Driving in India has also been equally exciting and much more different than driving in the US. While US driving is more of a defensive one, we really cannot get to our destination on time by being defensive in India! 🙂
Indian roads are marked by multitude of vehicles like the autos, bikes, cars, buses, bicycles, huge trucks and luxury buses and other slow moving vehicles vying for space in the small area. One has to be alert at all times while driving in India – driving on the wrong side of the road(!) is fairly common ,so are multiple vehicles trying to flip a ‘U’ turn. It is also fairly common to see innocent pedestrians trying to cross the road at all times on all roadways!!
Variety of horn sounds are heard, tempers are always rising and it is always a miracle for outsiders to figure out how we move around! 🙂 In addition, there are myriad other things happening on the road which will keep you totally glued to the road and its intricacies.
To add to all this, the manual transmission vehicle is the standard vehicle of conveyance(though more automatic transmission vehicles are flooding the market these days) Driving through all the snail pace of traffic by constantly pressing the clutch and gear is an adventure in itself!! (which many do enjoy, but not me!! :()
Driving on highways in India!
Highway driving in India is fairly comparable to driving in the US – but with subtle differences.Good speeds can be achieved with many vehicles zipping close to 120 kmph. The only major difference in India is the appearance of small towns and villages dotting the highways.
At any point of time, when the highways do cross small towns and villages, we can see pedestrians crossing the highways and this is blasphemous from a Western standpoint(but totally normal here! :))
In spite of the numerous differences in driving between India and US and driving in India seems a bit more cumbersome than the organized US traffic, it still is a pleasure to sit behind the wheel and explore new Indian destinations!
Sanjeevani!! 
Lol driving in India is as natural as breathing, but for an Englishman, the first time on the roads here feel like being thrown into a real-life version of Mario Kart.
However for all the pandemonium and random swerving, the roads are a kind of orchestrated bedlam, like a balletic drunken dance. Everyone is roughly on the same page and everyone drives the same way, so most are prepared for every hazard – even when that hazard is several pedestrians appearing on the expressway, or a lorry deciding to pull into your ‘lane’ as you overtake it, or a herd of cattle casually wandering into your path. It’s like a war zone out there 😀
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Yup – it is a war zone – but some of the people wouldn’t trade it for the organized traffic elsewhere in the world…and even I wouldn’t!! 🙂
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Maybe it’s different in India, but in Pakistan driving is pretty relaxed- nobody enforces any rules!
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