The old and the new

Truck drivers

During this trip, just 300km (Togli border) back there was a donkey lying on the road and so many vehicles had gone on top of that...flesh was everywhere on the road.  See, this is our daily income; we can’t do any other work except this. But obviously we feel very sad, even if an animal died. Now there are many modern vehicles running on the new road. Previously it took around 15 day to go up and down but now it reduced to 6 days.  But there isn’t any more profit for us.  Now our profit is fixed, previously it was open; whatever a driver needed was always given by the owner. But now it’s Rs 10,000 for everything, our food, toll tax, transport commission, labour, two drivers, etc. So it is like non-stop, night follows day... yes, we just stop to cook for ourselves. We cook both of our lunch and dinner at a time. By cooking ourselves we can manage the whole trip for around Rs 600.00 for food, but outside it is like Rs 250 (3 persons) for one meal. 

Raju Sayad, 30, Raju Tiwari 35.