Since the dance party cranked up across the hall at around 6:30am, I decided to watch some early morning news on my only morning in Bangalore. But my clicking stopped dead at the History channel.
“After three accidents in one day, [American Ice-Road Trucker X] decides to call it quits after his first day.”
“This is insane,” says X.
I’ve come in late, but from what I piece together the North American reality TV phenomenon “Ice-Road Truckers” has decided to (literally) take it on the road to pit their drivers against some of the world’s most dangerous roads. This episode is the start of their India attempt: because how could you do “IRT: Deadliest Roads” without coming to India, ice or no ice?
The premise is that four drivers are each assigned a colourful Indian “Goods Carrier” truck and they have to pilot it, loaded, from Delhi to a dam-building project way up in the Himalayas in Himachal Pradesh and back.
As someone who has been on all those roads, or regional variations thereof, it’s all fun. The Delhi portions are all about having to share the road with…anything that moves. At a long stop for a train crossing, the driver watches in horror as a similar truck on the other side of the track is surrounded by dozens of bikes and rickshaws all jockeying for position for when the barrier is raised (“They just swarmed him, like ants on a doughnut!”). The first guy doesn’t even make it out of the city.
The HP part is all hairpin turns, narrow, virtually single-lane roads (with two-way traffic, of course), and 3,000 foot drop-offs awaiting the slightest mistake. Having been up and down (and up and down and up and…) those roads and others like them in jeeps and buses, I can’t imagine having to drive them. I’d usually find myself a seat where I couldn’t really see what’s in front of us, even if my eyes were open.
A great watch if you’re an IRT fan, or India traveler, or both. It looks like it first aired back in 2010, but in case you missed it, worth tracking down.
