Driving (or not)

You don’t drive yourself around in India as an expat. Many of the Indians don’t drive themselves, either. The traffic is horrendous, parking is impossible. One of my colleagues drives with his sideview mirrors tucked in. Cars don’t respect your “personal space” here. Plus, the rules of driving here are like a dance, where the initiated seem to know just how close they can get to another car before quickly veering off. I don’t know the steps. But not driving yourself is a real inconvenience, too. Our driver lives in New Delhi, but his wife and children are in the far north. So occasionally he goes back home for a week, and we are driver-less. When we do have a driver, I feel responsible if we have kept him “busy” for too many hours….but our own schedules are hectic, and sometimes that happens. In general, I just don’t like that level of “dependency” - - I am accustomed to jumping in the van and going where I need to, when I need to; and if a particular shopping trip ends up taking 3 hours instead of 1, we aren’t accountable to anyone else...