One of the things that makes it easy to not drive in India (beyond the traffic and general craziness of the drivers) is that it's easy and relatively inexpensive to hire a car & driver for a day or more. We hired a car & driver to go to Yercaud for a cost of Rs. 4,000 (~ $80) for the weekend. Lest you think this is something that only obnoxious ex-pats do -- thing again -- it's something that many middle-class people do in India.
Our hotel didn't have a room for drivers to sleep in (may of the hotels in India do have such facilities) --- so Rajesh decided to sleep in the car --- he was rather matter-of-fact about it so I guess it's not too unusual. We weren't exactly sure what he did on Saturday morning to freshen up -- but he did ask us if he could use our bathroom on Sunday while we were at breakfast.
Rajesh was quite protective -- he traipsed around with us on all of our stops -- I guess to keep us out of trouble?!? It was quite nice though to have someone with us who spoke the local language --- most people do speak some amount of English, but having a local makes it so much easier (especially since we didn't really have any directions to the spots that we wanted to visit, including our hotel).
He was quite appalled that we wanted to stop to buy some beer to drink before dinner (our hotel turned out to not have a bar). Although changing quickly, cultural norm here is that women shouldn't drink (although plenty do -- just not so much in public).
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