The Road Trip Safety Checklist: Before You Leave, On the Road, In the Hills

Most road trip incidents are not dramatic. They are a bald tyre on a wet ghat section, a group that split up with no agreed meeting point, a rider descending on his brakes for twenty kilometres, or four people who left at 2 p.m. and ended up doing the last mountain hour in the dark. All four are preventable, and all four are boring to prevent.

This checklist is organised by when you use it: the week before, the morning of, on the highway, in the hills, and when something has already gone wrong.

The week before: the vehicle

If you do one thing on this list, do this one. Mountain roads do not create faults so much as they find the ones you already had.

• Tyres. Tread depth across the whole width, not just the middle. Sidewalls checked for cracks and bulges. Pressure set cold, to the figure on the doorframe or in the manual - not by eye.
• Spare. Present, inflated, and reachable without unloading the entire boot. Check the jack and the wheel spanner are actually in the car.
• Brakes. Pad thickness, fluid level, and a proper listen. A squeal on the flat becomes a serious problem on a 20 km descent.
• Fluids. Coolant, engine oil, brake fluid, washer fluid. Overheating on a climb is almost always a coolant story.
• Lights. Headlights both beams, brake lights, indicators, hazards. Get somebody to stand behind the car while you press things.
• Chain and sprockets if you are on a motorcycle. Tension and lubrication, and carry lube for a long trip.
• Wipers. Useless wipers are a Himachal monsoon speciality and they cost almost nothing to replace.

The week before: the paperwork and the people

• Driving licence, registration certificate, valid insurance, PUC certificate. Originals or the official digital versions, not photographs in your gallery.
• Check that your insurance actually covers what you are doing and where.
• Share the route, the vehicle number and the expected timings with somebody who is not coming.
• Agree who is driving which legs. A driver who has been told they are driving from 6 a.m. sleeps differently the night before than one who finds out at 5:45.

What to carry

• First aid kit - and at least one person who knows what is in it. Antiseptic, dressings, tape, painkillers, any prescription medicines, ORS.
• Torch that is not your phone, plus a power bank.
• Tow rope and a set of jumper cables. Somebody in the convoy should have both.
• Puncture kit and a compact compressor - close to essential on any motorcycle trip beyond a day ride.
• Warm layers, even in summer, if you are gaining altitude. See the Himalayan packing list.
• Cash. ATMs thin out fast and UPI needs signal.
• Water and something to eat. Not a luxury if you are stuck behind a landslide clearance for four hours.

The morning of

1. Walk around the vehicle. Tyres, lights, anything leaking underneath. Sixty seconds.
2. Fuel up before you leave the city, not at the first hill town.
3. Set the meeting point and the regroup points for the day, out loud, to everyone.
4. Exchange phone numbers across vehicles - not just within them.
5. Leave early. Almost every hard part of a road trip is easier at 6 a.m. than at 11 a.m.

On the highway: convoy discipline

A group of vehicles travelling together is not the same as several vehicles going to the same place. Groups that do not agree the rules split up, lose people, and make bad overtakes trying to catch up.

• Slowest vehicle sets the pace. Not the fastest. This is the whole rule and most groups break it within an hour.
• Fixed lead and fixed sweep. The lead never gets out of sight of the second vehicle; the sweep never leaves anyone behind. Nobody overtakes the lead.
• Regroup points, not radio contact. Signal fails. Agree the next stop, and wait there.
• Never ride or drive to catch up. If you are behind, you are behind. The group will wait at the regroup point.
• Spacing. On bikes, stagger the formation and leave a full gap. Riding in a tight pack means the third rider cannot see what the first one is braking for.

In the hills

Mountain driving has its own rules and most of them are about braking and about who goes first.

• Engine-brake on descents. Pick a low gear and stay in it. Riding the brake pedal for a long descent overheats the brakes and they fade - which means they stop working at the exact moment you need them.
• Vehicles climbing have right of way. A climbing vehicle that stops may not be able to restart on the gradient. Reverse or pull in if you are the one descending.
• Horn on blind corners. Standard practice, not aggression. Everyone up there does it.
• Hug the inside on blind turns, and expect a bus taking the whole road.
• Watch the surface on the outside of corners - gravel, water runoff, and diesel spills collect exactly where you would place a bike.
• Do not drive mountain roads at night if you can avoid it. No lighting, no edge markings, an unknown drop, and oncoming high beams. Plan to be parked by dusk.

Weather and altitude

• In the monsoon, do not park or stop under an obviously loose slope, and do not cross a flowing nala you cannot see the bottom of.
• If it is actively raining hard in the hills, stop somewhere safe and wait. Landslips happen during rain, not after it.
• Above roughly 2,500 m, take altitude seriously. Headache, nausea, breathlessness at rest or confusion means descend - see the altitude section of the Himachal road trip guide.
• Check road status before committing to a high pass. Conditions change within a day.

When something goes wrong

1. Get off the road. Vehicle fully off the carriageway if it can move; people behind the barrier, not standing in the lane.
2. Make yourself visible. Hazards on, warning triangle out well back up the road - further than feels necessary on a bend.
3. Count heads. Before anything else, and again before you leave.
4. Call for help early. National emergency number 112; highway patrol on 1033 on national highways. It is better to call and stand down than to call late.
5. Do not move a seriously injured person unless they are in immediate danger where they are.
6. Tell the group. One message to the group chat with location and status stops five people driving back to look for you.

The rules that are not about vehicles

• Agree the day’s end point before the day starts. Open-ended driving is how people end up on a mountain road at 10 p.m.
• Nobody drives tired, and tired is a decision the group makes, not the driver. The driver is the worst judge of it.
• Nobody drives after drinking. This does not need discussion, but it does need saying before the first evening.
• If one person is uncomfortable with a road, a pace or a plan, that is enough. The group stops or slows. This is worth stating explicitly at the start, because the person who most needs it is the least likely to speak up.

None of this makes a trip less fun. It makes the difference between a story you tell and an incident you do not. Before your next run, read the Himachal road trip guide for route-specific hazards, pack from the Himalayan packing list, and if you are going with people you have not travelled with before, the first group trip guide covers the social side. Ready to go? Find people heading the same way on upcoming trips and travel clubs.