...Don't tell my grandma

My grandma would definitely not like to hear about this part of my trip... but I'm going to write about it anyways, because yesterday was insane!!!

I've been in several countries with infamously bad drivers, including Mexico, Russia and China (let's face it, everywhere has bad drivers) , but my taxi driver yesterday was the worst, hands-down! I'm a fairly intrepid passenger (I'm trying to cultivate nerves of steel), but yesterday was the first time I've been scared. You know when you're watching a scary movie and something jumps onto the screen that makes your whole body icy cold and your hair stand up on end? Yeah, I felt like that the whole time I was in the car with him. Our taxi driver liked to drive fast - as in, twice the speed limit. Can't blame him, I would drive fast too if it meant getting rid of passengers sooner. He also liked to pass other cars - fair enough, semi trucks are the worst to get stuck behind. But passing on blind, hairpin turns with zero visibility, going double the speed limit on a narrow road through a steep canyon, with one lane of heavy traffic each direction? No shoulder to pull onto, and no bailout plan... see the problem?

Mom and I both asked him to slow down after the first near head-on collision. After the second (within inches of a high-speed wreck) we were both obviously upset and asked him to stop passing on blind corners. Instead, he increased his speed and was driving even worse, just to piss us off. After the third time he recklessly passed on a blind curve and brought us within inches of a head-on collision with a truck, I was done. I told him he was being dangerous, yelled at him to stop, and pounded on the back of the seat when he ignored me. He finally stopped, and we jumped out and started hiking happily down the busy canyon road. We got a ride with a truck full of nice young men who took us to the next bus station, and we traveled in peace for the rest of our 3-hour trip.

Looking back, I thought it was strange that I'd yelled at the driver to make him stop and let us out in the middle of rural India (we had asked nicely several times for him to slow down), and I was surprised that I'd had such a strong reaction to his driving, since just minutes before I had been telling mom that we have to let go of having control because the drivers here are used to this and know what they're doing. Now, other drivers haven't bothered me. I wasn't the least bit concerned when one driver took us on a one-way street through oncoming lanes of traffic, and I wasn't stressed by other drivers who were within inches of cows, pedestrians, and trucks. But the ride yesterday made me extremely upset, and I'm glad we got out. I try to follow my intuition carefully when I'm traveling, and I'm absolutely convinced that my story would not have ended well, or perhaps would not have been written, if I hadn't gotten out of his taxi. I'm glad for intuition to know when to say "enough is enough."

Crazy Indian drivers.