we are starting to see cotton bearing trucks. Black chickpeas are being dried in the field and castor and mustard are just about to be harvested. Cumin and wheat are still tender green plants in the fields.

Highways in Gujarat are well serviced. You don’t go long without a service station or a rest stop with restaurant, toilets and possibly a hotel. Some look newer, cleaner and more sanitary than others but when you have to go it’s always the old dodgy ones with a woman out front selling fruit. Oh well. Sometimes you discover the highway you need to take is a bumpy dusty unpaved road with a rusted out guardrail and teeming with goats. That’s India.

Highways never just stay highways. They always end up going through towns or villages where you and the locals give each other the old eyeball and maybe wave. People are often quite chuffed to get a wave from a stranger, particularly in more rural areas. You can see how much of India lives while driving around. So much work is still done through human labour despite all the technology India creates. Every scrap piece of plastic China produces seems to end up on the ground or in the water of Indian villages. I am still occasionally shocked at the amount of refuse I see.

Cows, goats and buffalo insist on their portion of the highways and village roads and they are treated as seriously and delicately as other vehicles. We passed two lads on a scooter with two full grown goats between them.

We also pass a lot tribes of nomadic people camping along the road. They use varying building materials and structures and we noticed a number of encampments with teepee like structures in the south.

The bird house theme of Ahmedabad is carried out all over the state. Tall brightly coloured, somewhat phallic bird high rises are everywhere along the roads and in cities and towns. Gujaratis love their birds.

Hijra (India’s transgender or third sex) are often waiting at toll booths. We give to them whenever we have reasonably small bills since we feel they deserve to collect a toll against the harshness of their lives. They are accepted in India, but still at the margins of society and often eke out survival by begging, singing or sex work. I pray they are at the tolls as free agents and not part of larger begging rings as with the children and the mothers with babies. I never want to be part of adding to the profitability of human trafficking.

Gujarat is full of wind farms with those tall eerie white wind turbines. There’s something about them lurking all tall and white, twirling those long slender fingers silently that creeps me the fuck out.

A nice part of driving in Gujarat is knowing there are no drunk drivers. Bad, careless or sleepy drivers, sure, but dead sober. 

Indians in general are very awake and alert in a way that Canadians are not. People are aware of their surroundings out on the street or in their cars. They don’t need controlled lanes. There are extremely complex road merges that they work through by what vehicles can fit in. Communication happens by horn. They know where everyone is and how much time and space they have and that everyone Is cooperating by the same rules to make it all work out. Driving is a cooperative endeavour and you need to be aware to make it work.

And how happy am I to see the signs letting me know I am at the Tropic of Cancer? Yes sun, please shine directly over my head. Like a hot halo.