Most rural roads in India, all but the busiest, have a tarmac strip up the middle wide enough for a bus or a truck. When one meets another coming the other way, or if a faster one wants to overtake another, they each have to pull over onto the “hard” shoulder to creep past each other.
Sometimes the hard shoulder isn’t really all that hard...
Fortunately there wasn’t a crowd of people on the top of this lorry when it keeled over – or if there had been, they’d got down while the passing manoeuvre was taking place. That’s the driver or his assistant sitting on the fuel tank looking disconsolate.
Later that evening they’d unloaded and enough of a crowd had gathered that they were able to pull the truck upright again with ropes. There wasn’t much damage: it had landed on soft ground. A lot of oil had leaked out of the engine, so they topped that up. They reloaded, started it up, and away they went.
By the time they were pulling it upright, it was dark and the illumination was a couple of petromax lanterns. As I was on my bicycle I didn't have my tripod or anything with me; photography was out of the question.
Luckily it wasn’t a very bad accident on this occasion. Nobody was badly hurt, and even the truck only suffered minor damage (one broken window and some extra dents to add to its collection).
These incidents can be very bad, if it comes as a complete surprise and there are loads of people hitching a ride on top of the load. They can be very badly hurt or killed, especially if the load is loose or breaks its ropes.
January 1984.
Nowadays many roads that used to be like this have a good surface wide enough for two trucks to pass, but there are still some like this, particularly in jungly areas and mountains (2005).
©Clive K Semmens 1984 & 2005