Greetings from the authors - Put together winding roads on high cliffs, blue sea below, bright sunshine, and cool hill station weather, and what do you get? Dunedin, South Island, New Zealand.
Why We Drive (continued)
Yes, we have good reasons:
- Having our own car gives us great flexibility and freedom. We don’t have to wait for a bus or train. We can start when we are ready, move on when we like, and get back home when we are tired.
- In many places, especially in the remote countryside where we often find the most beautiful sights, there is usually no other transport, except maybe two buses a day. If we didn’t have a car, we would never go there.
- We have a huge capacity to carry various stuff and, hence, we don’t have to pack and unpack much. Shoes go into one jute bag, unused provisions into another, a third one is for dirty clothes, and so on. All the bags are dumped into the car any which way. We spend time on detailed packing only when we are about to drop off the car.
- Only a car can get us, conveniently, to many of the lovely houses which we rent.
Where To Stay
Wherever possible, we stay in houses/ apartments and not hotels. Most hotel rooms are cramped, with little space to move around and barely one chair to sit at your laptop. We use Airbnbs. An apartment, even a compact studio one, has much more space than a hotel would give us. Usually, we get a 1BHK – enough for comfort and freedom. My wife Jan handles the difficult task of choosing where to stay. Two decisions have to be made:
- location
- specific property
For choosing the location, she uses the ‘hub and spoke’ model. A ‘hub’ is a central location, approximately in the middle of a geographical area, say, far north in Scotland. The ‘spokes’ are day trips in different directions. Yes, you got it. We book accommodation at a ‘hub’ for three or four nights, reach there one evening, spread our stuff out, get used to the place, stock groceries, connect the WiFi and Netflix, and settle down.
The next few days, we travel in a different direction every day, a maximum of 100km to 200km a day, to take in the sights.
This map (based at Ambleside) will illustrate the concept.
Over time, we have found that three to four nights is the optimum duration for staying at any one place. This avoids too frequent moves, and gives us adequate time to see everything there is to see.
Oh yes, finding out what there is to see is a research project by itself, at which Jan is now a master. She finds great places to check out, and guides us there.
My job is to drive the car. And, of course, enjoy!!!
Left-hand Drive Jitters
Relax, there aren’t any. Left-hand drive takes just 10 minutes to get used to. The only problem I keep having is that I hit the wiper control, instead of the signal control, if I am not careful. But, if you are used to a European car, such as VW, the signal is on the left, even in Indian models, and so you won’t have that issue either.
It is not difficult to drive in a strange country, or on the 'wrong' side of the road. Apart from the madhouse traffic in some cities, such as Rome, people drive carefully and follow all the rules. Besides, the traffic is usually quite thin in the countryside.
Hiring a Car
We have reached the firm conclusion that, despite being a little more expensive, big international car rental companies, such as Hertz, Avis or Thrifty, are our best choice, because:
- They have only new, or near-new, cars which are totally reliable. Smaller companies might charge you less, but you will probably get a 5+-year-old car with more than 100K (thousand) km on the clock. If your car breaks down, you are in a soup.
- Help on the road is easier to get from the big boys. We have had occasional tyre problems. One time, a wheel fell into a deep rut with sharp sides, and the sidewall of the tyre had a deep cut. Though we were on a remote road deep inside Spain’s Andalusia area, Hertz organised a repair van. Within an hour, we were at a garage where the tyre was replaced and we were back on the road. Basically, you need a totally reliable car-provider.
Choosing a Car
Since there’s just the two of us, we pick the smallest car we can find because:
- In remote areas, the roads are narrow and huge trucks abound, so small is good.
- Petrol is expensive almost everywhere, and a good mileage helps.
- Parking in tight spots is much easier.
I always prefer an automatic because it is so much easier to drive, especially on hills and in tight places, because you can concentrate fully on the road instead of battling with clutch and gear.
Car Hiring Paperwork
No, you don’t need an international driving licence. Your normal Indian licence is just fine. Car rental companies just want a licence written in English. Yes, you do need a credit card in your name. A word of caution: If you swipe your Indian credit card at a car rental POS machine, your bank people will call you on your Indian number to verify. If you are using a local SIM card, you won’t get the call, and your transaction will be declined. You need to retain your Indian SIM card in your phone and get ‘international roaming’ so that you can receive the verification call.
Insurance
Two 'must have' types of insurance:
- Health insurance from any Indian insurance company. We always take a good amount of insurance. Fortunately, we have never had to use the policies, but... And no, they don’t cost a bomb.
- Maximum insurance on the rented car, especially the 'personal liability' bit. Heaven forbid, if you do have a bad accident the cost amount can be open-ended. So, we just limit the risk as much as possible.
(To be continued...)
(Jan and Amitabha Banerjee are retired bankers living in Kolkata. They travel the world in their golden years and write about their journeys in their personal travel blog.)
