Along For The Drive

An increasing number of Indians are taking foreign self-drive holidays. Here’s what to keep in mind when renting a car abroad.

- Kushan Mitra

You’re going to be travelling abroad, and after you saw Farhan, Hrithik and Abhay cavort around Spain in a convertible, you think a driving holiday is the way to go. While renting a car is extremely easy in most parts of the world, you should still consider the economics of a driving trip, and consider all the potential pitfalls.

Do you have an international driving permit (IDP)?

Although some foreign countries will let you drive on their roads with an Indian driving license for a certain amount of time (anywhere between a week and several months), many others require that you carry an international permit along with your domestic one. Getting an IDP in India can be a cumbersome process, with a fair amount of paperwork involved, so keep this in mind before you make a decision.

Have you ever driven a left-hand drive car before?

Unless you are travelling to the UK, Australia, Japan, Thailand and a few other countries in Africa, you should know how to drive on the other side of the road. While there is a first time for everything, and traffic in most countries is nowhere as chaotic as it is in India, you must know all the road signs and the rules. There is no friendly ‘policeman uncle’ you can call if you get in trouble, and Sushma Swaraj will not reply to you on Twitter if you say you were stopped for speeding in Italy (which is quite unlikely, but that’s another story).

Rules are rules