Indian Road Trip

Panchgani slowly disappears into the rearview. The Hindi radio station drops a road trip beat in the background and the Sumo creeps down the mountain announcing our descent by horn. With dusk an hour off, we’ve captured my favorite time to drive to a new destination. The Maharashtran sunset serenading a soundtrack for our evening expedition.

For the first two months of my time in India I’ve spent most of my weeks in Panchgani, a small hill station in the Deccan. Even there, I’ve taken most of my days at Asia Plateau, the conference centre that hosts AfL. But with a month of the program behind us, the time had full come for some serious time away from the mountain. I couldn’t be more ready for a road trip.

It would be hard to describe to you my sense of freedom, flying down the hill towards the valley. A full release that only the road can offer. I chat with my friend Nigel as we survey the countryside. Smoke from the sheathed sugar cane stalks, burning in the fields rises skyward. A pack of goats bob along the road in front of their goatherd. We speed by a man on a bicycle stacked with gas cylinders. A group of men swap stories in the paan shop. Children grip their mother’s hands tightly amidst the confusion of the Indian traffic system on the way to the highway from the provencial town of Wai.

We stop at a toll booth and attract the attention of a number of hawkers in the queue. Grilled corn, dried nuts and fruits, even mango and cucumber spiced with masala. Its available. Despite the tempting treats, we pay a toll and steam on, The interstate allows us to increase speed and we bolt north to the metropolis. Pune, our destination, boasts almost 4 million in population and is one of the fastest growing cities in India. Unlike Bangalore, one of its main competitors in the south, Pune’s leadership has developed the 7th biggest city in the country into a crowded but fairly well run boomtown.
Night falls and we make a switch just on the outskirts of our city. My aforementioned guru, Prabhakar trades his carload of people into our truck. He will head off to see his family while we head in to meet some friends in town. Unsurprisingly, the exchange takes longer than usual, but we manage and pile in, now an India-comfortable nine of us in the truck. Passing the outer neighborhoods, we begin our circle along the south border of the city and eventually trade the dry flats of the country for the tall trees of Aundh, a well-established neighborhood on West side.

Patting our friendly driver Pradeep on the back, we ascend the steps of the non-descript apartment building. The night air cool and noticeably crisp for the packed city. Noise begins to fill it. We’ve arrived for the Diwali festival. The Hindu festival of lights. Fricrackers shatter the silence and fireworks shower the sky in color. A month removed from the spectacle of Ganpati, India still swaggers in the festival season. Up the stairs our friendly host welcomes us in. A giant hot pot of chicken biryani waits to fill our hungry stomach. We sit down to commence our feast and welcome in the first night of our week in the city.