Whenever we used to travel around India, my dad used to rent a car or a van with a hired driver. We used to travel with a few of our relatives and we would all fit ourselves in 2 cars. It you can tolerate the traffic on Indian 2 lane highways (one lane in each [...]

Whenever we used to travel around India, my dad used to rent a car or a van with a hired driver. We used to travel with a few of our relatives and we would all fit ourselves in 2 cars. It you can tolerate the traffic on Indian 2 lane highways (one lane in each direction) going at 90-100 miles per hour, I don’t think you will ever need to go to Disneyland! That is how crazy the driving there is.

So there was this one incident where the driver was going at a speed of 90 miles an hour. There was a car in front of our car and a bus in front of the other car. There was a truck approaching from the opposite direction. I was sitting in the front seat watching and recording on video all this for posterity in case we die! Our driver decided to overtake the car and bus that was about to overtake the bus. The truck from the opposite direction was approaching fast and we had to overtake the bus and the car that was overtaking the bus. My wife, who is not Indian and was on her first trip to India was sitting at the back sweating looking at the unfolding drama. She was telling my parents to tell the driver to slow down and my parents consoled her by saying to look out the side window! She was hysterical. While this was going on, the driver had successfully overtaken the bus and the car and just made it in the nick of time before the truck from the opposite end approached us. Whew! That was a really really close one.

…continue reading Punjabi Chana Masala Dal (Lentil)