Buying a car as a foreigner

Nick, you can drive in India! Perhaps, this should be expected, you are fully acclamated to Indian diaspora. Driving in emergency: Keep it to minimum till you can get help.

I practice what I wrote and then some (I eat my own cooking). Numerous lives are lost in auto accidents every day.

So you got used to driving on the "wrong" side of the road, didn't you? As a driver you just move with the flow of traffic. It's more difficult crossing a road on foot.

In the past fifty years at least four countries have left this select club (Sweden, Iceland, Ghana, Nigera) and, as far as I know, none have joined. Of course in 1982 the Falklands rejoined the club after 74 days of enforced absence.

I practice what I wrote and then some ... although the "some" only amounts to about 5,000km yearly average.

The first year I was here, the whole idea freaked me out (and I wasted the International Driving Permit). You just have to get started. Yes, I've been doing it for about six years now, but if I was still saying, whoaaaaa... get a driver... I'd still be back at square one being scared of getting started. There was nothing special about me back then: Just a foreigner who'd spent his first year living in India and wanted a car.

In very many ways, one takes less risk by driving oneself.

Anyway, I do not have a budget that could possibly include having a driver.

I know one thing: I have never actually driven in a country where they drive on the right. An emergency would be a really lousy way to find out how.

Still trying to get my head around this. You rode a horse wrong (backwards facing)? But, now you want to drive a car on the Indian road. Just remember there is no side of the road in India. The bigger the vehicle the more the right of way. The only exception is bicycles which travel randomly (some of my friends are bicyclists so I won't call for a genocide of such). Grand fun all in all in hindsight..

All joking about the wrong or right side of the road aside... Either way is a pain in India according to what I have read. What will probably happen is I will buy a motorcycle, and get used to the roads. Then I will buy a used car (I like the look and price of the ambassadors!) and drive it myself. I honestly am just not the hire a driver type! I have logged more than several trips back and forth accross the US, and untold numbers up and down, I like to drive! Traffic, well it is a part of life, and if it seems a good idea once we have boots on the ground, IM is where I will come for sage advice and scared wisdom about the purchase of possible vehicle. (Used is OK for me, I am a decent shadetree mechanic, and know when to pay for experts). I thank you all for commenting, and hope to continue tapping from this well over the next several years of my Indian tenure.

The lobotomy that is supplied with many bikes is an optional extra. You do not have to drive like a complete madman with total and complete disregard for anything else on the road and even less concern for your own safety. Many bikers do not drive like that. Of course, they are ones that pass unnoticed, proceeding patiently with correct road position and proper road sense. Others swarm like mosquitoes.

Unfortunately, even good drivers are regularly victims. A biker, stopped at a traffic signal, for instance, is reduced to a pulp by a truck driver that does not even slow down for that signal. Sadly, this sort of news item is regular and frequent.

Most bikers in the world are very much aware that they drive the most dangerous form of transport on the roads. Knowing this helps to keep them alive. Please be aware that biking here is far, far more dangerous than may imagine. I always try to remind myself that the feeling of safety given by a thin car body is largely illusory --- but it is safer than having nothing between you and the road.

We have forum members who are keen bikers, so there is, I guess, another side to all this, but I doubt that they will hugely disagree with my general assessment. And please don't think that my remarks are just "foreign." You can check out what other Indians think of bikers, cab drivers, and the general level of driving competence in India on Team-BHP.com. Team-BHP is the best resource for all things regarding driving India

I don't encourage visitors to drive here. What can you see when you need 110% concentration on the road? But I do encourage residents not to think of it as something impossible, because it just isn't. But, hey, I can (and do ) rant and rant and rant about what it is like out there on the street

I have ridden a bike in Beijing for the last 2 years. Of course it isn't the same, but I have developed a keen sense of where things are relative to where I am, and I try to not drive like an idiot even if I feel as if I am completely surrounded by them. I am sure there will be a large learning curve in Bangalore, but I am ready for it, and even excited about it. I just know I can't ride a bus everyday to get to work, I will go insane! Also the weekends out of town is what I am really looking forward to! As to the safety... well we all have to take chances every time we wake up. Someday I will die, I hope it's not on an Indian roadway, but it's not a fear that will stop me from climbing on and getting to my destination!

It occurred to me last night that if you're going to be in India for six months, you should just buy a car. I wish I had thought of this when I was visiting. But for future trips, this is definitely what I'll be doing - depending upon what legal hoops may or may not be in the way by then.