Mussoorie Mall and Driving
When you think of malls in India today, you are justified in thinking of large, indoors, air-conditioned, international caliber stores. The Mall in Mussoorie is outdoors with stores lined on one side of a road, which is appropriately called the Mall Road, for a portion and then on both sides towards the end.
As with many places in the great motherland, the space is small. It is also very crowded in the evening. I made the decision to drive through on the Mall Road since I was on my way to Dhanaulti and I needed to get there at a decent hour. I knew it would take longer but I wanted to see The Mall since I hadn’t stopped yet.
Well, it wasn’t too bad for more than 2 kms of the 3 to 3.5 kms total. Yes, there were a lot of people but you go slow, you honk (because people cannot see your car until they hear your car, and this is true everywhere in India), and you get through. Then came the fun part. The road turns very narrow towards the end, narrow enough to barely have one Honda City pass through. For my American friends, the Honda City is equivalent in width to the Accord in the US with length being in between the Accord and the Civic.
Of course, there is no such thing as a one-way road! Cars can and do go on both sides. So we ran into small, medium sized and large vehicles. When I say medium, I mean cars like mine. When I say large, I mean SUVs and…………..mini buses!!! Yes, that’s right – not only were SUVs going through but also mini buses!
We were lucky because we were at the very front of the whole jam that happened. A gentleman from the car behind me was kind enough to get out and act as the traffic cop (since there weren’t any). It took manuevering by us, by the SUV, and the mini bus back and forth, within two inches of the stores on the left and the cars on the right, before we passed. The whole affair took about 15 minutes to go about 50 to 75 feet. How the rest of them managed, with the SUVs and buses, I have no idea!
It was good that I didn’t get stuck on the Mall Road for too long. I had managed to get half way to Dhanaulti when the fog started coming in quite thick. More on that in my next post.
