In India, you do not simply rent a car - that is far too dangerous. You rent a car, which comes with a driver. For this trip, we've had the same driver every day named Minoj, who has been great at getting us where we need to go at our convenience. He is always cheerful, and glad to chat about the differences between India and Canada. As you may recall, he even served as a guide\translator for us at the chaotic Laxmi Road.
Little did we know how good we had it.
For whatever reason, he couldn't drive for us on Thursday, so his company sent us a replacement. This guy was very new, and didn't speak a word of English. Nothing one could hold against him, for sure, but this turned out to be our undoing.
We were sailing merrily along to the office. I was reading the local newspaper, trying to get insight into what makes Pune tick, when Mike asks me, 'Don't we usually go right at this intersection? [instead of left, as we had.] Now, my sense of direction is equivalent to that of a drunk earthworm, so I wasn't sure, but soon it was undeniable - we were lost.
Panic set in. Our driver had no clue where he was. We had no way of telling him he was lost. In a fit of good thinking, Mike called the receptionist at Wesley Clover and got her to translate into Hindi some directions. But the damage was done...we were way off track. We spent the next half an hour pulling over and asking everyone on the street if they knew the way to the neighbourhood. They all kindly gave directions, but to be honest, I think half of them were just making stuff up. We drove in circles as our driver got more frustrated, calling people on his cell phone to bail him out. At one point he is doing so as he pulled over to ask yet another person for help. A police officer. Out comes the ticket-book - driving and talking on a mobile is a no-no the officer kindly explained to us. Our driver attempts a bribe - standard practice - but it appears he gets the ticket regardless. Officer still took his money, and to his credit, gave us the correct directions.
As luck would have it, we were only five minutes from the office, although somehow we managed to go all the way around and came at it from the opposite side of the city. Needless to say, we were very happy to see familiar ground and not a little late!
The driver clearly spent all day memorizing the way back to the hotel, and that night, we had no issue. But that didn't stop us for being very glad to see Minoj this morning. Never leave us again!
Little did we know how good we had it.
For whatever reason, he couldn't drive for us on Thursday, so his company sent us a replacement. This guy was very new, and didn't speak a word of English. Nothing one could hold against him, for sure, but this turned out to be our undoing.
We were sailing merrily along to the office. I was reading the local newspaper, trying to get insight into what makes Pune tick, when Mike asks me, 'Don't we usually go right at this intersection? [instead of left, as we had.] Now, my sense of direction is equivalent to that of a drunk earthworm, so I wasn't sure, but soon it was undeniable - we were lost.
Panic set in. Our driver had no clue where he was. We had no way of telling him he was lost. In a fit of good thinking, Mike called the receptionist at Wesley Clover and got her to translate into Hindi some directions. But the damage was done...we were way off track. We spent the next half an hour pulling over and asking everyone on the street if they knew the way to the neighbourhood. They all kindly gave directions, but to be honest, I think half of them were just making stuff up. We drove in circles as our driver got more frustrated, calling people on his cell phone to bail him out. At one point he is doing so as he pulled over to ask yet another person for help. A police officer. Out comes the ticket-book - driving and talking on a mobile is a no-no the officer kindly explained to us. Our driver attempts a bribe - standard practice - but it appears he gets the ticket regardless. Officer still took his money, and to his credit, gave us the correct directions.
As luck would have it, we were only five minutes from the office, although somehow we managed to go all the way around and came at it from the opposite side of the city. Needless to say, we were very happy to see familiar ground and not a little late!
The driver clearly spent all day memorizing the way back to the hotel, and that night, we had no issue. But that didn't stop us for being very glad to see Minoj this morning. Never leave us again!
No comments:
Post a Comment