On the road to Kasauli .... tea and bfast

After a few minor “near misses” we pull over for a cup of tea. There are side road tea shops all over India. There are even some that you can drive through. They are not like the places where you pull up to a window and order. Rather you pull over on the side of the road and there is a man with a stand selling tea. These tea sellers are mostly from south India in Kerala. They sell tea in so many places in India and around the world that there is no place that someone has gone that there is not a tea seller from Kerala there first. It is said that Neil Armstrong could not have been the first man on the moon because there must have been Indian man from Kerala there first to sell him tea. 

In this story, we pull off the road at a petro station and go into a breakfast / tea shop and have our tea. The Indians call it chai. It is nearly always about 3-4 ounces, in a small paper cup, very sweet and milky. There are exceptions but most Indians have their tea this way. We enjoy a cup of tea and head out to Kasauli. We get stuck in little traffic in one of the tri-cities called Chandigarh. What this really means is that we come into some traffic lights where we actually have to stop and wait instead of just slow down and keep going at an intersection. Chandigarh has nice roads with modern traffic lights that give you the exact seconds you have to wait. It is the right of all motor bikes, auto rickshaws and bicycles to get in front of cars and busses so they can get out ahead of you. They are smaller and can maneuver their way to the front. From what I can tell, this may be their only right on Indian highways. Bigger and faster vehicles take most of the rest of the rights. Our schedule included a trip to a Pastor's house for breakfast and then to his church to hear him preach and then on to Kasauli. Because of the traffic or traffic lights we are late so we stop for breakfast on the way and then go right to church. We stop at a government restaurant. I ask my host what that means. My host explains government restaurants have standards that they follow… usually. I ask if that means it is better. Yes,….well maybe. I ask if it is better than a private restaurant. Yes it ... could be. I do not ask any more questions. I enjoy two sunny side up eggs (actually they are over easy which is really what I wanted but could not explain it) and some paratha (flat Indian bread) with curd (like yogurt). The breakfast is delicious and I am a fan of government restaurants. We get into the car and head to the church. On our way to the church, I notice some dark ominous clouds off in the distance on the horizon. As we get closer, what I thought were clouds form into peaks of mountains. We are nearing Kasauli. 

On the Road to Kasauli ... the Near Miss...

In 2004 I made my first trip to India. I flew from Singapore to Chennai. I overnighted at a decent hotel. I enjoyed an Indian meal of Tandoori Chicken and naan. This is an unusual order because Tandoori is a north Indian food and I was in South India. It was the only thing I knew on the menu to order. Until this trip, the best tandoori I ever had was not in India but in Malaysia. My family and I had a short vacation in the Cameroon highlands. It was there that North Indian cooks had tandoori ovens right on the street. Delicious!

 Anyway, I sleep great that night 

and got up the next day to head to another city. I was a bit worried when I got in the auto rickshaw to head to the airport. Maybe it was intuition or maybe I was just worried about my next flight. You can decide. About half way there, it happened. We were moving along at a decent pace and following a petrol truck. There was traffic all around us but hey this is India right? The driver was getting cut off by someone else and got distracted. The petrol truck stopped. At this point, you need to imagine a slow motion film. Imagine the driver slowly turning his head and seeing the situation. Pan the camera to the passenger and see the horror, fear, helplessness, hopelessness, a sickening grasp of life ending written all over his face. Imagine the driver slamming the breaks and the passenger seeing there is no way to avoid impact with a truck full of diesel. Eternity in heaven is upon us. Now comes the hard part for me to explain. We are still in slow motion here but it doesn't really help. Somehow at the last possible second the driver turns the wheel hard. It is just enough that he doesn't hit vehicles passing on the passenger’s side. There is a bug on the bumper of the petrol truck that has been squished to death but it is the only thing that dies in this story. Amazingly, it all goes down as a near miss. There is no contact with the truck at all. The passenger looks at the driver with awe, respect, and wonder. The passenger wonders if this man is a Hindu god worthy of worship. If you are an Indian native, you may say that it is impossible to think of a rickshaw driver as a god and not want to read any further. Please, bear with me. The driver has a look of boredom. He looks relaxed, calm, uninterested, and unconcerned. He doesn't even care! I can’t say for sure now but in my mind he yawned. The passenger still in wonder decides this man cannot be a god and this “near miss” must be a cultural norm. 

I speak to you in third person because it helps me tell just the facts without excessive drama and emotion. I am reminded of this on my trip to Kasauli because I am riding and experiencing them at a high frequency. Even within a short time of this writing we came around a hair pin turn with a bus in our lane coming the other way. The "near miss" is a regular occurrence in India. Of course my contextual cultural norm of "nearness" is not the same as others I am sure.  Next time we will get back to the road to Kasauli. I promise.