The joy of driving
15-September-2021I started driving 4-wheelers for the first time around 20 years ago. First with the Maruti Omni which my parents had and then later on when I purchased my first car, a Maruti WagonR in 2006. That cars is still with me and has done close to 95,000 kms and is going strong. It appears ready for another 50k at least. I find the activity of driving a 4-wheeler really enjoyable. I am not an expert driver and nor do I drive particularly fast. I drive at a sedate pace and I enjoy every kilometre.
I have driven around 150k kms since then. As I have grown old my driving style has changed. In my younger days, I used to look at the roads as a competition and tried to either go faster than the other vehicles or squeeze into the last available lane at the traffic signals. Now days I am much more relaxed and I find driving much less stressful.
I read a very good advice on the website Team-BHP. It said that when one is driving, one should keep one’s ego in check and control. Irrespective of how fast you go or how slow you go, the net difference in the time that one takes to reach from point A to point B is very small. I have checked this practically. I and a colleague were visiting a nearby tourist spot. I was in my WagonR and he had his new Verna. As expected, I was not able to keep up on the highways. I used to catch up at the tolls though. Overall, in the 80 kms drive the time difference between our cars was around 10 mins. (140 mins vs 130 mins).
Thank you for writing about your love for driving. I too love driving and have been driving for more than 30 year.
As per your experience, which state has the best roads for driving?