He’s a young guy in a red Ferrari jacket with close-cropped hair, knockoff Italian shoes and a neatly manicured Tony Stark beard. If he speaks English, he doesn’t admit it. He just bobs his head and smiles warily at my cheery “Good Morning” and insists on carrying my heavy backpack to the car. He’ll be my driver for the next three weeks as I explore the isolated Brahmaputra floodplain, an area sandwiched between Bhutan, Bangladesh, China and Myanmar and connected to mainland India by a narrow sliver of land known as the “chicken-neck.”
Image-wise, Priyom is the exact opposite of Kal, my driver in the southern Indian state of Kerala. Where Kal had been conservative and staid, Priyom is sleek and stylish in a Fast-n-Furious kind of way. I quickly discover that this image also applies to his driving style. If riding with Kal was nail-biting, riding with Priyom is downright heart-stopping. Kal rarely exceeded 50KPH. Priyom rarely goes less than 100 unless a collision is imminent, at which point he jams the brakes and somehow slides between the careening bus and the fully-loaded lorry (with a couple of centimeters to spare), honking furiously and also dodging the inevitable bicycle or scooter. At the time of this writing I’ve been with Priyom for fifteen days, during which not one single vehicle of any kind has passed us. Not one. As far as I can tell, Priyom is the fastest driver in all of India.