Drive to Nagarahole - Coorg : First event

Disclaimers : The events which I am going to share across, are or could be one of the most commonest ones seen or came across by others, But the very fact they seemed odd in the evened out trip of ours :D, requires them to be blogged about.

The first one, was on Bangalore-Mysore road and during the day (Thank god!). First would want to take this as an opportunity to thank the Gov of karnataka for the proper tarring of "this" road, 90% stretch of this road is done, but has some pot-holes, half done bridges, untarred (as on 14th April 2006) along. [ I know it is their duty to lay and maintain it, but looking the that state of the roads back 5 years and now compared, the only fear is we don't limp back to that again] Coming back to the road, this is four laner, two lanes for either direction of the traffic. But the two-laner at some stretch becomes a one-laner with both the direction traffic narrowing onto the same road acting as bottle necks [ The above 10% stretches], well most of these conversion have a some kind of a diversion sign, warning ahead(?) or atleast close to the diversion about these.

Now, I think I have provided enough data buildup on the roads ;D and now getting into the scenario build up :). At some two laner [ dead sure of this!! ] stretch towards mysore, we approached a entourage, trucks, two, on left lane, one behind the other with speeds around 70s-80s and a ksrtc bus. When I was about the overtake this line of mamoths, the ksrtc break aways from the tail and move beside (overtake) the trucks, thus leading to something like the pack on two rungs, with a truck and the bus in a row, followed by a truck and me. So, my sight is blocked with the bus in the front and the lorries at my side for a minute or a couple. Getting frustated I began honking at the bus, the bus too lets out a shrieking honks [which i didnt realize, at the moment ] and of all a sudden, moves to the left lane ahead of these trucks. As soon as this bus exits out of my lane, to my utter shock, I find a truck coming (?) in my lane [ Now this might similar to scene from BI where Douglas following Stone ;), minus the sea, the curvey roads, Stone and importantly the music!! ]. With the sighting, applied brakes bringing the speeds from 100, the car reacted quite benevolently and gracefully slowed down [ thought it might skid, would miss my control as shown in "most" bollywood movies ], the seat belts pulling us back and could heard the tyre screeching and bringing us speeds of 20 in seconds and stopping 20 Ft in front of the truck. But this time, the left laners had too slowed down in anticipation.

Well thank god we had no tail followers... Or we could have landed in a more a mess.

My first brush with... Though there was no flighty images of the past, but was could feel the adrenaline rush and the pounding heart. The sight of the truck held my breath and all of us swore and in the side glance saw som with hands in air [what was ur reaction bhatta?]

Swore at the truck driver, when passing by [ though he (the opposite truck driver) had stopped his vehicle could not comprehend why he entered into this lane] and moved along.

Trying to recollect, I still can feel the heated tension, shouts of that second, wide opened eyes, breath struck in throat, an open jaw, gripping of the handle, "Oh shits",......

That was a really an hair raising moment.

Next : The second event