While travelling through various villages in India, there are many amazing wonders and experiences that we like to cherish, capture and keep with us as memories forever. Apart from always writing about wildlife, I wanted this post to capture one such situation I came across on my return from Ranthambhore National Park in 2008 to Delhi.

My wife and I had a lovely time at Ranthambhore Tiger Reserve (Rajasthan, India). When returning back we came across a tractor carrying a massive bundle of hay. Now what makes up hay? It’s just grass which has been cut, dried and stored for the use as animal fodder. Our journey was made all the more entertaining by being stuck driving behind this massive, precariously balanced sack on the back of the tractor.  No room to overtake, we spent a lot of the drive studying the sack on the back of the tractor and particularly the hand-stitched rope somehow holding it all together.  The stitching was almost like artwork; weaving the cloth together and keep the goods safe - very creative and showing some skilled perfection.

Despite it looking like it might burst at any time, it was still moving at some speed - quite an amazing sight to see on the road in front of us.  However, thinking that this tractor’s journey would stop at the next approaching village, we were not as impressed when it ended up ahead of us for most of our journey.

While driving, I thought mostly to the health and safety guidelines which vehicles have to undergo here in the western world. I was sure this tractor would have never passed its MOT (Ministry of Transport) certificate if here in the UK. On top of that there was no way the driver of this tractor knew there was a massive traffic jam behind him because he had huge loud speakers blasting out Rajasthani local music.  He was quite happily oblivious to the chaos on the road he was causing!  All quite a contrast to UK road driving!

With modern technology now in farming, it is common to see a baler made out of machinery. This machinery compresses and cuts/chips hay into compressed bales which are easy to handle and transport between places. Yet here we were, driving behind essentially a well designed sack whose health and safety records were non existent and yet humans had done what machinery could do and somehow the balance between the two sides on the tractor was just accurate.

Eventually, we did escape and overtake the hay tractor, but the small wonder of the incident of the hay tractor, and how such an object was put together and stayed together, will always be a fond memory of our travels in interior Rajasthan.