Traffic
Even to the initiated, travelling in India is nothing short of a full-on culture shock. Jostling for place amongst the trucks, buses and even the odd elephant, it’s one that can make your first few miles on the subcontinent feel more about survival than cycling. But in the midst of all this mayhem, the humble bicycle still holds a vital role in the Indian road web. Aside from hundreds of single speed Heros, offspring of the world’s biggest cycle manufacturer, utility bikes inch their way forwards through the capital's sea of traffic, beneath toppling payloads - furniture stacked up like a game of Jenga or a dozen schoolchildren squeezed in for the school run. Before cinema-style billboards proclaiming allegiances to the bike gods - Atlas, Hero and Raleigh - cycle rickshaw drivers lounge in the midday sun, hustling for customers. Theirs is a tough life; at night, they wrap their spoke thin bodies in shawls and make their rickshaws their home.
Manali to Leh
Things
are a considerably calmer in the mountains further north. The road between
Manali and Leh is an important strategic link so you'll still be sharing
it with the metal heavyweights, particularly on the first stretch to Keylong.
But relatively speaking, it’s quiet and what traffic there is tends to
come in spits and starts - truck convoys delivering goods to Leh, buses
making the two day journey and tourist jeeps bouncing along from one pass
to the next. Indian diesel and Himalayan dust being what they are, it’s
often best to pull over and let them rumble by, while landslides will
often create bottlenecks and empty a road for a day or so. Kindred two-wheel
spirits, piloting throaty Enfields - motorbikes largely unchanged since
colonial days - are also drawn to this epic road, particulalry posses
of Israeli backpackers, sun-drenched dreadlocks billowing in their wake
like windsocks.
Spiti
Spiti is a less important route so it sees almost no traffic at all, bar the occasional Tata, local dilapidated bus and the odd jeep. Chances are, the only traffic you’ll see is a tailback of mountain goats, while most of the hitchikers thumbing rides are burgundy-robed monks. The region between Tabo and Recompeo, close to the border with Tibet, remains a sensitive area with military trucks strutting their stuff. The closer to the hill station of Shimla you are, the busier it gets, unless you keep to the backroads where once again peace prevails…
I horn, therefore I am!
Forget the highway code. In India, Big is Boss. Undisputed heavyweight champions of the road and top of the Indian food chain, Tata trucks offer splashes of colour in the often ochre landscape of the high Himalaya, proudly adorned with racey paintjobs, fancy ornaments, catchy slogans (Real Love is Dangerous) and a dashboard crammed full of Vishnu shrines. Reincarnated Mercedes from the 1960s, Tatas need constant TLC and the sight of drivers half-engulfed beneath bonnets, brandishing hammers as they lovingly bash away to the soundtrack of the latest Bollywood hit, is all part and parcel of the Himalayan landscape. Truck stops are sparked to life every morning by the gunning of engines and a flurry of wake-up blasts of the horn. In fact, like a mobile phone ring, each seems almost unique to its driver from quick, ear bleeding staccato jabs to stereophonic trumpeting fanfares to melodic arpeggios. What’s more, Indians love the sound of their own horn. In fact, they’re so horn-happy it’s takes over the role of braking, with its own local dialect. A single blast: ‘Out of my way, weakling!’ A double blast: ‘I said, out of my way, puny one!’ A triple blast: ‘Fine. Say you’re prayers to Vishnu. Here I come!’ Followed by an audacious piece of overtaking timed to coincide with a blind bend, and a friendly wobble of a head leant out the window: ‘Jolly good sir, how are you this fine day?’ Like scenes from a spaghetti western, truck showdowns are all too common, along giddying strips of road the width of a country lane. Upturned machines lying far below like discarded toys are reminders of how precarious these roads can be.
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