Its so true when they say that Coorgs are one amongst the bravest races in the world. As you read along , you will know why! So, FPH (fake Paris Hilton)was also too busy to do any research or detailed planning for this trip! So Chengs and I decided that we should drive in Europe and decided Switzerland will be beautiful to drive, we could go to a cheese factory and play with some cows :-)! So Chengs said she would book the car! The only thing I asked her to check was if our Indian license would work and she said it would! So fast tracking to the day before we had to collect the car and Deeps notices that its all left hand driven cars here and we are like Oh shit , neither of us have ever tried that! But deeps is like since Chengi booked , she can drive ! Then I look at Deeps a bit scared and tell her Chengs doesnt know how to drive , she asks me what she booked and I say I have no clue, Deeps was checking if it was automatic or manual, none of which I had checked or Chengi had bothered to ask me (the driver )before booking! Chengs obviously thought if you know how to drive how does right hand or left hand drive, automatic or manual be an issue:-)! Ben , chengis friend gave us some tips and by then we knew she had booked manual so that helped since thats what we drive in India! We went to pick up the car and we saw two cars there , one looked like what the Internet booking showed us and the other was a beautiful black Volkswagen Tiguan SUV, Deeps wished Chengs had booked this ,instead of that! As soon as we went in they told us we got an upgrade to our beauty the Volkswagen! Super excitement at this point and a standard on the trip now is to remember that all the good things happening to us like clear weather,upgrading the car, making it on time to trains and buses, Krish is giving us! ( Krishna the Indian god , according to Deeps is upping everything for us). We got all our instructions, Deeps wanted them to open the bonnet , my dad insists on that , but to be honest I dont really know what we check for or why we look inside! My dad calls and gives us instructions , for Chengi, Deeps and me, he is already stressed , kept insisting we should go slow! So we start, Deeps decides to drive first, all of us have a bit of a fright, in reality we were risking our lives, but we trusted each other and said were in this together! It was so funny and we laughed like mentals coz Chengi sat at the back and was like a better motivator than Deepak Chopra or Robin Sharma ofcourse in her own style! She was so overly encouraging , that at some points she had a motivating word even for our GPS !Deepthi was asked just to drive, Chengi was going to see the boards for direction and I was going to tell Deeps to watch out for the right side coz she took a while to get the measures right and we only almost scratched a few mountains, sides of the tunnels, very rarely pedestrians on the footpath! We got cursed a lot of times coz we didnt maintain the speed limit because we were slow as deeps argument was Daddy said we should go slow , she took that too seriously in a country where we would be fined for blocking traffic because of slow speed . is that a word???we were all stressed out, it was raining , we were going up the mountain to grindelwald so very narrow roads, Deeps wants the Swiss govt to consider broadening the roads a bit, they can cut into the beauty but think about safety! She would like them to bring down the speed limit where its 100 to about 70! We were looking for interlaken on the sign boards first and we would keep seeing Ausfahrt and we even joked what kind of a place is this where everyone can fart or something silly like that! Its not even funny as I recall it now, however at that time these boards kept coming every few Kms , finally Deeps asks Chengi who knows German , which is this place that one can go to from everywhere and she tells us Ausfahrt means Exit ! Hahahhaah.,was so funny at that time discovering this! The fog was getting a bit much and deeps asked me to turn on the fog lights and I saw some sort of a sign and turned it on! In a few seconds, Deeps looked worried and asked me if Something is wrong with the car and said her seat has heated up and started yelling that the car is on fire and a lot of panic now but obviously we couldnt see any fire, I quickly turned off what I put on it was the drivers seat heater :-)! We passed by some gorgeous scenery, stunning views, saw a lot of lakes and wished we could stop and take a dip but The aim was to just reach in one piece also FPH said it would have been nice if the lakes were temperature controlled!! really Deeps? Chengi and Deeps Ive now noticed have a lot of wants like a lot of us but their wants are for supreme luxury ,something like the lake temperature example:-) they would need to and would love to marry a sheikh in their next life for some of these wants:-)! So we are brave coz we decided to try something in a foreign land , which is risky to life, one of the drivers had a right- left issue (if suddenly told take a right, this person would need to think for a few seconds:-) ,the feeling we went through was from stress, to great relief , to anger, frustration , trust and trust issues. Its like a feeling of panic when you have to present to your CEO and just at that time even after checking your presentation doesnt open or the projector goes crazy, or like a time when u have just lied to your parents and hoping they wont remember and ask that one question that will get you caught, the nervous feeling when you have to score to win during a tie in the basketball match and you have been given the last free throw! Well, at the end of the whole experience of driving Im glad we tried it , we loved it - unstructured to structured, hairpin bends, braving the rain, fighting the fog , extinguishing a possible fire , hearts in our mouths, clinging onto seats, the sudden forget full ness that we need to be on the right side and thinking that you are in the wrong lane when u see oncoming traffic and like Deeps said this was tougher than her summiting Everest base camp :-))))) Moral of this one : Coorgs are so brave, they take chances like this and what a chance Chengi took with us , driving ;-)
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 18:12:03 +0000
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