My travel piece for the Guardian on driving on the empty Yamuna Expressway to Agra. They hacked off the end, which is a shame, so am pasting the full version here: A few weeks ago, I decided to take my family to see the Taj Mahal, and asked Ajay, a Delhi driver who ferries around journalists, which of the two routes he’d recommend – the old Grand Trunk Road or the new Yamuna Expressway. Ajay warned me against the latter. “Too many fatalities,” he said, with a haunted expression. Another driver agreed: “Cars are always turning turtle.” I’ve been living in India long enough to know that “turning turtle” is local jargon for rolling a vehicle. I’ve also learned (the hard way) not to take advice regarding the conditions of roads and distances at face value. Further probing revealed that neither driver had actually travelled on the phantom route; they were merely repeating hearsay. How, then, in a country that leads the world in road fatalities – with more than a million killed in the past ten years – could a superhighway have earned such a fearsome reputation amongst drivers who consider Delhi’s anarchic traffic conditions to be normal? Setting off across the Yamuna River and on past the satellite city of Noida with its gleaming call centres and apartment blocks rising abruptly from the surrounding farmland, I was soon more baffled still. The two billion dollar Expressway, which opened in 2012 reducing the driving time from Delhi to Agra by up to four hours, appeared like an alluring mirage: three pothole-free lanes on either side, clearly marked and stretching off, straight and uninterrupted, into the hazy distance. More surreal still: it was almost completely – empty. The usual lopsided Bedford trucks, bullock carts, auto rickshaws, slaloming hatchbacks and swarms of kamikaze “scooters”, which infest every highway I have ever travelled on in India, were conspicuous by their absence. There were no herds of goats forcing us to break abruptly, no mangled Pye-dogs, no villagers drying red chillies in the left-hand lane. We didn’t even encounter a single jugaad, a type of homemade vehicle with a lawn chair for a seat, coming straight at us in the wrong direction. There were also signs – large, legible signs – urging drivers to “Always Overtake On Right”. It hardly seemed possible that we were still in India. And in a sense, we weren’t – at least not the India of the majority. Barbed wire fencing along the entire 102-mile route ensured that the Expressway, like the country’s burgeoning middle class gated communities, kept India’s perennial maelstrom of detritus at bay. Soon, I was cruising at 80 mph and congratulating myself on breaking the subcontinental land speed record – until a BMW went rocketing past. Could this be the future of long distance motoring in India, I wondered? If the government’s propaganda is to believed then, yes, at least in part. 11,500 miles of “controlled access highway” are to be constructed by 2022. The country’s main humdrum highways, which comprise 2% of India’s roads yet carry 40% of the traffic, are due to be widened and improved as well. The only snag is that the National Highway Authority rarely delivers more than half its annual target and many road projects are already running years behind schedule. Meanwhile, vehicle sales are growing exponentially – the figure for November was 1,603,292 alone, up more than 5% on the month before. The likelihood is, therefore, that the main highways will remain hopelessly congested, while the new expressways go underused. Traffic volume on the Yamuna Expressway is roughly two thirds under capacity, according to the local development authority. The high toll preserves the route for the wealthiest of drivers. Our two-hour drive, which saw us passing a dozen cars with flat or blown out tyres (not to mention countless skid marks, some ending alarmingly at the foot of the divider), also went to prove that Ajay’s fears were well founded. Indian vehicles don’t have to pass any kind of road-worthy test and most are simply not up to travelling at a high constant, speed. That goes for the vast majority of drivers, too, the Indian driving test being about as challenging as reciting your ABC. Clearly, as well as new infrastructure, India’s driving culture will need an overhaul as well. Still, I have tried since returning from Agra to persuade Ajay that the Expressway is the best road in India, yet feel certain that he will continue to opt for the old route, regardless of who’s paying the toll. The journey will take him up to four hours longer. He will swerve and break constantly to avoid oncoming buses and holy cows. He will pass many a crushed car lying in the ditch. But the familiarity of it will make him feel much, much safer.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 07:38:14 +0000
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