Much has been written about the pros of traveling by car and
extended road trips, but hardly anyone talks about the cons of it. Every coin
has two sides, and the road trips also have their benefits and detriments.
Since I am talking about the negative sides of road trips, it does not mean
that I do not like them. I am an ardent lover of traveling by car, but I felt
like writing about the flip side of it. At least a decade ago, road trips used
to be cheaper and much more fun than today. Let me take my heart out as I talk
about the disadvantages of traveling by car.
Traffic jam
Earlier when I had started going for road trips during my
college time, there used to be hardly any cars on the road. However, nowadays
the immense traffic on the road irritates me every time I go out on the road,
especially during office hours. Passing through the small cities is one hell of
a task because the vehicles are not regulated at all, and I am sorry to say,
but people do not have any civic sense to be on the road. The animals,
children, pedestrians, and bikes are all on the same street where the
high-speed vehicles should be. All this chaos causes traffic jam even in
metropolitans, forget the Tier-II cities of India, which are in massive bedlam.
Time consumption
I have to be honest
here; road trips do take a lot of time and effort. If the distance is more than
100 kilometers, I have to do a lot of mental preparation to be there in the car
for hours at a stretch. With the growing age after forty, being in the car for
more than three hours definitely seems painful. If I leave for Goa from Mumbai,
it takes me more than 11-12 hours to be there, which is a long time of course.
Although extended hours of journey do not seem much painful when I have someone
to talk to in the car. Being alone for such a long journey is undeniably awful.
Hidden costs
Being on a road trip does involve a few hidden costs, which
may sometimes shoot up the budget by a great deal. If the car breaks down, the
prices of the motels are great than I expected, the food is expensive, and the
toll taxes there at every hundred kilometers; I have to bear the costs of every
such expense. All these expenses are really agonizing, mainly because I am
habitual of going for a road trip when these expenses used to be much lower
than the current times.
Bad weather
Although the bad weather can impact traveling in all modes
of transport, sometimes it becomes especially challenging to deal with it when
it is raining or snowing heavily. Driving on the wet roads is highly risky
since the visibility is too low and the roads become slippery. Secondly, if the
snowfall occurs on the hilly areas, it becomes equally disturbing to drive the
car in a zero-visibility environment because of snow.
No comments:
Post a Comment