India is a vast country and the distances are hard to grasp. We have a driver for a few days to take us between cities. Sohan is 58 years old and comes from the North of India, near the border with China. He comes to Delhi to work and returns home twice each year to visit his family. He takes very seriously, his responsibility to ensure our safety, wellbeing and general happiness. He is kind and conscientious. Unfortunately, he is a truly dreadful driver. He specialises in driving very slowly between lanes in a sort of zig zag manner.
Sohan has a good visual memory but cannot read maps. He also cant read anything in English so the helpful guide book is useless (and why should he read English? After all we can’t read much Urdu!) More of a challenge is that he struggles to understand or follow instructions. So when he speaks, he repeats the same information over and over again to check our understanding, his understanding and one more time for good luck. It is a killer combination. He is too generally nice to be annoyed with and too generally incompetent to be happy with. Gemma is constantly consulting Google Maps to find out where we are and where we should be going.
His style of driving quietly enrages Stuart and his repetitive chat takes tolerant Gemma to the very edge of reason. So there is a lot of smiling and nodding as everyone’s blood pressure rises. We have had to agree a rota of whose turn it is to sit beside him because it is too much for one person to endure.
He also takes our safety very seriously. We are assured that everyone in India is out to cheat us. Therefore we must speak to no-one, make no eye contact, see whatever we have to see quickly and come straight back to the car. It’s not quite the way we had planned to see India.
We have one memorable (for all the wrong reasons) 10 hour journey, in 42 degree heat, where he averages 23 miles an hour. He is regularly overtaken by tuktuks, rickshaws, bicycles and on one occasion, a camel. Stuart nicknames him Slowhan. He is the only car to stop in anticipation of a red light – the rest of the cars don’t even stop when there is an actual red light!
But he is always on time, always smiling, very honest and nothing is too much trouble. Every morning, the car is clean, polished and sparkling. It’s a classic example of how you the traveller, must adjust to the country and culture of where you are visiting. NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND, We’ll probably book him next time!
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