Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Driving in India

Google Maps said that the drive to the Bird Sanctuary would be about 3 hours.  That sounded okay, but long.  But 3 hours would be doable.  The first hour was spent on the road just outside our neighborhood as we tried to drive to the "highway" that would take us to our destination.  There was a huge jam, as they call it here.  We moved about a car length every 10 minutes.  People were getting out of buses and walking.  We wished we could too.

Once we made it to the "highway" we were set.  Not bad, but it certainly wasn't a 3 hour stretch of road.  Maybe with no other vehicle on the road we would have made it in 3 hours, but it was 5 for us.  The last hour was through villages as we tried to find the hotel.  Google maps gave us directions that didn't work for us.  We ended up down a street into a village that had a water buffalo in the middle of a pond.  Turn around.  Go back and try again.

We decided that on the return we would try to find the new, fancy express way from Agra to Delhi.  Google Maps said we could get on not far from where we were.  It was just 33KM away from us.  Those were the slowest 33KM that I think I have ever gone.  Well, most of it wasn't bad, but the 8KM of pot holes was horrible.  And then when we got to the end of the 8KM there was a man who told us to turn around and go back if we wanted to go to the Express Way.  Thanks again Google Maps.

So after finding the express way the trip was great.  We were amazed at how quickly we got to the end of it.  It took at least another hour to get from the express way to our home, but after the 8KM of doom we were thankful.  Calgon.... take me away!


Lesson learned - don't go by Google Maps in India!

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