“When everything’s coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.” (Unless you’re in India.)

“In India, you don’t drive on the left of the road, you drive on what is left on the road.”

Driving in India is like a colorful parade or a circus (more like a circus).

Almost every kind of vehicle decorates itself in some way. Tractors have strings of marigold flowers. Trucks typically have an explosion of colors, patterns, designs and slogans wishing well for both driver and cargo.

The only type of vehicle that does not decorate itself (nor even wash itself) is, of course, the almighty and all crazy… bus.

Buses in India are driven by people who clearly subscribe to the theory of reincarnation and the idea that, well, if it doesn’t work out in this life… I’ll just figure it out in the next life.

I would like to read the mind of an Indian bus driver (not for too long) to learn how what his idea of a “road” is. I think it would be something like this…

“Road” is a vast, wide-open space (with some annoying, small and slow moving objects that occasionally get in my way (ie trucks, cars and tuk tuks)) that enables me to deliver large quantities of petrified people to arbitrary locations on a daily basis.

Eric likes to think of the vehicles on the roads of India as dinosaurs.

Bus is Tyrannosaurus Rex    (the undisputed king of dinosaurs)

Truck is Stegosaurus    (they kind of lumber along and, apparently, Stegosaurus used to supplement its diet by eating rocks, which makes sense)

SUVs are Velociraptors    (quick, darting and vicious)

Tuk tuks… well, to be honest you don’t see many tuk tuks on the open roads of India.

Now that we have horn back, we are more like a yapping little Chihuahua, than any kind of dinosaur.

We beep at every possible opportunity to make sure the lumbering dinosaurs of the road see us. When they do, they typically look down at us with either the immense annoyance of a big dog looking down at a yapping Chihuahua or… “What the heck is that…?”

Throughout our journey, we keep randomly running into one of the other teams of Rickshaw Runners. Their name, and it’s up to you to interpret what it means (I certainly don’t know), is… “Dumb for Good”.

We first ran into “Dumb for Good” at the Ellora Caves (which are a series of Buddhist and Hindu temples that were carved (by hand) into the side of a mountain over hundreds of years (see below)).

The “leader” of “Dumb for Good” is a 50 year-old dude from southern California (definitely a surfer) who wears flowing white clothes. His sidekicks are 2 guys in their early 20s (who we think are the sons of one of his friends).

When Eric spoke to said leader of “Dumb for Good” at the Ellora Caves, they compared notes on various things…

Eric: “How fast do you guys usually go?”

Dude: “I don’t know, man. I just listen for the hum of the engine.”

Eric: “Have you had any interesting experiences?”

Dude: “Yeah. Yeah. We were driving at high speed and there was a 2 ½ foot gap in the road. Man, we thought we thought we were goners for sure, but we cleared it. Pretty scary…”

Eric: “Which route have you taken?”

Dude: “Well… Initially, we just had a compass, but then we realized we probably needed a map.”

A compass???!!!

They were trying to navigate 3,000 kilometers of India in a tuk tuk with nothing but the sun and a compass!!!!

That’s outrageous!!!!

If you look at a map of India, it looks a giant plate of spaghetti the size of… India!!

The second encounter with “Dumb for Good” was 2 days later at the Gol Gumbaz mosque (whose giant dome is only 5 meters smaller than St. Peters in Rome and which was, at one time in history, the largest building in the world (see below)).

Eric saw one of them near their tuk tuk, “Hey, man. How are you?”

He looked at Eric, confused, “Do I know you?”

“Um… Yeah. We saw each other two days ago at the Ellora Caves…”

I hope they make it.