It still boggles my mind to think that people drive on the left side of the road. I am looking out my window and gazing at this as we speak. All part of a culture, I guess. Hey, people don’t complain in the United States that we actually begin writing a document on the left side, do they? I always had to marvel at the Arabs for writing from right to left, as if they wanted to reverse anything ever written by the west. For example I can write, “Pork is good”. The answer would then be “.t’nsi ti ,oN”, right? Driving on the left side takes some getting used to (so is writing from right to left), I admit, even though I have yet to drive here. Riding my bicycle is experiment enough.
I recall first driving on the left side in the Republic of Ireland in the fall of ’07. This was one of the few times in my life when I wished I didn’t have a stick shift. Now the vital right hand was actually compelled to do something as ludicrous as steer while the underemployed left hand was put to work, frantically assisting in adjusting the clutch over narrow and capricious country roads.
I took the rental car (a Volvo) for a spin one morning to inspect a battlefield of the late Anglo-Irish war in the early 20’s. I had read about this battle dozens of times, constantly recreating it in my mind while picturing the lush green rolling hills acting as witnesses to what would turn out to be an appalling day of bloodshed.
Somewhere along the way I flashed back to my notes and lost myself in the beautiful countryside, picturing the Irish guerrilla forces of 1920 scamper up the hills in plain view of the enemy. A duet of screeching rubber and honking horn quickly brought me back down to earth and County Cork, albeit the year 2007.
Intuitively, I had managed to slam on the brakes and now found myself face to face with a white Toyota. What the hell was the driver doing on the wrong side of the road? Maybe it’s true what they say about the Irish after all, being a shameless bunch of drunkards who will slam the first whiskey shot before even brushing their teeth. I can confirm this lady was freakishly sober when I approached her car to check on her. And of course she was driving on the correct side, which is the left. I mentally slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand as I addressed the terrified young lady who was clutching her chest as if she’d suffered a crippling asthma attack.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, trying to spin the event into something less than what it actually was, like two pedestrians bumping into each other instead of the two metal monsters that would have possibly reduced each other to scrap metal.
Her reply was a question, although each word was virtually a sentence.
“Just. What. Were. You. Doing. Driving. On. The. Right. Side. Of. The. Road?”
The Irish accent sounded even more charming from a voice so apparently shell-shocked.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just a tourist. I forgot where I was.”
The lady’s response was to gun the engine and head away from this tourist as quickly as possible. She couldn’t have escaped more quickly from an alien.
Flash forward to Nepal. The streets are at least as narrow, and drivers are not impeded by such pesky things as etiquette or even rules. Come to think of it, driving on the left side is considered the norm, and is not necessarily smart and final. Drivers will take liberties and use as much of the road as they can. If this entails expanding the lane (a term loosely applied here, since the Hindis will sell Mount Everest to the Chinese before discovering dividing lines), so be it. The result of such liberties translates into inadvertent but frequent games of chicken. The exception here is that if you are riding a bike while the other chicken is drawing a bead on your head with a motorcycle, you might want to swallow your pride and throw the game. Fine, you win. Call me chicken. I’ll make the name change legal the next morning.
My wife is not too shy to drive herself around this town, which is fine with me. However, as long as I actually pay a driver to take us wherever I want, I will pass on this experience. And oh, thanks Britain for the reminder that you were actually a colonial power of these parts. One question, though. Why did you stop there? Why aren’t people greeting each other with left hand shakes? I mean these are very leftist Maoists, aren’t they? I’m sure they would have appreciated the gesture. I am surprised you didn’t just whack the locals on their knuckles to ensure that they would write left-handed as well. Maybe you’d like to build a time machine, race back through the ages, and clone a few people with a few modifications. So the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body? Chuck it, I say. Tinker until left and left can be one. Who needs artists and politicians anyway, right?
This will be interesting how I make the re-adjustment once (and if) I manage to get back to the west.
I recall first driving on the left side in the Republic of Ireland in the fall of ’07. This was one of the few times in my life when I wished I didn’t have a stick shift. Now the vital right hand was actually compelled to do something as ludicrous as steer while the underemployed left hand was put to work, frantically assisting in adjusting the clutch over narrow and capricious country roads.
I took the rental car (a Volvo) for a spin one morning to inspect a battlefield of the late Anglo-Irish war in the early 20’s. I had read about this battle dozens of times, constantly recreating it in my mind while picturing the lush green rolling hills acting as witnesses to what would turn out to be an appalling day of bloodshed.
Somewhere along the way I flashed back to my notes and lost myself in the beautiful countryside, picturing the Irish guerrilla forces of 1920 scamper up the hills in plain view of the enemy. A duet of screeching rubber and honking horn quickly brought me back down to earth and County Cork, albeit the year 2007.
Intuitively, I had managed to slam on the brakes and now found myself face to face with a white Toyota. What the hell was the driver doing on the wrong side of the road? Maybe it’s true what they say about the Irish after all, being a shameless bunch of drunkards who will slam the first whiskey shot before even brushing their teeth. I can confirm this lady was freakishly sober when I approached her car to check on her. And of course she was driving on the correct side, which is the left. I mentally slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand as I addressed the terrified young lady who was clutching her chest as if she’d suffered a crippling asthma attack.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, trying to spin the event into something less than what it actually was, like two pedestrians bumping into each other instead of the two metal monsters that would have possibly reduced each other to scrap metal.
Her reply was a question, although each word was virtually a sentence.
“Just. What. Were. You. Doing. Driving. On. The. Right. Side. Of. The. Road?”
The Irish accent sounded even more charming from a voice so apparently shell-shocked.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just a tourist. I forgot where I was.”
The lady’s response was to gun the engine and head away from this tourist as quickly as possible. She couldn’t have escaped more quickly from an alien.
Flash forward to Nepal. The streets are at least as narrow, and drivers are not impeded by such pesky things as etiquette or even rules. Come to think of it, driving on the left side is considered the norm, and is not necessarily smart and final. Drivers will take liberties and use as much of the road as they can. If this entails expanding the lane (a term loosely applied here, since the Hindis will sell Mount Everest to the Chinese before discovering dividing lines), so be it. The result of such liberties translates into inadvertent but frequent games of chicken. The exception here is that if you are riding a bike while the other chicken is drawing a bead on your head with a motorcycle, you might want to swallow your pride and throw the game. Fine, you win. Call me chicken. I’ll make the name change legal the next morning.
My wife is not too shy to drive herself around this town, which is fine with me. However, as long as I actually pay a driver to take us wherever I want, I will pass on this experience. And oh, thanks Britain for the reminder that you were actually a colonial power of these parts. One question, though. Why did you stop there? Why aren’t people greeting each other with left hand shakes? I mean these are very leftist Maoists, aren’t they? I’m sure they would have appreciated the gesture. I am surprised you didn’t just whack the locals on their knuckles to ensure that they would write left-handed as well. Maybe you’d like to build a time machine, race back through the ages, and clone a few people with a few modifications. So the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body? Chuck it, I say. Tinker until left and left can be one. Who needs artists and politicians anyway, right?
This will be interesting how I make the re-adjustment once (and if) I manage to get back to the west.
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