July 29, 2011 was my first day in India. Hopefully, it will be the worst.
We spent a total of about 17 hours on both of the plane rides combined. That wasn’t fun. When we got to the airport, we had arranged for a driver to pick us up and drive us to Mussourri, where Woodstock is located. My dad told me to time the trip for fun, to see how long it really was. Basically, our driver was clueless. He started asking us directions right after we got out of the airport. Now, how many of you can navigate through India? Well, we can’t (at least, not yet). To top things off, a huge festival was going on. The main road was closed so that the people could walk to the Gahngii River. For the festival, they would collect water from the river and take it home. Of course this year would be the year with the most participants ever recorded. So, we took back roads, and got lost a couple times. I slept almost the whole time. When I woke up, we were entering Mussourri. On one of the twisting and turning mountain roads, we were coming around a turn in the left lane on the outside (remember, in India they drive on the left side), when another car came flying around at the same time. He was taking his turn way too wide. A crash was unavoidable. Our driver swerved, and the other car hit the back right corner of our car. Luckily, our car was only scratched. The other guy wasn’t so lucky. Our driver pulled over, and after a lot of arguing, we finally got back on our way. That was Crash #1. For Crash #2, we were driving through the very narrow, almost one lane roads in the bazaar (he bazaar is a bunch of shops selling anything and everything). Another car was coming the other way, so our driver had to back up. Suddenly, we heard the most horrible crunching noise. We had hit another car. The other car’s driver got out and hit our driver in the face. Our driver stayed calm and told him that he would come back after he delivered us to the hotel. I don’t know what happened to him.
Overall, we spent 12 hours, 22 minutes in the car. It was supposed to be a 7-8 hour drive.
