The road to Jaipur

On the face of it, it’s much like any other. What we would call a dual carriageway, most of it (although by no means all) is fairly new and well surfaced. There are often crash barriers in the centre and the signage is good. But…

Our driver cheerily told us that you only need three things to drive in Delhi – good brakes, a good horn and Good Luck! Not an auspicious start.

As we left the hotel, the one standout feature on the road was the lack of lane markings. Although there were some later in the newer stretches of road, it seems that they were only for decoration because they served no other function. The unmarked tarmac on the roads out of Delhi set the spirit of Laissez Faire. Just to spice things up, there were also random cattle. Imagine Chiswick roundabout in the rush hour with Oxen. In anything other than total gridlock, this would have been carnage but the traffic took the form of a gigantic rubic’s cube, with progress only by thrusting into a space in the split second between it opening and closing.

After about an hour, we finally hit the highway (but amazingly, nothing else). Every sort of vehicle imaginable was bowling along together; cabs, cars, buses, TukTuks motorbikes, cycles, horse carts, loose cows and oxen; it absolutely was the Wacky Races. The only rules were to never, ever use an indicator and to never not use the horn. Overtaking happened on all sides, everywhere and at very close quarters in a constantly morphing number of traffic ‘lanes’; I suppose we were grateful that at least 90% of the traffic on our carriageway was travelling in the same direction…

The other surprising thing was that as the traffic eased, most vehicles were still obeying the modest 50mph speed limit – it quickly became clear that this was enforced not by the police but by cows sitting in the outside lane, grazing the central reservation.

The animals were interesting; apart from the ubiquitous cattle, by the time we were out in the country (and of the worst of the smog), we were joined by camels, monkeys and on one occasion, a domestic elephant coming the wrong away up the inside lane.

There was a universal pit-stop half-way to Jaipur, which although by no stretch of the imagination a service station, was a place which seemed to be set out with tourist sensibilities in mind, especially toilets. Enterprising locals had nicked all the paper and were trying to flog it back to would-be users! S wanted only to spend a penny and thus infuriated the locals by refusing to make the necessary purchase. So much so that she subsequently gave a woman a 50 rupee note anyway, who then ran around high-fiving her palls and retired for the day!

We were glad to be on our way again…

After nearly five hours, we arrived in Jaipur, which was even noisier, busier, dirtier and manic than Delhi. A much older city, the centre of which preserved since the 1700’s, it was absolute bedlam – but utterly fantastic. The traffic was far worse than anything so far; unfathomable as to how anyone got anywhere without being ground to dust. After a long, hot journey, this was all getting a bit ‘intense’ for S and we were therefore deeply relieved to get to the amazing oasis that was our hotel; a stunning place.

To relieve the stress of the journey, S immediately went for some retail therapy in the underground min-mall and got a great bargain on three loose blouses at only ten times the price that she could have got them for in the market in Delhi yesterday.

Her revival in humour was only slightly tempered by realising that she needed the card key for our room to work the lift from the lower floors – just after the doors had closed on her. Too bashful to push the ‘help’ button, she went for several unrequested rides before finally escaping into the basement and finding her way back to our room via the stairs.

Over dinner that night, we considered that on the whole, it had been a wise choice not to drive ourselves here!