It never ceases to amaze me how taxi drivers in Mumbai have absolutely no idea where they're going. I realise that I was probably spoilt to death in London; being able to leap into a black cab and declare a relatively obscure destination with a cry of 'Tally Ho' and a wave of my less than manicured hand is definitely one of the things I miss most about home.
The amount of times I've got into a cab in Mumbai and the driver has known where to take me is definitely in single digits. Before you even think it, it's not the language barrier. Most of the significant places in this City are still referred to by their English names, post-Colonial renaming or no renaming. Plus I can parrot a formidable Hindi accent by which to pronounce them.
An average journey generally goes something like this:
- I approach the cab, state my destination and ask if he knows where that is.
- He nods, I get in and then we spend the first ten minutes driving around till we find someone who actually knows where it is.
- We drive around at high speed along a myriad of back roads until I've completely lost my bearings (as you can all attest with my sense of direction this doesn't take much).
- He then asks me for directions and I have to resist the urge to cry or beat him over the head with my Blackberry.
Anyway, when sharing this frustrating discovery with a fellow expat she calmly confirmed that it's true; the taxi drivers don't have a bloody clue where anything remotely useful is. She then imparted a pearl of wisdom, in fact it was more like a nugget of pure gold, that I have clung to ever since.
You have to give the driver's landmarks. Eureka!
And this is what I've been doing ever since. The only problem is, is that I then need to rely on my own appalling sense of direction to journey from said landmark to the real destination. I think this could finally be the moment I crumble to peer pressure and purchase an iPhone simply for its relatively infallible GPS system.
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