Echolocation

 We left Delhi the next day and flew to Guwahati.  The flight was unremarkable.  It was timely and the service from the government funded Indigo Air was exceptional for a small airline.

Mark keeping watch of our luggage.

Guwahati airport is more like a third-world airport should be.  There is cracked plaster, water damage, quite a surprising number of army guards carrying semi-automatic weapons, and a wide array of traditional and contemporary dress.  After some (you guessed it) food, we waited for our transport to arrive.  There isn’t a lot to do in this airport.  No wi-fi, no Starbucks, no…..well, not a lot of anything.  Traditional tea booths and a shop selling yards and yards of the traditional silk fabric used here for dresses.  Lovely stuff.

A clear view of the road is not really needed for driving in India.

Our transport arrived.  It is what we would call either a large van or a small bus.  It’s kind of the Indian equivalent of an airport shuttle.  As you can see, on this one the luggage is on the roof and held in place by rope and faith.  You may also be able to see that keeping a clean line of sight through the windshield is optional.  In fact, it’s absolutely fine to tape any flora or fauna that you happen to be worshipping today right in the line of sight.  That way you can concentrate on that instead of the task of driving.  But that’s OK.  Driving is not done by sight.  It is done by sonar.  I’ll get back to that later.

The road is crowded with everything from full size trucks to bicycles to three-wheeled taxi’s to common passenger cars and carts pulled by hand or water buffalo.  Add to this a few thousand pedestrians, many with large parcels of straw or bamboo tied to their back, along with a few mystics and gurus panhandling, and you get an idea of the crowding on India’s roads.  The lanes are reversed here so you drive on the left side of the road. 

Mostly.  Actually, what you do is drive on the left until you feel like you can go faster than whatever is in front of you.  Then you begin weaving back and forth while honking your horn constantly.  This is where sonar comes in.  Relying on that same technology that bats and submarines do, the driver listens for an echo to his horn and if he hears none, he swerves fully into the oncoming lane and guns the motor.  At the last possible minute, when he hears an echo from an oncoming vehicle, he swerves back into the left hand lane, narrowly avoiding the vehicle he just passed.  A narrow miss is still a miss, nonetheless.

The drivers view.  Note the writing on the back of the truck.

Well, maybe that isn’t exactly how it works, but it is certainly the impression one gets.  It is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.  After a while there becomes a sort of rhythm to it.  You begin to notice that it is like a large dance floor at a fine West Texas country-western bar frequented by gifted two-steppers.  They swirl around their girls and scoot their boots and it all becomes a glorious bit of coordinated chaos with not one unintended touch of someone else’s partner.  The Indian traffic madness is like that only with less beer and even more polyester.

Finally it turns dark enough that it seems the driver really is operating by sonar.  There is no way to see the bicycles and water buffalo who, it seems, are not equipped with reflectors for some reason.  Oh well.  The dark makes it easier not to panic.

We finally arrive in Tezpur.  The hotel is nice and dinner is in about 30 minutes.  The greatest relief is that we are now actually where we need to be to do the mission.  These recent posts may have been interesting and all, but they are too much of a travelogue and not what I was sent here to do.  I’m really looking forward to getting to interact with the people of this country and share with them.  I believe they have a lot to teach me.

Tomorrow is Sunday here and we’ll be attending church services with local believers an doing some additional training for the medical mission of the coming week.